 There are certain Super Nintendo games that are best described as hit and miss. They have a lot of positive aspects, but are met with an equal number of negatives. Lufia and the Fortress of Doom is like that, Breath of Fire 2 is like that, and Gradius 3 is definitely like that. Positive number one, this is a great looking game in every respect, with really cool enemies and bosses, and the backgrounds lend themselves to some really cool stage structuring. The corresponding negative is that this game has major problems with slowdown. The bubbles level here is probably the worst, it just gets cripplingly slow, to the point that the screen looks like it's gonna start glitching out. That's just not the sort of thing that ages particularly well. Positive number two, the power-up structure is a lot of fun. You can pick and choose from a list of how you want to set it up before you start the game. Then as you collect those red power pods, as they're called in the manual, you can apply them accordingly however you'd like. You can play with how you like your ship's speed, and whether or not you'd save your tokens for bigger stuff that protects your ship, or upgrade your weapon right away. The corresponding negative is that it's really easy to pick up two power pods right next to each other and completely miss your chance to activate that power-up. So then you gotta cycle all the way back around, that is really annoying. It can even happen when you're just caught up in the game and you don't have a chance to glance down and see where you're at. Positive number three, once you do collect every power-up, it's fun as hell to just annihilate everything in your path with this ridiculous setup of lasers, rotating fireballs, shields, and missiles. It is awesomely overpowered and just mowing through the early levels like a hot knife through butter is the greatest. The negative about this is, again, the slowdown. Look at this, when I fire, the game slows way down. When I let go, the game goes back to normal. That's, uh, kind of a problem. Another positive is that Gradius III is a good game for newcomers to the shoot-em-up genre. It's a good, cheap, straightforward game to use for practice, but just please make sure to put that shit on easy first. This game is hard as hell on normal, and I don't even want to consider playing this game on hard. No frickin' thanks. But on easy, it's manageable and a lot of fun. You just get jacked up with all your power-ups and annihilate anything in your path. The inherent problem here, though, is that if you die, you start with nothing. Nothing! So you could be right at a boss fight, die, and then start in the same spot with nothing but a pathetic P-shooter. That is a problem. Seriously, if you die anyplace else but at the beginning of a level, you might as well just start the whole game over because you have no chance. One other thing I gotta mention is the Konami Code. If you try it during the game, you die. Oh, okay. Actually, what you gotta do is replace the left and right on the D-pad with L and R. That will fill you up with all your power-ups immediately, but you can only do it once. So yeah, as you can see, Gradius III is a game of major strengths and major weaknesses. If you're a seasoned shoot-em-up veteran, you know you can find much better than this game to test your skill. Yeah, it's got its positives, but other games have similar strengths, without the debilitating negatives. If you're a newcomer or you just suck at shoot-em-ups, I recommend trying this game on easy, stacking your power-ups, and just practice for a bit, see how far you can get. And if you end up liking Gradius III even a little bit, you gotta check out some of the better shoot-em-ups, like UN Squadron, Axel-A, and of course, Space Megaforce.