Gradius III (Arcade/PS2) - Bonus Stages

Gradius III ~Denestsu Kara Shinwae グラディウスＩＩＩ ~ 伝説から神話へ ~ Gradius III ~From Legend to Myth~ (Arcade/PS2 version) ©1989 Konami This game has an interesting secret. The blue orbs that Bacterian (the final boss) shoots at you don&actually kill you upon impact, but instead send you to... bonus stages. Kinda not something a casual player would think about. The stages themselves are different than most "bonus stages" in Gradius games, which are usually places to score big or freshen up on power-ups. Instead, these seem to be more in the realm of fun bonus content. They are (poor) recreations of the first stages of Gradius and Salamander, complete with bosses. The music even seems to resemble the original games (especially in Salamander, since both this game and Salamander used the same sound chip on their PCBs). While this is a cool concept, there¬ much of a point to playing these stages. They are ridiculously hard as you are stripped of all of your power-ups both when entering the stage and when leaving it. Both stages only have 2 power-up capsules and they&right at the very beginning, so you really only have your pea shooter to defend yourself. You barely get any score benefit from them either: I only score 17,200 from the Gradius stage and 8,500 from the Salamander stage. You could theoretically farm them to infinity (since you can reenter the stages after completing them), but you&much better off just finishing the game. Neither of these stages are worth it in full-game...