The player controls the trans-dimensional spaceship Viper and must
battle waves of enemies through various environments. The game
became synonymous with the phrase 'Destroy the core!' as the
standard of boss battles involved combat with a giant craft in the
center of which would be situated one to several blue colored
spheres. These bosses would be designed in such a way that there
would be a straight passage from the exterior of the giant craft
which leads directly to one of these cores. The player must fire
shots into this passage while avoiding attack patterns from weapon
emplacements on the body of the boss. However small but
destructible walls are situated in this passage impeding the bullet
shots from damaging the core and must be whittled away by repeated
well-placed shots. In a way these tiny walls represent the boss'
shielding gauge until its core is finally vulnerable to attack.
Some bosses have the ability to regenerate these walls. When the
core has sustained enough hits it usually changes color from blue
to red indicating that it is in critical condition and its
destruction is imminent. Upon the destruction of a core a piece of
the boss may be put out of commission seeing that it is no longer
powered by a core or if all of the cores are destroyed the entire
boss is defeated and explodes satisfyingly. Note that these cores
are not present on the more organic bosses of Gradiux. Such bosses
have weak spots in places such as a mouth head or eye.
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