Questions for Gradius 1 experts

[teh_L0ki]

So I beat Gradius recently after about a week of practice (lots of time during that week though) :) Anyway, I noticed it loops back again with an increased difficulty which isn't unheard of for nes games, I know off the top of my head super mario bros and castlevania both do this as well.

Anyway my questions are:

How many times does the difficulty increase? From googling online it's my understanding that it's not a one time bump for a second loop like the other aforementioned games, and that it progressively becomes more difficult with each loop.

My second question is about the scoring and loops. How many times exactly does it loop, does it just keep going or does it get to a point like in DK where there is an insta kill stage or a crash screen? Also what is the roll point for the score?

Thanks in advance, if anybody actually knows the answers to these questions, I'm very curious. :help:

[Bloodreign]

The arcade version normally caps difficulty at loop 8, not sure if the NES version follows that format. The game has an infinite amount of loops. No kill screen, if you can survive all the way to loop 8 then you can do subsequent loops. Score does not roll over, it caps at a certain point called a counterstop.

[teh_L0ki]

The arcade version normally caps difficulty at loop 8, not sure if the NES version follows that format. The game has an infinite amount of loops. No kill screen, if you can survive all the way to loop 8 then you can do subsequent loops. Score does not roll over, it caps at a certain point called a counterstop.

Thanks for the info, I'm not sure I'm up for 8 loops of this though :puppydogeyes:

Anyway do you know what the counterstop point is?

[Bloodreign]

I'm thinking 9,999,999 points, but I could be wrong, getting that score could take a good while in the arcade version.