OVERVIEW
 
Pretty much the majority of the people are familiar with the game Gradius by now. It sometimes goes by the name Nemesis. It also has sort of a spiritual sequel series called Salamander aka Life Force. In the first game of the actual series (Scramble and Super Cobra are considered spiritual prequels), you enter your first fight against the Bacterion who wages war against the planet Gradius. The story goes like this: The people of Gradius are in danger of being completely destoyed by the amoeboid Bacterions. To save them, you have just launched the prototype hyper-space fighter, the Warp Rattler. The entire galaxy awaits your duel to the death with the evil Bacterions. Your objective is the Bacterion superfortress, Xaercus. To reach this, you must steal the enemy power capsules along your route and boost the Warp Rattler's hyper powers. You are the last hope for the gentle people of Gradius!  You will need all your courage and concentration to win. Get ready to blast off! and you are Vic Viper, the only space fighter with the ability to stop them.

The Gradius as well as the Salamander series has been known to lead to frustration and the Turbo Grafx port of this game will throw sort of a curveball that I will mention further on in this review.
 
GAMEPLAY - A+
 
The game starts off with you shooting at some small waves of enemies in an effort to get capsules to "buy" powerups such as Speed Up, Missile, Double, Laser, Option, and Shield. To be more specific on a couple items, Double refers to Double Shot which you shoot in two directions (one forward and one upward). Option refers to a companion that hovers along with your ship and has the same exact weapons as your current ship. You can have up to four of them. The Lasers shoot a long beam that can plow through just about anything in its path and is the best weapon to have in the game. The Double does come in handy for the Level 4 sub boss as those things can gang up on you quickly.

You have to dodge every which way to avoid those bullets which are shaped like diamonds. Always keep your eyes on the orange enemies because aside from the wave sets, they are the only type of enemies that yield Power Pods for buying powerups. The bosses mainly the sub bosses are tougher than the actual boss in the first six levels (five for others). In the first level, you are in the middle of two erupting volcanoes with rocks that are hard to dodge. In level two, you got blocks forming out of nowhere that try to home in on you. In level 3,  you got to deal with several flying Moai heads. Level 4, you deal with what looks like Volcano tops (in the NES, you deal with the Volcano eruptions upside down instead). Level 5 which is exclusive to the Turbo Grafx 16, you face a string of fossil heads. Level 6 (5), you deal with brains with arms. After dealing with those sub bosses, you face the boss who is the same for those level. A core boss that tries to level with your horizontal plane and fire four missiles which you can avoid and shoot away it's barriers and destroy its blue core. The penultimate boss, is not a ship but a core which has a safe spot where you can stand as it times itself out. Matter of fact, all bosses will time themselves out if you let the fight drag on for so long including the final boss which is a brain that does not offer any resistance whatsoever. This is cliche for all Gradius games for the most part as all bosses go out like suckers (sorry can't use any profanity on this site folks). The road to the final boss is super tough. Have fun dodging all those bullets in the last level and dealing with the terrain.
 
CONTROLS - A
 
The controls are on point in this game as they respond to your every movement of the controller and shot button. However, things can be a little tricky if you use your Speed Up too much because you can end up moving too fast to maneuver safely and risk the danger of crashing into the terrain in addition to accidentally an enemy or one of their bullets.
 
GRAPHICS - A+ 
 
Graphics are excellent in the Turbo Grafx port as there are more vibrant colors to add to the attention to details. The explosions stand out more and one notable thing in the game you may notice is that when you get to the Level 7 boss (Level 6 in other non-TG16 games), you can actually see the core of the boss which you are aiming at wherever as in some of those non-TG16 ports just shows an empty shell. 
 
SOUND/MUSIC - A+
 
The sound and music are so good that Konami has the nerve to copyright it on YouTube under Sony which is a load of melarki but it is their company so what can I say. The best music is the sub-boss and boss music which are the same but give you the feeling that the battle is intense.

OVERALL - A
 
This game is excellent. Everyone should give it a try as it contains an extra level which takes place in the desert. You just got to watch out for them bones because they can kill you. The Turbo Grafx 16 version of its sequel also comes with an extra level and it also offers twice the challenge as this game. Gradius is also one of those few games that introduced the famous Konami code. Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start or in this case use II instead of B and use I instead of A as those are the equivalent to the buttons on the NES compared to the Turbo Grafx 16 controller. Happy playing ya'll and ni ruoy ecaf sgagt :p

Azul Fria : Turbo Grafx has some great games It sounds like a great game that I will have to try out. I like how descriptive your GAMEPLAY section is (gives me a good idea what to expect when I try out this game). Thanks for the nice review!