Stage 3 - Into the Crystal Cage, just when you thought the crystal stage in Gradius II and the bubble stage in Gradiu III were pretty cool, wait till you see this one...Konami has TOPped themselves once again! The stage starts out with a ship in the background throwing pieces of crystals at you, you'll then encounter it later in the level as a mini boss(not really). The most amazing thing about this stage is, if you possess any type of 'straight' laser, firing at the crystals WILL NOT destroy them, instead, you laser beams will then REFLECT at an angle as soon as it hit the crystal, causing your laser beams to scatter around like crazy!! Try to playing it with a friend, if you both carry a laser beam, you'll know how scary it is!! A truly magnificent stage that has to be PLAYED to believe!

BOSS

It's a meteor, it's a crystal,...NO, it's a typical Gradius boss!! When I first checked out this boss on the internet, I thought it was really dissappointing both in graphics and concept, but again, Konami is genius. It starts out shooting small rainbow twin-lasers at you, just avoid them or stay in between them and fire at the core. Then this machine will bounce up and down releasing a bunch of rainbow bullets at you, again, fire and stay out of their way. At last, it'll open its wing up and fire four rows of HUGH rainbow-beams at you, BE-CAREFUL!!

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