If I ever beat Gradius 3 at one point, I was probably playing it on the lowest difficulty level possible. This looks impossible.

...By this point, the game is just mocking me. If I shoot these fireballs, they split off into a billion fireballs. So I'm screwed. Lol.

...The only enjoyable section of Gradius 3. Even then, players have to remember to steer the ship or else the Vic Viper will crash and lose all the power-ups it earned. Mwahaha...sigh.

I think I beat Gradius 3 a long time ago. At least I think I did. And afterwards, I needed a long rest because this arcade game was extremely unfair. But hey, anyone can play the arcade edition on the Playstation 2 or PSP, if they're willing to torture themselves. Because that's what Gradius 3 is. A sack full of torture.

Well, the Afterburner stage 4 wasn't as bad as stage 3. But then the Moais come in. And it's impossible to beat this unless I memorize all the moai patterns. And the towers...ugh.

Okay, whoever designed the arcade version of Gradius 3 needs to die. Seriously, the last checkpoint is nearly three minutes away from the boss. And then after that, the boss is shooting a million lasers. And after that, I have to go through the tunnel in the style of Afterburner. I give up. Lol.

I've never seen anyone beat this game myself, but that final section is sure bizarre. I thought that person was going to fight the final boss, but then the ship gets hit by a fireball and the game turns into Life Force. The player beats the Life Force boss, gets to the final boss again. Then the ship gets hit by another fireball and the game turns into the first stage of Gradius I. After the player beats the Gradius I boss, the player beats the final boss and then there's an entire escape sequence that the ship has to fly through. That's sadistic.

Gradius 2 was tough, but still beatable. The arcade sequel, on the other hand, is nearly unplayable. It had no continue feature and so many bullets. If Konami hadn't reduced the difficulty for the Super Nintendo version, we could've called this worst Gradius game of all time. Even then, this game is almost as notorious as Ys 3 for its unbearable difficulty level.

I love the Gradius games, but I still hate Gradius 3 with a passion. It's easily the most unfair Gradius game ever made. I could never get to the third stage. Of course, I was also playing it on a dinky PSP, so that's probably not the best version for dodging tiny bullets...