This is such a great conversion of Gradius. I’d even go as far as to say the music is superior to the arcade, which isn’t saying much for a 1985 game I guess, but there’s a lot more going on. Also the extra stage is a nice addition. As with R-Type, PCE Gradius has to slightly scroll vertically, this can be especially troublesome when trying to see the turret enemies, I’m pretty sure missiles still take out the lower ones even though they’re off-screen, which is helpfully I guess. One thing that does annoy me about this conversion is that you can‘t individually control your missiles, whenever you fire you HAVE to fire a missile regardless if you wanted to or not. I think they should have given you the option to use select as an extra button like most of the other PCE 3-button arcade games (Image Fight & Ninja Spirit)
I also managed to pick up a Micomsoft / Dempa Shinbunsha (the makers of the Framemeister) XE-1 HU Pro joystick. This was a pretty iconic stick for the PCE back in the 80’s, and was frequently shown off in UK magazine import advertisements. It’s a very well-made stick and is fully microswitched with a 4/8-way selector and the buttons that can rotate a full 180* for comfort. It also has variable slider for autofire, unfortunately one of the sliders is missing on mine but fortunately I can interchange the one I have easily enough. I’m not sure if this will replace my usual HORI Fighting Stick PC, iconic as it is the XE-1 has a very small footprint and isn’t as nice to use without comprising comfort, but it’s just so nice I’ll probably just use both.
