Video Game / Gradius

Destroy them all!

Konami's Gradius (also called Nemesis in some incarnations) is one of the seminal side-scrolling Shoot 'Em Up series. The player controls the Vic Viper, a small starfighter, and faces off against the forces of the Bacterions, and generally destroys everything.

The Power-Up scheme in Gradius was particularly innovative for the time — destroying waves of enemies (or special Palette Swap enemies) drops glowing tokens, which the player can exchange at any time for an upgrade. A bar at the bottom of the screen shows which upgrade they can purchase with the tokens they have collected, with the more powerful ones requiring more tokens. Essentially, the ship is carrying its own shop around with it at all times. This allows the player to tailor their strategy as they play — for example, they may elect to skip a cheap upgrade and hold out for enough tokens to buy a more powerful one.

This is in contrast to the system later used by R-Type, where there were multiple types of powerup each with a specific application.

Gradius's power-up scheme is a staple of the series, and later games provided different upgrade loadouts for different ships, or the ability to customize the loadout before playing. The traditional upgrade sequence is Speed Up, Missile, Double (a bidirectional cannon), Laser, Option, and Shield. It is because of Gradius that "Option" is often used to describe a powerup that provides the player with an Attack Drone.

The power-up scheme was copied by a few other games, such as Apidya and Project X.

The first Gradius was released in 1985, but in a real-life Retcon, the 1981 game Scramble was declared part of the series in Gradius Galaxies.^note The first Gradius game was codenamed Scramble 2 before its final product release.

Compare Parodius, which is Konami taking this series and giving it a Cute 'em Up redesign. And pumped with enough LSD to drop an elephant. Also compare Otomedius, an anime parody series which has a lot of breasts and Fanservice.

The last Gradius video game released was Gradius ReBirth (ironically enough) in 2009. After that, Gradius just quietly went off the radar, outside of the aforementioned Otomedius. The series did get a pachislot spinoff in 2011, the series has cameoed in various other Konami games such as Pixel Puzzle Collection (a Picross-like game with puzzles depicting elements from and music lifted from various Konami games), the BEMANI series (mainly in the form of music remixes), and the second Zone of the Enders game (where it was depicted as a Transforming Mecha) and ports of the games get released from time to time (with the latest being Arcade Archives: Gradius III in 2020), but don't get your hopes up for a new Gradius game anytime soon.^note Even ignoring Konami's extremely controversial business practices starting in 2015, Gradius lost its commercial traction after the 1990s, along with the rest of the shmup genre as three-dimensional games became the new norm. However, there may still be a sliver hope that aside on how Konami has calmed down a little on the controversies and at the 2020's have been releasing compilations of their old games that gained ground in the 8-bit era, which was their proven golden age (as shown with either Castlevania, Contra or their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games), a Gradius compilation may be possible and your best bet for modern exposure, but even then, it wasn't Konami's top tier defining franchise even in that age, so the chance is still low.

Not to be confused with the 2003 console RPG Gladius. Nor with Darius, for that matter - though they are both iconic shoot-em-up franchises.

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List of titles

• Gradius (1985, arcade). Titled Nemesis outside Japan.
  • Ported to NES (which retained the Gradius name for its overseas releases), MSX, PC Engine, Japanese cellphones, PC88, X1, X68000, Spectrum (as Nemesis the Final Challenge).
    • MSX port included in Japanese Saturn and PlayStation in Konami Antiques MSX Collection.
    • NES port included in the NES Classic, released on Virtual Console for the 3DS, Wii and WiiU and to the Switch (both the home version on the Switch online subscription's NES library and the "Vs. Gradius" coin-op version in the Arcade Archives series on the eShop).
    • PC Engine port included in the PC Engine Mini, including both the original release as is and a "near arcade" Easter Egg version with a rearranged soundtrack and color palette shifts to better resemble the arcade version within the PC Engine's technical constraints.
  • Ported as part of Gradius Deluxe Pack to the Japanese Saturn, PS, and PC.
  • Ported as part of Konami Classics to the DS.
  • Ported as part of Gradius Collection to the PSP.
  • Ported as part of Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection to XBOX One, PS4, Switch and Steam, with both regional versions for each version (Gradius for Japan, Nemesis elsewhere) following an initial update.
• Salamander (1986, arcade). Titled Life Force outside Japan.
  • Ported to Famicom/NES, MSX, PC Engine, Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad, Japanese cellphones, X68000. Kept the Life Force title outside Japan.
    • Famicom/NES port released on Virtual Console for the 3DS, Wii and WiiU.
    • MSX port ported to Japanese Saturn and Playstation in Konami Antiques MSX Collection.
    • PC Engine port included in the American and European models of the PC Engine Mini, retaining the Salamander name, and also released on the Wii Virtual Console.
  • Ported as part of Salamander Deluxe Pack to the Japanese Saturn and PS.
  • Ported to PSP as part of Salamander Portable.
  • Ported as part of Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection to XBOX One, PS4, Switch and Steam, with both regional versions for each version (Salamander for Japan, US/EU Life Force elsewhere) following an initial update.
  • Life Force (American arcade version, with changed plot and some changed backgrounds)
  • Life Force (Japanese arcade version, with completely overhauled graphics and a Gradius-style power-up system)
    • Ported as part of Salamander Deluxe Pack to the Japanese Saturn and PS.
    • Ported to PSP as part of Salamander Portable.
• Gradius 2 (1987, MSX; Nemesis 2 in Europe)
  • Ported to Japanese cellphones.
  • Ported to Japanese Saturn and Playstation in Konami Antiques MSX Collection.
  • Ported to X68000 as Nemesis '90 Kai.
  • Ported to PSP as part of Salamander Portable.
• Gradius II: GOFER no Yabō (1988, arcade; not to be confused with Gradius 2). Titled Vulcan Venture outside Japan.
  • Ported to Famicom, PC Engine CD-Rom, X68000, and Japanese cellphones.
    • PC Engine port released on the Wii Virtual Console in all regions and all regional versions of the PC Engine Mini.
  • Ported as part of Gradius Deluxe Pack to the Japanese Saturn, PS, and PC.
  • Ported to PSP as part of Gradius Collection, for a proper North American release. After 18 years.
  • Ported as part of Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection to XBOX One, PS4, Switch and Steam, with both regional versions for each version (Gradius II: GOFER no Yabō for Japan, Vulcan Venture elsewhere) following an update.
• Gofer no Yabō: Episode II (MSX; Nemesis 3: The Eve of Destruction in Europe)
  • Ported to Japanese Saturn and Playstation in Konami Antiques MSX Collection.
• Cosmic Wars (1989, Famicom)
  • A Turn-Based Strategy game set in the Gradius universe.
• Gradius III: Densetsu Kara Shinwa E (1989, arcade)
  • Adopted to the SNES, but with significant changes in stages, bosses, and weapons.
  • Ported to the Playstation 2 as part of Gradius III and IV.
  • Ported to the PSP as part of Gradius Collection.
  • Ported to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch under Hamster's Arcade Archives label.
• Nemesis (1990, Game Boy)
  • Included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 1 (1997, Japan) for the Super Game Boy under the title of Gradius
  • Included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 1 (2000, Europe) for the Game Boy Color under the title of Gradius
• Nemesis II: Return of the Hero (Game Boy). Released as Gradius: The Interstellar Assault in North America.
  • Included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 3 (1998, Japan) for the Super Game Boy under the title of Gradius II
  • Included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 4 (2000, Europe) for the Game Boy Color under the title of Gradius II: Return of the Hero
• Salamander 2 (1996, arcade)
  • Ported as part of Salamander Deluxe Pack to the Japanese Saturn and PS.
  • Ported to PSP as part of Salamander Portable.
• Gradius Gaiden (1997, Japanese Playstation only)
  • Ported to PSP as part of Gradius Collection, finally giving it a proper overseas release after 9 years. Also included exclusively on the Japanese version of the Playstation Classic.
• Solar Assault (1997, arcade)
• Gradius IV Fukkatsu (1998, arcade)
  • Ported to the Playstation 2 as part of Gradius III and IV.
  • Ported to PSP as part of Gradius Collection.
• Gradius NEO (2004, Japanese cellphones)
• Gradius NEO -IMPERIAL- (2004, Japanese cellphones)
• Gradius Galaxies (2001, GBA). Didn't come out in Japan until 2002. Titled Gradius Advance in Europe and Gradius Generation in Japan.
• Gradius V (2004, PS2) — Developed by Treasure.
• Gradius ReBirth (Wiiware, 2008, 2009 in US) — Developed by M2.
• Gradius the Slot (Arcade, 2011) — not a traditional shoot 'em up, but a pachislot game where doing well in the slots affects how well you do in battle.

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Destroy them all! The Gradius series provides examples of:

• Ace Pilot: The central heroes of the series tend to be highly experienced pilots, such as James Burton and his descendants.
• Action Prologue: Gradius: The Interstellar Assault opens with your comrades getting blasted away by a Bacterian Warship Core dumping the player in an escape sequence as it pursues relentlessly through an asteroid belt.
• Attack Its Weak Point: "Destroy the core!". Depending on the boss (usually organic bosses), the Large-Ham Announcer will say "Shoot it in the mouth!", "Destroy the eye!", etc.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: There are a select few games in which player does not pilot the Vic Viper. In the MSX-exclusive titles, they are given command of ships such as the Metalion starfighter or the Vixen series. Even in MSX Salamander, which varies drastically from other versions of the game, you are in command of something else (Saber Tiger and Thrasher.)
• Anime of the Game: The Salamander OVAs. See here for more info.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Believe or not, this trope occasionally shows up in at least a few games.
  • In every Boss Rush segment, should you die to any boss after the first, the game will first summon a barrage of orange Zubs so you can power yourself back up, rather than having to rematch the boss with no powerups.
  • In the first release of arcade Nemesis, starting from a checkpoint will have players greeted with a lot of power-up enemies, making it easier to recover.
  • Salamander and Life Force: Upon dying, you and your friends can respawn in the same spot and take the Options back.
  • Solar Assault: Like in Salamander games, your plane respawns in the same spot if you get hit. And you can manage your plane's speed during the stages.
  • The Arcade Archives port of Gradius III AC just goes and unlocks all of stage select from the get go. This helps immensely, as this particular game is sadistically difficult.
  • Gradius Gaiden: In coop-mode, not only does dying let you respawn in the same spot, you also get 5 power-ups to get back on your feet. That being said, your friend might steal them. Even in single-player mode, you respawn in level sections where power-ups are given out in generous quantities.
  • Gradius V: This game practically combines almost all of the above merciful features, save for spawning power-ups upon dying. The addition of a tiny hitbox for the Vic Viper is a necessary blessing, considering the massive amounts of enemies, bullets, and cramped spaces throughout the levels.
• The Artifact: As stated here, the original game was meant to have several different power-ups in the last slot on the bar, which is why it was denoted with a question mark. However, the developers were unable to implement all of their planned ideas, so in the final game it invariably gives you a shield. Subsequent games keep the "?" while still never deviating from variations on the shield power-up.
• Asteroid Thicket: Gradius V stage 5 is the epitome of this. This trope isn't a stranger to the series, as Salamander has two stages (stages 2 and 5) dedicated to this trope, along with the asteroid belt stage in Nemesis 90 Kai.
• Asteroids Monster:
  • Numerous enemies. In 2 of the stages in Gradius III, they're predominant.
  • On a larger scale, the Final Bosses. Every time Bacterion or certain commanders (Gofer and Venom, for example) are killed, their pieces spread across the universe, each of which is reborn as a new instance of them.
• Attack Drone: The Options are the Ur-Example of this trope in gaming, but unlike other future examples, the Options fire the exact same weapon load-out as your ship while they follow you like a snake's tail (some versions, like Gradius III, have other ways the options can work, such as rotating around the ship, or in a permanent "V" formation).
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The flame thrower weapon in the Nemesis series. Sure it looks neat, but it has such short range that you have to put yourself in harm's way to get the most of it, and it's practically worthless against Core bosses. To make matters worse, the damage is pathetically weak due to a Game-Breaking Bug. Thankfully this was corrected in Gradius V where the Fire Blaster gets the awesome damage output it deserves.
  • Depending on the title and player skill, Ripple laser can be this, despite being an iconic powerup of the series. It's an expanding laser shot that covers a wide range and can be devastating in covering the screen in offense with enough Option drones...but unlike most other lasers, its piercing potential is very limited comparatively, which can be a major downgrade in later levels where piercing through enemy formations quickly with a laser can be key to surviving any length of time. Thankfully it does fire comparatively quickly, so that does help offset some of its negative.
  • Nemesis 2 allows you to find new weapons within stages, which can expact your tactical options, but these new weapons get tacked onto your power meter, making it longer and thus requiring more power capules to get power-ups near the end, such as Option and Shield. It's often best to just take one or two weapons you want and ignore the rest.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: Brain Golem appears in the first stage of Salamander 2, appearing to be the endboss, only to be Eaten Alive by a giant serpent-like creature. It's possible to kill it before the serpent shows up, but the method to do it is so difficult that in practice most players end up seeing this trope played straight.
• Bandit Mook: Option Hunters/Thieves will steal away your options if they touch you or your options (they will appear if you haven't been shot down for a long time), but they cannot destroy you or be destroyed.
• Battleship Raid: Stage 4 of Salamander 2 and the second stage of Gradius V; you run through a mirror version of said battleship in the final stage of the game, minus the boss rush after destroying Venom's eyes, since the game ends immediately on that. Nemesis III has a small one with the boss fight against Queensryche, where after destroying its head, the player must reach to the core by carefully fly into its cavity from the rear while destroying the inner turrets.
• Big Bad
  • Bacterion in most games, Gofer in II and IV, and Dr. Venom in Nemesis 2 and 3 on the MSX and in ReBirth.
  • Doom in Salamander 2.
  • The Lars Empire in Gradius NEO/Imperial.
    • For those who don't know, the Lars Empire is an evil human empire that has obtained the ancient Gradian and Bacterian technology in a time which takes place many years after the Gradius/Nemesis series. The only Bacterians in Gradius NEO/Imperial live in the wild, with no Hive Mind to guide them, and the Gradian Empire doesn't even exist anymore; it has been replaced by the Gradian Union.
• Black-and-White Morality: Planet Gradius, Planet Latis, James Burton, and David Burton are good; Bacterion, Venom, and Salamander are evil.
  • Before the Northern Cross War that inadvertently killed nearly of the Wreekians, the Gradius government avoided contact with them because they were primitive. After the Northern Cross War, the Gradius government didn't do much at all for the poor Wreekian survivors; they only wanted to use their ESP power. This would put the Gradian government on the grey morality.
• Blackground:
  • The NES adaptation of Lifeforce combined this with Dramatic Disappearing Display when the player faced off against most of the game's bosses. The end result was like two beings fighting in an empty void. It is unclear whether or not this was done for practicality or purely for drama, as both player and boss are already in a completely black screen with no obstacles.
  • Curiously, Gradius II continued to employ the stark background for boss battles, but did not remove the game's HUD.
  • Many of the more modern games in the franchise have backgrounds fade to black and then back in to a new background, in lieu of having multiple backgrounds appear and transition seamlessly.
• Boring, but Practical: In games that offer multiple weapon loadouts, the traditional Missile-Double-Laser setup is this. It may not be as flashy as newer weapons, but it can handle any situation very adequately: the basic Missile reliably hits enemies under the ship and can cruise along flat or downhill surfaces, Double catches enemies above you, and Laser inflicts plenty of damage with each beam. This is taken a step further in Gaiden and Galaxies, where Double can be upgraded to fire behind the player as well.
  • Gradius III for the SNES is likely the first game most US players played that allowed them to customize their weapon loadouts, offering 5 possibilities for most weapon types. Needless to say, several possibilities are sure to become this:
    • Twin Laser for the lasers. A simple two shot laser that offers range and piercing potential without being slow or cumbersome to use.
    • Reduce for shields. Reduces the Vic Viper's size drastically, which can be a major help as not only can you take about 3 shots before the shield wears off, it also makes you a more evasive target.
    • For the special, Speed Down can help a lot, especially since certain stages require you to have thrown a few upgrades into your speed....and then require you to skillfully maneuver narrow corridors in a later one. This reduces your speed by one level, which can help the player return to a more comfortable speed if they spent enough upgrades that would cause them to fly into a wall too easily.
• Boss Bonanza: Most games in the series have Boss Rushes. Gradius Gaiden's eighth stage, "Formidable Guardians", however is this trope instead, because with the exception of a boss that hooks itself up with two Deaths, all of the bosses in this stage are new bosses.
• Boss Rush: Most of the games since Gradius II have had one of these. Gradius V has two boss rushes, one at the end of stage 2, and one at the end of stage 6; stage 7 also has three bosses: a mid-boss, and then two bosses in a row before the end of the stage.
• Brain Monster: In Salamander, the first boss is the Brain Golem, which resembles a giant brain with an eye at one end. It attacks mostly by waving two serpentine arms around. Brain Golem reappears in another Womb Level in Monster Maulers, now equipped with Eye Beams. A frozen-over cousin, "Brain Freeze," appears as an exclusive boss in the Game Boy version of Parodius, and wields a Paper Fan of Doom in its second attack phase.
• Broken Armor Boss Battle: The Core Battleships require the Vic Viper to destroy the barriers first before you can reach their cores and defeat them.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Blowing up the Big Bad into pieces just winds up having each piece being able to develop into their own Big Bad. Each with their own attack force.
• Bullet Hell: Many games on loop 2 and above, particularly the Treasure-developed Gradius V.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The US localization of the SNES III rebrands the stages as "Terror Zones" and the bosses as "Mayors".
• Catchphrase: "Destroy the core!", also known as "Shoot the core!"
• Classic Cheat Code
  • The NES conversion of the first game introduced the Konami Code, and the SNES conversion of III was also the first to subvert it. Instead, it has a modified version of the code where the left and right buttons are replaced with the left and right triggers.
  • Using the code in the FC version of II, as well as in Life Force on the NES, grants you 30 ships when you start the game.
• Collision Damage:
  • This is more justifiable when one is flying a spacecraft. However, Gaiden has the Guard shield, which renders the player immune to terrain unless they wedge themselves into a space too small, or get smashed by two walls.
  • Irritatingly, shields have hitboxes that extend beyond the ship's hitboxes, and as such can be whittled down to nothing simply by flying through a tight passage (this made the "Shrink 'shield'" in Gradius III one of the more popular choices, as while you could only take two hits before the "shield" wore off, your hitbox became really small).
• Console Cameo: After completing the 2nd loop of ReBirth, Dr. Venom presents James with a device that he says can aid in his mission. Said device is clearly a Wii Remote. Which Dr. Venom says can be used to destroy Bacterians as if he was playing Gradius.
• Continuing is Painful: So you've spent 30-35 powerup capsules powering up your ship. Then you die. Then you die some more because your default speed is slow and your ship is completely ass-naked.
  • You do start with a single power-up on the bar (though this is only if you died with one on the bar). That's enough for a Speed-Up, which may be just enough speed to survive long enough to start rebuilding. If you're good.
  • Depending on where you died, you might have enough time to get over to your options, which drift offscreen rather than vanishing, and pick them up again.
  • Gradius Gaiden lets you rearrange the power meter, so you can, for example, get Options for only one or two powerup capsules each. Also, if you're playing a 2-player game and you die, you'll explode into five capsules.
  • Gradius V leaves any multiples you have onscreen when you die, and you can fly into them to reclaim them.
• Continuity Nod: Gradius ReBirth is chock full of references to Nemesis 2 and 3 on the MSX, to the point of being a de facto prequel. (The game is set in Cosmic Year 6664, 3 years before Nemesis 2). The true ending of ReBirth, gotten after finishing three loops, is Dr. Venom getting arrested for his failed coup d`etat, directly setting up the events of Nemesis 2.
  • A prototype version of the Metalion, the ship from Nemesis 2, is unlockable, and using it replaces the pre-stage section music with a remix of the equivalent theme from Nemesis 2.
• Convection, Schmonvection: In Life Force and Gradius III you fly between two solar surfaces and are OK unless you get struck by a flare.
  • Same thing with any lava-based stage.
  • If the Viper is truly flying in outer space, then the trope is justified - no air means no medium to transfer heat through.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: More of an exception rather than the rule; only the Salamander / Life Force games, Gaiden, and V allow two players to play together instead of taking turns.
• Cool Starship: The Vic Viper, along with its cousins, Lord British, Jade Knight, and Falchion Beta.
• Cores-and-Turrets Boss: Potentially the Trope Codifier. Examples include level 2 boss in Life Force that has two phases: First being a defensibe system with 3 cores and second having a moving core.
• Cue the Sun: The ending for Gradius Gaiden.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The classic Shield has more hit points than other shields, being capable of soaking up 10 hits or more depending on the game. Unfortunately, they only defend from the front, which means you still must watch out for enemy attacks from above, below, and behind.
• Darker and Edgier: The plot of the North American Life Force arcade, compared to other versions of Salamander / Life Force. Here, a special bionic Super-Soldier has developed a brain tumor and the player is shrunken down to fly into his body and operate. However, the soldier's immune system is partially composed of machines with human pilots who have strict orders to kill all intruders. The game's story implies that even though you're on the same side, their orders are non-negotiable and you must kill them if need be.
• Deadly Walls: Traditionally, touching the environment will kill you as if you had run into a bullet or enemy, though they can be used to block the enemy bullets if the player is wise enough. However, Gaiden offers two kinds of shields that defend against this trope: the Guard shield which allows your ship to bounce off of walls (although getting wedged into a space too small will still kill you), and the Limit shield which for 3 seconds offers complete invincibility and lets you pass through walls safely.
• Demoted to Extra
  • Big Core MK.I is a recurring boss in the first Gradius games. By Gradius V, it's a generic mook which appears multiple times throughout the stages with the other enemies. Yes, it's more powerful than an ordinary mook, but it's still an Elite Mook.
  • Subverted when a modified Big Core MK.I with a ring of turrets attached to it AND equipped with planet-piercing lasers appears as the first stage boss in Gradius V. Later loops add a second Big Core MK.I attached to the other end of the ring from the original.
  • A similar fate occured to the Japanese Life Force boss Gau/Gaw, appearing in groups before the start of the Bio stages of Gradius Gaiden and Gradius V.
• Did Not Get the Girl: The Prince of Latis (named Lord British, like his fighter) spends much of the Salamander OVA's third episode trying to propose to Stephanie, one of the Vic Viper pilots. In the end however, seeing how she and Dan (the other Viper pilot) work, talk and argue with each other convinces him to step back, believing they make a far better couple. He's not too broken up about it either, as he tells his attendants that he'll fall for some other girl in due time.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The Snake Options in Gradius III are the least used Option style due to their quirky nature. ^note The Options move to the opposite direction whenever the Vic Viper stops moving. For example, if the Vic Viper moves right and then stops, the Options would swing to the right rather than stay behind the Vic Viper. However, the swinging nature of Snake Options means that the Options become a makeshift whip that allows the Vic Viper to attack hard-to-reach enemies and boss weak points while firing from a safe distance.
  • Vertical Mine in Gradius IV. These can be thrown in any direction, the direction being influenced by what direction you're moving when you launch the mines. Clumsy at first, but once you learn how to throw mines effectively, you can easily hit hard-to-reach enemies and turn bosses into mechanical Swiss cheese very quickly.
  • Back in Nemesis II and Nemesis III, the Fire Blaster used to be Awesome, but Impractical due to its short range and utterly pathetic damage, but its return in Gradius V averts Video Game Flamethrowers Suck when played smartly. While the range is still short, the damage is absolutely devastating against bosses, and thanks to the constant fire rate, the Fire Blaster comes in handy with the asteroids in Stage 5 and the goo in Stage 6.
• Difficulty by Region:
  • The non-Japanese versions of arcade Gradius (Nemesis) spawn a bunch of red enemies when you respawn from death, and allows you to continue up to three times, rather than no continues in the Japanese version. On the other hand, perhaps to compensate, it has a harsher Dynamic Difficulty curve.
  • The European version of arcade Gradius II (Vulcan Venture) adds a continue feature, again not seen in the Japanese version; unlike Nemesis, the continuing limit is gone. However... it also removed the prequel's treatment of spawning red enemies whenever you respawn from death, making the continue feature less useful.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: An early scene in part three of the Salamander OVA shows a ceremony taking place on Gradius. The building it takes places in looks suspiciously similar to the US Capitol, and the music that plays sounds strangely similar to the POTUS's Lietmotif, "Hail To The Chief." The flags for Gradius and Latis even look strangely similar to those of the US and Great Britain, respectively.
• Doppelgänger Spin: The Options; they mimic your movement like a snake's body. In some games, they literally spin around.
• Downer Ending: NEO Imperial ends with the Big Core MK-1 Custom escaping the Lars Empire after destroying the Genocide Core, only to be destroyed by the Force Viper unaware that it went rogue and was trying to escape. The last we see of the Big Core MK-1 Custom is its wreckage burning up in the atmosphere of a nearby star. This is the only sad ending in the series.
• Dragon-in-Chief: The Shadow Dancers confronted at the end of each game just before the Final Boss. Due to the Final Boss of each game going down very easily, the Shadow Dancers serve as the de facto Final Boss and are much more deadly to fight.
• Dramatic Disappearing Display: Oddly enough in the NES version of Gradius II, the HUD at the bottom disappears completely when fighting certain bosses, but not others. This may have been invoked because of the lack of free tiles for the boss and the HUD in those places.
• Dub Name Change
  • The English manual for the MSX version of Nemesis and the NES Gradius refers to the Vic Viper as the Warp Rattler.
  • In Gradius III for the SNES. Several mayors get renamed: Big Core mkII to Ice Ice, Crystal Core to Monarch, among others. The Vic Viper itself is called "Modulated Artillery Exalter" (or M.A.X.).
• Dynamic Difficulty: The games' difficulty increase the more powerups you have. While having some powerups is always better than none at all, it ensures that players who go straight for a full loadout will be punished if they can't handle the increase in enemy bullets and bullet speed. This is best exemplified in the first game, where the Big Core's lasers are comically slow at zero powerups, but practically go faster than light if you have full powerups.
• Dyson Sphere: Zelos's size in the NES version of Lifeforce, although even this is implied to not come anywhere close to it since outer space itself can be seen inside of its stomach, stars in place and all. This is simply the closest thing T Vtropes has to describing it.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: One staple of the Gradius series are the variety of big awesome bosses. Gradius 1 however features either environmental hazards or an army of smaller sub-bosses, always followed by a Big Core MK I and the same cheery boss music at the end of every level. The only exception are the Stage 6 Nucleus boss and the Brain.
  • Although Stage 6 is the game's "Cell" level, it doesn't quite resemble the Womb Level design of later iterations. While it does have floating amoeba and two small tissue-like surfaces at the end, most of the terrain seems to consist of blue veins or cords bundled together. Additionally, while there are destructable walls to shoot through, they more closely resemble a net of very fine crystals, and do not grow back.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: ReBirth locks you to one loop if you play on Very Easy or Easy difficulties.
• Easier Than Easy: Many games have a difficulty level below Easy, often labeled "Very Easy" or "Easiest". V is notably still a challenging experience even on Very Easy difficulty.
• Eldritch Abomination: Most of the Big Bads qualify, including Zelos, Venom, Gofer, and Bacterian.
• Endless Game: Nearly every game will loop back to the first stage upon completing the last with increased difficulty, and will do so until the player exhausts all of their lives. (In practice, anyway; some games do have finite loops, just an absurd number of them such as V having 255 loops.)
• Four Is Death: The Boss Rushes in Gradius V both have four bosses in each of them; after defeating each of the first three, four powerup-filled Zubs appear before the next boss rolls in.
• Evil Is Visceral: The final boss in each game tends to be some sort of brain, or a head with a very big brain. The entirety of Life Force is also this.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Most bosses in the series simply explode. "Huge Heart" in Gradius V dies by splurging Alien Blood in five different areas, pulsating out of control before slowly combusting and finally exploding. It's surprisingly unsettling to watch.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: Life Force establishes itself to be set inside a giant alien life-form which is infected by a strain of bacteria. In the Japanese version, you must destroy a Planet Eater from the inside.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: According to the Gradius Gaiden manual, the Vic Viper and its three sibling ships are capable of traveling at five times the speed of light. This could explain why they are completely unaffected by the black hole in Gaiden stage 7.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: The final stage of Salamander 2 leading up to Doom is much shorter and easier than those of most other Gradius games and has no normal enemies. Usually, the entire final stage is effectively the Final Boss and has a defenseless controller, but Doom doesn't need an entire stage to protect him because he's actually a difficult final boss.
• Flame Spewer Obstacle: Stage 1 of Gradius 2 and stage 3 of Salamander has fiery surfaces that emit huge arcing flames either once per location or at regular intervals.
• Fly-at-the-Camera Ending: Played straight in the NES version of Gradius, Inverted in the rest of the games which show the Vic Viper or any other of the space fighters fly out of the camera and back to planet Gradius.
• Foreshadowing: In the intro cutscene in ReBirth, Dr. Venom briefs James on his mission of destroying the brain infecting Gradius's moon-computer, and that Venom himself has another mission to do in the meantime. Venom's "mission" is the coup d'etat that James busts him for at the end of the third loop.
• Fun with Acronyms: The final boss of Gaiden is named O.V.U.M. (Original Visions of the Ultimate Monsters).
• Gaiden Game: The aptly-named Gradius Gaiden, though if you're looking for a real Gaiden Game, check out the MSX Gradius series (Nemesis 2, Salamander and Nemesis 3), which has a completely different and more detailed plot from the main series, and introduces several features not seen in future games, save for a remake of Nemesis 2 called Nemesis '90 Kai.
• Game-Breaking Bug: It's extremely unlikely for it to happen, but in III AC, if the Shadow Dancer spawns immediately after a Ducker fires a shot, it will slip down the hall and its hitboxes will abruptly fill the entire screen to kill you instantly.
• Game Mod:
  • The Japanese Lifeforce arcade is this to Salamander itself, changing most of the graphics and altering some gameplay physics. It's very similar to what Nintendo did to create the overseas Super Mario Bros. 2.
  • The "SA-1" fan mod of Gradius III SNES removes the slowdown.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: At the end of V's penultimate stage, the Vic Viper runs an analysis on an impenetrable battleship, coming to the conclusion that the battleship requires a simultaneous assault from two ships going down two different paths to destroy. The pilot comes to the conclusion that he should travel to the past and seek help from his past self. Even if you're in a 2-player game, which one would expect would bypass the need to time-travel, the second Vic Viper will not be acknowledged and the player 1 ship will create a space-time rift anyways.
• Gas Chamber: The first-half of stage 6 in Gradius V have these.
• Genius Loci: Many of the Big Bads, including Gofer, Bacterion, and Zelos. This trope also applies to the organic planets, which have Bacterians controlling the planets.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: You pursue after the final boss of Nemesis II: Return of the Hero, now a Clipped-Wing Angel, when it escapes its own Collapsing Lair.
• Get Out!: In Gradius Gaiden, one of the messages you get for a Game Over is "Get out of here, forget about it!"
• Gone Horribly Right: You need a few Speed Ups to bring your ship up to a reasonable movement speed. However, get too many Speed Ups and you end up with an uncontrollably fast ship (except in Gradius V).
• Gravity Is Purple: The Falchion β from Gradius Gaiden has the "Gravity Bullet" as a possible weapon which is a purple bullet that explodes into a purple Sphere of Destruction.
• Gravity Sucks: In Gradius Gaiden's stage, On The Event Horizon, you are chased through a planet by a black hole.
• Guide Dang It!: In order to get the good ending in the MSX version of Salamander, the players has to have a Nemesis II cartridge plugged into the second cartridge slot, get a item that randomly spawns in a set of different areas, and beat a bonus stage. To make matters worse, the bonus stage doesn't load properly on certain MSX2 models.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: The original Gradius has some pretty challenging levels, especially at the end of each one when "Aircraft Carrier" begins playing and a special enemy formation shows up. However, once Big Core itself shows up, it's a relatively simple fight of just dodging laser spreads and shooting back at it. Later games avert this by introducing bosses that are more difficult.
• Have a Nice Death: "You need some practice" is a very common voiceover when you get a Game Over.
• Hell Is That Noise: Get out of the way—If you can—When you hear a siren-like noise in the SNES Gradius III, if you don't want the critter at the left edge of the screen to make off with one of your Options.
• Hive Mind: Bacterion, Gofer, and Zelos in the Gradius Series. Venom has become one too in Gradius V.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The Shadow Dancer (arachnoid Humongous Mecha) in most of its appearances.
  • Averted in some home console releases and Solar Assault where you can destroy them.
• Impressive Pyrotechnics: Treasure managed to include Ikaruga's characteristic tendency to have bosses blow up spectacularly into Gradius V.
• Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress: Too many Speed Ups can lead to you running right into the bullets you're trying to dodge, or ramming yourself into the Deadly Walls.
• Invincible Minor Minion: The shrapnel fireballs in the Fire Stage of Gradius III AC, the mook-depositing floating Moai heads, the ice cubes in the Ice Stage, the mini-spiderbots known as the Shadow Dancers in the Fortress, and the regenerating Blue Moais in Gradius IV. Also some of the Mook Makers used by bosses.
• Japanese Ranguage: Though never explicitly confirmed, it's very likely the series's title was a misromanization of Gladius.
  • Highly likely because the Gladius Sword in Vandal Hearts 2 is a reference to Vic Viper.
• Joker Immunity: The Bacterians are really hard to kill. Though this is justifed, since whenever they are defeated, pieces of them will regenerate and begin anew.
• Konami Code: The franchise that started it all. The game was designed to be super hard that even the devs had a hard time reaching certain levels to program and debug. So the head programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto developed a cheat code to help the devs reach all points of the game which needed attention (The code empowers the player with all upgrades immediately). When the game is released, the devs realized that they forgot to take the code off the game, but the code ended up helping many players trudge through the Nintendo Hard nature of the game, so the code stays and get reused in other Konami Nintendo Hard games, and the rest is history.
• Landfill Beyond the Stars: Stage 2 ("Requiem for Revengers") of Gradius Gaiden, complete with lots of boss cameos.
• Large Ham: The announcer in Salamander 2 is really enthusiastic in his line delivery.
  "POUND through the ENTRAILS and SHOOT ABADON!"
• Last Breath Bullet: On later loops, many bosses will fire aimed shots at the player during their death throes. Better not get caught off guard...
• Legacy Character: Because the series has a timeline which spans nearly two millennia, the Vic Viper starfighter is obviously not always the same ship. Despite this, there are games set just a year or so apart where the ship looks drastically different.
• Leitmotif: The first game's boss music evolved into the iconic "Boss Rush" music. Whenever and wherever it shows up, Boss Rush time. One of the series' most recurring bosses, Tetran, often uses "Poison of Snake" as its boss theme since its first appearance in Salamander.
• Lethal Lava Land: Found in several games where Asian dragons slither between suns/lava pools; the most straightforward example is the second stage in Solar Assault, where the ship flies through a volcanic and then lava landscape with phoenixes to a lava trench with an Asian dragon boss.
• Load-Bearing Boss: The final bosses of the Gradius/Salamander Series. Certain organic bosses count too.
• Loose Canon: Anything outside the main series or not starring Vic Viper tends to fall into this.
  • Salamander's plot in particular is either a repeat of Gradius (arcade), a Bacterion invasion that takes advantage of an age-old prophecy on Latis (Anime), or a cult terrorist attack on the same planet, secretly headed by Dr. Venom, in which Vic Viper and Lord British are not involved at all (MSX). Furthermore, its alternate counterpart, Lifeforce, is either a plot to cure an ill man (NA arcade) or to destroy the planet-eating Zelos (JP arcade and NES game,) and even then, the two Zelos plots imply two very different sizes for the planet-eater.
  • Nemesis for Game Boy may or may not be a retelling of Gradius itself. Further confusing matters is that interquel Gradius ReBirth appears to be a retelling of it.
• Malevolent Architecture: The Fortress Stage in each game consists mostly of this.
• Marathon Level: "Enemy base"-type stages are often longer than each of the previous stages. To wit:
  • Gradius III has you fighting a Boss Rush of enemies from previous games, then you go into the enemy base, making your way to a turret wall. Then you have to endure the assault of an invincible "walker"-type boss. Then after you go through some regenerating walls and destroy Bacterion, you have to go through a harrowing high-speed escape sequence before the game is finally completed.
  • Gaiden starts with a high speed section followed by a fight with Booster Core. Then you cruise through the main body of the fortress and fight a turret wall. Then after a few more enemies, Big Ducker shows up. Then Sol appears and you have to endure the invincible enemy's assault for several more minutes. Finally, you get to O.V.U.M..
• Market-Based Title: Many games were renamed when being exported to other regions:
  • The arcade version of Gradius was released as Nemesis in North America and Europe, but the NES version kept the Gradius name overseas. However, the MSX version was still named Nemesis in Europe.
  • The arcade version of Gradius II: Gofer no Yabou became Vulcan Venture in Europe. It never made it pass location test in North America.
  • The MSX version of Gradius 2 became Nemesis 2 in Europe, while Gofer no Yabou Episode II became Nemesis 3: The Eve of Destruction.
  • Salamander is where things get complicated: The arcade and NES/Famicom versions were renamed Life Force in North America, but then the Japanese market got an "arrange" version of arcade Salamander called Life Force. The arcade version was still titled Salamander in Europe, but the NES port uses the Life Force title (to avoid confusion, the Salamander title was still used on the boxart).
  • Nemesis II (Game Boy) → Gradius: The Interstellar Assault (NA), Nemesis II: The Return of the Hero (EU). Odd, given that previous games are called Gradius in Japan and Nemesis in export markets.
• Mascot Mook: In the spinoff Cosmic Wars, the Moai represents the Gradian Empire, while Salamander's Brain Golem is the mascot for the Bacterians.
• Meaningful Name: "Vic Viper". Consider its shape and how it is followed by the Options.
  • The mechanical robot walker of Gaiden (Just before O.V.U.M.) is a giant gear-like wheel named Sol (Spanish for "sun").
  • Aside the acronym O.V.U.M., the word Ovum means "egg".
  • Gradius II Big Bad Gofer was in fact named with the "errand boy" meaning in mind. The implication being that he was dispatched to attack Gradius by someone even higher up in the Bacterion ranks.
• Meet the New Boss: Bacterion, Gofer, Venom, and Zelos. All of them are Bacterion emperors who mastermind the Bacterian attacks. All of them are located in fortresses/planets. All of them want to destroy Gradius. They command strong armies, but they themselves are weak and very vulnerable. They eventually get destroyed by Vic Viper and explode into pieces. The pieces spread across the universe and grow into a new Big Bad.
  • Subverted for Venom at first. Even in Nemesis 2, Venom was a Bacterion emperor and That One Boss. But then Venom reappeared in Gradius V and in that game, now he's a brain that's no weaker than the other Big Bads.
  • Doom is an exception too.
• Mook Maker: The ubiquitous enemy-spawning devices, some of which are indestructible. And many bosses, eg the Giant Moais, can do this too.
• Multiple Endings: Nemesis 3 has two depending on whether you got a shielding device earlier in the game. While warping home, David finds himself under attack by Venom, who's alive and well. If you didn't get the shield, he's forced to drop out of warp since he can't use his shield and warp drive at the same time, and he's implied to be killed. If you get the shield, he turns it on and makes it home safely.
• Musical Spoiler: In stage 8 of Gaiden, the second of two tracks used for the Boss Bonanza stops playing when the last boss in the lineup, Neo Big Core, is introduced, and is replaced with the standard boss theme to indicate that this is the last boss of the stage. In loop 2 and later, the "Boss Bonanza part 2" music keeps going for Neo Big Core, which foreshadows that there's one more boss to go at the end of this stage. Sure enough, Heaven's Gate shows up after Neo Big Core is destroyed, and then the standard boss music finally plays.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Said by the Anti-Climax Boss who is also the Big Bad and the Final Boss in Gradius V, to more or less some degree after he is destroyed.
  • In fact, it states that there is a whole lot of pieces of itself spread across the universe, with each one eventually becoming sentient and coming after the Gradians. Which leads to a horrifying thought: What if they ALL gain sentience AT THE SAME TIME?
• My Name Is Not Shazam: The final boss music for Salamander 2 is named "Giga's Rage". The final boss itself is named Doom.
• Mythology Gag: In Gradius V, the Zelos Force reuses a damage sound effect from Salamander, and the "waaah!" yell is also a reference to that game for the same cause, being defeated, except that the voice is different.
• Named by the Adaptation: "Gradius" was originally going to be the name of the player's ship, as evident by the pre-release title of Super Dimensional Fighter Gradius, which appears printed on the Japanese instruction card for the arcade game. However, the later backstory for the home versions establishes Gradius to be the name of a planet, while the ship is named the Vic Viper.
• New Game Plus: Nearly every game goes back to the beginning after you complete all stages, this time with more difficult enemies, usually with faster or more bullets. A few games' second loops stand out in particular:
  • Gradius III (arcade)'s stage 2-1 is sadistically difficult, even by the standards of one of the hardest games in the entire series. It's been said that this was done on purpose to kick players off the machine.
  • Gradius Gaiden introduces what is perhaps the most number of differences to a second loop in the series. Some things that were previously just background or otherwise harmless now affect your ship (Stage 1's snow waterfalls now pull your ship down, the exhaust of Booster Core in Stage 9 can now kill you), bosses gain new attacks (for example, Stage 4's Moai Dimension now has four heads instead of two, Stage 8's Deltatry now fires indestructible blue capsules), among many other changes. The biggest change by far is in Stage 8, which introduces a new boss at the end: Heaven's Gate.
  • Gradius ReBirth has three unique loops in total (from the fourth one onwards, the game simply applies Numerical Hard to enemy bullets), and like Gaiden stages and bosses undergo some significant differences. For example, the hollowed-out volcano in Stage 1 is now upside-down on loop 3, and in Stage 3 the spinning Moai formations appear much sooner in the stage. You can immediately jump to loop 2 by changing the difficulty to Hard, and to loop 3 by changing the difficulty to Very Hard.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Gofer's last words in Gradius IV are to be believed, every time you destroy him or another Bacterian commander, they'll explode into pieces, and each piece will grow into a new iteration of the one you just killed, meaning that killing the Bacterian guy-in-charge allows them to spread out further and further.
• Nintendo Hard: The games are notorious for their high difficulty, due to one particular mechanic: Dying takes away all of your power-ups, leaving you with only the Speed Up highlighted (and that's only if you had a highlight on the power meter upon death in the first place - if you had just enabled a power-up before death, you were really screwed). The game then expects you to pull yourself through a difficult section with no upgrades except maybe a single Speed Up, and it is quite likely that however many lives you have, you will lose them all. Several arcade games, most notoriously Gradius III, exponentially increase the difficulty by refusing to let you continue playing should you lose your final life.
• Non-Action Big Bad: The vast majority of villains in the series put up little to no offense when you finally reach them, making it painfully trivial to kill them. At the same time, they're in control of the enemies you've been fighting throughout the game, and their goal is to make sure you don't get to their leader in the first place.
• Non-Linear Sequel: Played straight with most of the games, save for Nemesis 2 and 3 on the MSX and their prequel, Gradius ReBirth.
• Now Do It Again, Backwards: In Nemesis 2 after you complete Stage 7, you now have to do the first six stages again in reverse order.
• Numerical Hard: When you complete the game, you start over again with a new loop, which mostly just has faster and more numerous bullets. Some games like Gaiden and ReBirth do add new elements on higher loops, however.
• Oddball in the Series:
  • Gradius V features a number of deviations from past mainline titles. It is the only mainline game to:
    • Allow two player co-op.
    • Have a "respawn in place" mechanic. (You can, however, turn checkpoints back on if you wish.)
    • Not have a moai stage.
    • Not have a volcano stage. (Stage 5 could be seen as one, as it features asteroids and volcano-like rock formations, but said formations don't erupt.)
    • Be outsourced to an external team (Treasure).
    • Get a straight-to-console release, skipping the arcades.
    • Allow four shots per player ship or Option on the screen at once, as opposed to the traditional two shots. (to help mitigate with the game's extreme Bullet Hell difficulty.)
    • Have cutscenes in-game, and the only one to have voiceovers in the cutscenes.
    • Where your ship has a significantly smaller hitbox than its sprite, being only the size of your cockpit.
    • Have not one, but two Boss Rushes; one in stage 2 and another in stage 6.
  • A case can also be made for Game Boy Nemesis II/Gradius: The Interstellar Assault. While it looks and plays enough Gradius to not be In Name Only, it features very little music, enemies, or level themes from the previous titles, is the only game in the entire franchise to feature Direct Continuous Levels and has a final boss that fights back (albeit not much) and isn't an immobile brain or core.
• Once an Episode: Nearly every single game has a volcano stage, a Moai stage, and a Bacterian base stage.
• One-Man Army: Except for a few games like Salamander and Gradius V which have co-op multiplayer, each player storms the army of spaceships separately in all the other games.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Partially mitigatable by the Shield, but only if it hits the shield instead of you. Then again, the first Gradius was originally an 80s arcade game...
• Organic Technology: Most of the organic enemies as well as the Womb Levels are these.
• Planet Eater: Zelos from Salamander/Life Force.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Eastern-style dragons appear as enemies and bosses in some of the games such as Salamander/Life Force, Gradius II, Gradius III, Gradius IV, and Solar Assault.
• Player Mooks: Gradius NEO Imperial has you playing as a rebel Big Core MK I. It's the only player ship that averts One-Hit-Point Wonder trope until the end.
• Point of No Continues: Salamander 2 locks you out from continuing once you reach the "Experts-only" second loop.^note Which also changes the music of some stages to remixed versions of those from the original Salamander. Downplayed in that it still allows a second player to join in... up to until you clear final stage again or lose all your lives being solo!
• Post-Defeat Explosion Chain: In IV, bosses with multiple parts explode piece by piece. In V, the boss' pieces fall apart while a shockwave surrounds its central body until it finally explodes.
• Post-Final Boss: Bacterion and most (but not all) of the other leader-type characters such as Gofer and O.V.U.M.; they either mount a laughably weak offense or don't even attack, leaving you free to kill them with nominal effort. As such, the giant (and often invincible) walker, wheel, or similar that you have to endure beforehand along with the onslaught of Duckers is the de facto Final Boss.
• Precision F-Strike: In V, exactly two swear words are spoken: by the announcer upon dying after 7 stages ("What the hell?") and by the pilot at the end of stage 7 ("Damn. Nothing's denting it."). Oddly enough, V got a T rating...with the content warning having nothing to do with language.
• Prequel: ReBirth takes place three years before the events of Nemesis 2.
• Press X to Die: Inputting the original Konami Code^note Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A in the SNES version of Gradius 3 while the game is paused results in you exploding. If you press L, R, L, R instead of Left, Right, Left, Right though, the Konami Code works as normal.
• Protagonist Without a Past: Outside of the MSX games, the Vic Viper's pilot isn't even named, and it isn't until Gradius V that he ever finds it necessary to talk to anyone. And he's just talking to himself anyway.
• Prolonged Video Game Sequel: A full run of Gradius IV can take about 35-40 minutes, assuming no deaths. Gradius V takes an hour and a half per loop.
• Quietly Performing Sister Show: Thunder Cross, another series of horizontal shoot 'em ups by Konami which reused music and had similar aesthetics.
• Rail Shooter: Solar Assault; this game is more akin to Star Fox and Star Fox 64 than traditional Gradius, and was rare (most of the stateside consoles could be found in Chuck-e-Cheese's arcade/restaurants).
• Recurring Boss: A bunch. The most prominent is Big Core and its variant/upgrades (some of which are recurring in their own right), but other recurring foes include Brain Golem, Tetran, Intruder (like Big Core, Intruder also has its own variants), the Death MK # series, and the Zelos Force.
• Recurring Boss Template:
  • Giant Moai heads embedded in a cave that spit rings and/or smaller Moai heads.
  • "Gun walls" in the final level with turret guns and Mook Maker pods. Depending on the game, you will have to destroy 1-4 cores to put an end to it and proceed onwards.
  • A giant contraption found in the penultimate or final level (a cage in the first game, giant wheels in Gaiden and Galaxies, and crab/spider-like walkers in most of the other games) usually in the hallway leading to the final boss that is invincible or hard to destroy and that the player must maneuver around.
  • An immobile, defenseless brain or head that serves as the final boss.
• Recurring Riff: "Aircraft Carrier" from the first game routinely shows up in games, usually right before a Boss Rush or Boss Bonanza. If it's the former trope, expect "Poison of Snake" and "Take Care" from Salamander and Gradius II, respectively, to also show up, due to boss rushes often featuring bosses from these games.
• Recycled Title: Somewhat. The MSX game Gradius 2 is entirely different from Gradius II for arcade, Famicom, and other consoles. The latter is differentiated by its use of a Roman numeral rather than an Arabic one and the GOFER no Yabou subtitle. Averted in the European versions, as Gradius 2 becomes Nemesis II while Gradius II becomes Vulcan Venture.
• Retraux: ReBirth (2009) is designed to look like a "32-bit"-era game, with a soundtrack in the style of Gradius II and III.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Lord British, The 2nd player ship in Salamander is piloted in the anime by the prince of Planet Latis, the planet you're defending. It's not made clear if that this holds true in the games.
• Samus Is a Girl: The best ending of the Japanese release of the NES version of Salamander (aka Life Force), seen only if the player beats the game without using any continues, reveals that Vic Viper's pilot is a woman. This ending was cut from the Western releases of the game.
• Schmuck Bait: In the SNES version of III, putting in the classic Konami code will kill you as soon as you unpause. For players already conditioned by previous Konami games that the code was safe, it's a sinister trap by the devs.
• Science Fantasy: The series routinely weaves in and out of this, especially in terms of some of the game's bosses, as some are prophecized ancient terrors, while others are elemental beings, like dragons, phoenixes, and lions made of fire. Even Moais are also recurring enemies and bosses in the series. Other supernatural elements routinely come into play as well, especially in the MSX games where the concept of ESP plays a role in the story. To compliment the fantastical side, the series also has fleets of battleships, robot spiders, and alien monsters made of Body Horror. What other game lets you play as a Cool Starship that battles fiery dragons and battleships with Frickin' Laser Beams and Attack Drones?
• Segmented Serpent
  • Salamander has the Intruder, a serpentine fire dragon as its 3rd stage boss, although unlike most examples, the Intruder is pretty clunky and rigid in its first appearance, but future Gradius games give the Intruder and its kind more fluid animations, thanks to better hardware.
  • Gradius III's dragon boss starts off as a 3-headed wyvern (kinda like King Ghidorah), but it transforms into a serpentine dragon with A Head at Each End, making the Vic Viper attack two weak points. This is only for the Arcade version; the SNES version just skips right to the serpentine form.
  • Gradius V has huge wormy monsters with vulnerable heads or tails. The ones in the Womb Level are downgraded versions of Gradius Gaiden's first boss.
  • A fire serpent enemy◊ from the NES version of Gradius II, which was previously a boss in the arcade version of Salamander/Life Force.
  • The Vic Viper, the fighter's Options and their tail-like behavior give the Vic Viper a vaguely serpentine appearance, hence its name. The Vic Viper's ally fighters also have these kinds of Options.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: In Gradius III (SNES) and Gradius Galaxies, this comes in the form of entering the classic version of the Konami Code while the game is paused.
• Sentry Gun: In so many places.
• Sequential Boss: The first boss of stage 8 in Gradius Galaxies as well as Keeper's Core, the second-to-last boss of Stage 7 in Gradius V.
• Shout-Out
  • The 2nd player ship in Salamander 2 is called "Super Cobra", a reference to the old arcade game of the same name.^note Which in turn was named after the Bell helicopter.
  • Vic Viper is one of the Konami characters appearing in the special Purikura sequence of Mitsumete Knight R : Daibouken Hen ; it's also, in Tokimeki Memorial 4, Rui Nanakawa's third (and very effective) Limit Break, invoking it after playing the Konami Code's buttons on a DanceDanceRevolution board.
  • Many bosses in the Nemesis series are named after rock or heavy metal bands. Most of them have been renamed and given more generic names, with only Venom retaining his name.
  • The boss ship Deltatry from Gaiden is heavily inspired by the ship from Konami's Trigon/Lightning Fighters, complete with its giant laser and fire dragon summoning attacks.
  • Let's not forget Lord British.
  • Vic Viper itself is designed after the Colonial Viper starfighters of Battlestar Galactica. Seen from the side, it looks almost identical to the Mk VII model.
  • The series has at least a few references to the Godzilla franchise. The 7th boss of Gradius III (Arcade) is a three-headed fiery dragon called Wyvern, whose appearance clearly resembles King Ghidorah, at least if he's made of fire and has one tail. The beta version of Nemesis II MSX has Godzilla-like Kaijus as enemies for an unreleased crystal stage.
  • The boss of the Cell stage in Gradius V, Huge Heart, bears a strong resemblence to the Final Boss of Contra, Gomeramos King. Similarities include the boss not directly attacking, instead opting for four disconnected "cocoons" to provide obstacles for the player, and the "heart" beating faster and faster as it takes more damage.
• Smart Bomb: One of the items you can pick up, although they don't hurt the bosses.
• Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: Level 5 of Salamander, there is a section with pillars that periodically smash together, acting as an obstacle.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Averted with the Vic Viper, a heroic Gradian star-fighter whose Ace Pilots dedicate themselves to protecting the galaxy from Bacterion forces. Played Straight with Zelos, a malevolent Planet Eater who is portrayed as a serpentine Draconic Abomination, at least based on the Salamander/Life Force art cover.
• Soundtrack Dissonance
  • Stage 4 of the Salamander arcade is hard as nails due to fast-moving rocks, volcanic eruptions, and enemies that come out of the background. The background music, on the other hand, is calm and relaxing. Most console adaptations of the game (including the NES Lifeforce) change this song's tempo to make it more upbeat.
  • Many final stage themes sound cheerful and almost holiday-like.
  • Aircraft Carrier was first heard as the boss theme in Gradius 1, and it has shown up as a remix in almost every game of the series since. It also has never lost any of its unsettling cheerfulness. Gradius V subverts it by making it having apocalyptic feel, though.
    • The MSX version of the original game contains bonus stages with background music in a very tense, urgent minor key. Ironically, it sounds far more appropriate for the game's boss battles, with the above boss music better fitting into the bonus stages.
  • Gradius II's ending theme is quite somber, rather than triumphant as you might expect. Even more so when played on violin or harp in the official orchestral albums. The PC Engine port's ending sequence has expanded visuals when beaten on Professional Mode that add some imagery fitting to the song; Vic Viper passing by the scattered wreckage of the bosses that it previously defeated.
• Space Base: Every level takes place on a Space Base, be it a Womb Level, a Mechanical fortress, or a volcano planet.
• Space Is Noisy: As expected from a shoot'em up game where a large part of the events take place in space.
• Spell My Name With An S: Are the bad guys called "Bacterions" or "Bacterians"? It's not clear, especially when Gradius Gaiden use both names in the same context.
  • Is it Lord British or Road British?
  • Is it Metalion or Metarion?
• Spider Tank: The Shadow Dancers. In many of its appearances in (almost) all arcade games and few home console games, it is invincible and must be dodged until it leaves (the arcade exception is Solar Assault, which is one of the few Gradius games to have an actual Final Boss; a Shadow Dancer variant on poles is that boss).
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity:
  • In addition to the power-up Zub Rush before both boss rushes in Gradius V (with 4 additional Zubs in between each boss), the second-to-last part of Stage 7 has the Vic Viper traversing a series of shafts with power-up lasers. While it comes after a room where one must roll balls to shield off lasers blocking the path (with Zubs, Duckers and turrets making this job harder), there are a lot of power-up lasers. You will want to be at full power; the next part of the stage is a cramped minefield with more Duckers, and then you have the gunwall boss known as Keeper's Core, a major source of Bullet Hell and the hardest boss in the game.
  • In the Famicom port of Gradius II, destroying Club (the boss of the mechanical base stage) awards a massive amount of points depending on the current game time, enough to award at least a dozen extra lives. You'll need them, because right after is the final stage, which has no checkpoints.
  • Arcade Archives: Gradius III is one of the few Arcade Archives games to have a stage select that has all stages and checkpoints available as start points from the get-go. This isn't Hamster Corporation being nice so much as it is a warning, as you will need to practice individual stages if you want to have any hope at conquering one of the hardest games in the series.
• Theme Naming
  • Most of the original enemies in the MSX Nemesis games (particularly the bosses in Nemesis 2 and Nemesis 3) are named after rock and heavy metal bands and musicians. Naoki Matsui, the lead programmer of the MSX games, was a known metalhead and even named his own studio Team Metalslave.
  • The export titles of Nemesis and Vulcan Venture for the first two arcade games were deliberately chosen because they were Greek and Roman themed.
  • The soundtracks of Gradius IV are named after Greek/Roman God(desse)s and Titans.
• Time-Limit Boss
  • The first stage boss in V, a modified Big Core, will suck back when you took too long fighting it.
  • All the bosses in Solar Assault have timers that appear when the boss appears (the timer starts counting down when the boss first attacks and becomes vulnerable). If the timer expires, the boss self-destructs, but no point bonus is awarded.
• Time Travel
  • In Gradius V, you encounter your future self in Stage 2 and cooperate with him to destroy a battleship that he took back in time with him. Then at the end of Stage 7, you encounter that same battleship and time-travel back to the events of Stage 2, because the battleship can only be destroyed with two ships.
  • One fun little detail regarding Stage 8 is that your past self plays exactly like you did in Stage 2 during the parts when both ships are shown, or all four if there's 2 players. If you skip Stage 2 using stage select, however, then the ships will follow a predetermined path, like your future self does on Stage 2.
• Too Fast to Stop: Activating too many Speed Ups can result in a ship that is nearly impossible to control. Very few games allow taking back Speed Ups; Gradius III allows you to assign the '!' slot to Speed Down but only if you use Weapon Edit, and Gradius V changes Speed Up to Initial Speed once you hit maximum speed (thankfully in that game, max speed is pretty reasonable).
• Trick Boss: In the Famicom version of II, stage 2 doesn't end after Big Eye's defeat, as he is succeeded by Giga.
• Uncertain Doom: In the bad ending of Nemesis 3, David exits time warp in hopes of shaking off Venom, as his ship's built-in shield cannot activate while in time warp (whereas if you did get the Bacterian shield item from earlier in the game, he's able to use it to return to his own time safely). The last thing we see is text stating that David left his own time in Gradian year 6809 and has yet to return. Whether he was killed directly by Venom, suffered fatal effects of abruptly interrupting a time warp, got stuck in a foreign time period with no way back, etc. is left up to the player's imagination.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Losing a life swipes all of your powerups, which against a stage or boss that is giving you serious trouble, translates to "give up and exit the game." There are a few exceptions, such as Gradius III (Arcade)'s easy mode and games that respawn you in place and therefore allow you to get your options back. As such, the best Gradius players aren't necessarily the ones who can complete the game on a single life, but the ones who can recover out of deaths from even the most hopeless-seeming of situations.
  • To make things even worse in the SNES version of Gradius III, you can only continue a limited number of times before your game is over for real!
• Unwinnable by Design: Gradius ReBirth — Select Type E, then get either V. Shot or Vector Laser and go into Stage 2 on higher loops or any bonus stage. V. Shot deprives you and your options of any forward-firing capability and Vector Laser cannot destroy destructible walls. Result: -1 life.
• Victory by Endurance: A valid tactic for dealing with some bosses is to simply wait them out by dodging. They'll eventually give up and die after a while.
• Video Game 3D Leap: Gradius IV was a presentation upgrade rather than a total upgrade.
  • There's also the Solar Assault sub-series, which is fully-3D Gradius, though it hardly got any attention.
• Video Game Caring Potential: In "Gradius V" during Stage 8, where you work with your past self, said past self will move exactly as you did during Stage 2. If the player is aware of this ahead of time, they could feasibly position their Options in smart ways that have them attacking enemies on the future Vic Viper's path. When Stage 8 rolls around, you'll be receiving cover fire from yourself! Based on how hard the game's final stage is, you very well might need all the help you can get.
• Video Game Long-Runners: The first game was ported to the NES, as well as many, many PC platforms. Then there's the many arcade releases and many, many console and (original!) PC releases.
• Villain Protagonist: You can play as the Bacterians in Cosmic Wars.
• The Virus: The Bacterion Empire is an example of this. They are composed of invasive and matter controlling cells that multiply every time the Bacterian Empire is defeated.
  • Subverted in the Salamander OAVs. Instead of cells, the Bacterians are living crystals that can turn into any kind of creatures. Maybe Bacterion is a huge Crystal lifeform that can transform into a cell or maybe the Bacterians are cells born in crystals grown on Bacterion's rocky shell?
• Wave-Motion Gun: Lining up all your options, along with a powerful laser, can result in a (slightly toned-down) version of this. Some of the earlier/easier bosses can be taken down in a single volley.
• Wave-Motion Tuning Fork: Near the end of the opening cutscene for Gradius V, the Vic Viper is shown shooting a beam from between its front fins. It pierces through and destroys a heavily-modified Big Core MK.I, the boss of the first level.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: The Vic Viper pilot in Gradius V.
• Weak Boss, Strong Underlings: Most final bosses in the series are easy-to-beat brain organisms, which are sorely lacking in health and firepower (if they have any at all). The minibosses encountered on the way to them are much more dangerous opponents, with one usually being a deadly wall of guns and another usually being a completely invincible multi-legged mech. To say nothing about the brutally difficult Boss Rushes present in almost every game in the series, all of whom are the minions of the final boss.
• Weaponized Exhaust: Booster Core, the first midboss of Gaiden stage 9, averts this trope in the first loop as its exhaust can't hurt you. But in subsequent loops, its exhaust now becomes harmful (signified by the flames turning from a dim and transparent orange to a bright and opaque blue) and will kill you unless you have a Limit shield on.
• Wham Line:
  • Gradius V, stage 2.
    "Warning: There is a space-time anomaly forming. Two objects have emerged. Ship identification code cannot be processed for the large craft. The other is Vic Viper T-301."
• What the Hell, Hero?
  • You hear this said by the announcer if you make up to the last stage but die.
  • Inverted in Gradius IV, where if you make it up to the last stage and die, the announcer congratulates you for making it that far, saying "You are the Viper!".
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Most final bosses put up negligible or no resistance as you shoot their weak points to kill them. Some final bosses that do nothing, such as those of Gradius and Gradius Galaxies, will simply self-destruct if you leave them be.
• Womb Level: Usually at least once per game, since the Big Bad does the invasive bio-goo thing. Cell-levels are also reasonably common. The premises for Life Force and Salamander make those entire games Womb Levels, but not every level within them counts as one.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Played straight for the most part with the last boss, but averted in Gradius III, Salamander 2, Nemesis 2, Solar Assault and NEO/Imperial, where the Final Boss attacks. This is probably because the final level is usually the final boss; all the enemies are controlled by the Big Bad's psychic powers. Some of these final bosses do fire back, but their attacks are painfully easy to avoid; others (such as the the one in Gradius Galaxies) don't attack at all and will simply self-destruct if you don't do anything.

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