John Linneman from Digital Foundry recently reviewed Gradius Origins: A collection of Gradius games from multiple platforms, now available on modern consoles as well as Steam. This was developed by M2, who have a long history of very high quality emulation ports of classic games on newer consoles. All of the ported games perform exactly as well as you’d expect from M2, but there’s also a new game included in the series, Salamander 3 that seems to hold up with the rest! If you’re a fan of side-scrolling shooters, the video is a must-watch. More info after the links:
Main Page: https://www.konami.com/games/gradius/us/en/
Physical Versions: (sold out)
After watching this video, I thought: “Damn, I think I’d really enjoy Salamander 3 and I haven’t played some of the other included versions before, so maybe I should buy the Switch version?!”. Then, I went to the website and saw all physical versions are sold out, even though the game wasn’t even up for sale digitally yet. This is really annoying, as I personally like to wait for games to be reviewed before pre-ordering, to make sure they’re what I’m expecting. I guess this is just the times we live in, but I don’t have any interest in digital-only games and don’t want to pay scalper prices, so I guess I’ll just skip this one.
…but my complaints aside, you definitely get a lot for your money! Salamander 3 alone is probably worth it, but here’s a full list of all the games it comes with, taken from the page linked above. Click on it for a full-sized view and definitely check out the main page for more info and where to order each version digitally:
