Bah -- Gradius 3 easier than R-Type*? That's madness Somehow, an unspedup Vic Viper is even SLOWER than the R90, and R-Type at least had the courtesy to drop some of those powerup ships near where you'd restart on dying.

Oh, in any case, this game is still rather excellent, even if I'm terrible at it. Slowdown, though? That sounds strange. The PS2 port never had any -- that was based off the arcade version though, so maybe it's an SNES thing?

* R-Type 3 is a different story. I know people complain that R-Type involves too much pattern memorization and what not, but it's no more than you have in Gradius. Excepty R-Type 3, which took the entire thing to some extremely idiotic point around level 3 where it was like, "WHOOPS HERE'S THE FLOOR!" and by that point you're dead. Sloppy level design -- you can die too easily through no fault of your own. I much prefered the more open, Gradius-esque levels of R-Type Final, Darius Gaiden, and Einhänder.