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Item came exactly as described and shipping from seller was Ultra fast! Would do business with seller again! Thank You :)
RighteousBlaze· September 2026
BoughtNinja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge
Gradius III
- $23.99
- Regular price
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$32.99 - Sale price
- $23.99
- Unit price
- per
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Item Condition
Game + manual: the cartridge and its manual, no box. The photos are of this exact copy — look them over closely for its condition, packaging and details. Every cartridge's shell, label and board are checked for authenticity when it comes into the store, and it's tested before it's listed. It ships in a collector's bag or a hard plastic case.
Item Description
Pause the game, punch in the famous Konami code, and your Vic Viper blows itself to pieces. That little prank tells you a lot about Gradius III: Konami knew exactly what its players would try, and it decided to have some fun with them. Swap the shoulder buttons in for B and A and the same sequence loads the ship with power-ups instead, a trick that spread through schoolyards as fast as the original code. Underneath the joke sits a horizontal shooter built on one of the smartest upgrade systems the genre ever produced.
Every capsule you collect lights up the next slot on the power meter, and you decide when to cash it in: speed, missiles, double shot, laser, the glowing Options that copy your every shot, or a shield to soak up hits. Gradius III goes further than the earlier games by letting you pick your loadout before launch, choosing from preset weapon arrays or building your own in Edit mode. That choice changes how each stage plays, and experimenting with combinations is half the fun of coming back.
The stages are pure Gradius invention. Drifting bubbles split into smaller pieces when you shoot them, the series' trademark Moai heads spit rings of fire across the screen, and the Bacterian armada sends its armored Core battleships to block the way. This Super NES version arrived in the console's first wave, reworking the arcade original's stage lineup and easing its notoriously brutal difficulty for home play. When the screen fills with sprites the action slows to a crawl, a quirk players still joke about as the hidden assist that got them through the hardest stretches. Two players can share the campaign by taking turns.
For a Super Nintendo shooter shelf, Gradius III is the anchor: an early showcase of what the new hardware could throw on screen, Konami's flagship series at its most customizable, and home of the self-destruct code that still gets a laugh three decades later.
Fast factsgame data via IGDB
- Released
- 1990
- Publisher
- Konami
- Genre
- Shooter
- Players
- Single player, Co-op
About the game
In the darkest reaches of infinite space, pure evil lies in wait ... The Dark Forces led by the god of destruction, Bacterian, prepare to launch a massive onslaught against the planet Gradius. Possessing unstoppable power, the Dark Forces threaten to plunge the Universe into total war and complete annihilation. Their invasion force smashes the Gradius defenses, and the surrounding planets soon fall like dominoes. Now Bacterian's evil grasp reaches for the heart of the resistance...planet Gradius itself... To counter the oncoming threat the United Gradius World Forces gather all their fighter craft. Half of them form a defensive net - the other half a strike team. But they are badly outnumbered and The Dark Forces easily tear through their thin frontline. No fighters survive the slaughter.... In a last gasp move, the United Gradius World Forces send out two fighters, previously considered too dangerous for combat missions: The InterDimensional VIC VIPER fighters. The Fighters take off for the heart of darkness to join the fray that will decide the fate of the Universe...
Summary from the IGDB community database — the condition and contents of this listing are described above and in the photos.Watch gameplayGradius III on Super Nintendo
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Super Nintendo
Gradius III
$23.99
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Super Nintendo
Gradius III
$23.99
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