Konami brings a decade worth of the best arcade side scrolling shooters made with the release of Gradius Collection for the PSP. This groovy trip down memory lane with ace space pilot Vic Viper offers fans of this shooter series a total of five games: Gradius, Gradius II, Gradius III, Gradius IV, and Gradius Gaiden.

In case you're not familiar with Gradius, in the game you don the role of ace space pilot Vic Viper who (all by his lonesome) must save the universe using his split nosed space craft. That's pretty much the entire plotline of the series (with a variety of light variation), but Gradius is all about hordes of alien ships, power-ups, and the occasional giant alien boss. While the difficulty on these games was never a walk in the park, that proved to be one of several endearing qualities of Konami's shooters. Throw in some pretty unique level design, a power-up system that was vastly different from most side scrolling shooters, and wave-after-wave of ships to destroy and you have the perfect space shoot 'em up.

While the earlier games in this collection do look a bit dated, the latter titles (specifically Gradius IV and Gradius Gaiden) still look sharp even by today's high graphical standards. That's pretty impressive if you consider these games are pretty old. Considering that the original games is nearly 20 years old, it's pretty silly to expect to be wowed. Still the gameplay in the original Gradius -- and every other game in this collection -- proves to still be as addictive and frenetic as it always was.

One of the key enhancements of this package is that you are allowed to tweak the number of lives you start out with and modify the difficulty to your liking. You can also save your progress at any time by pausing the game, which is a serious godsend when you consider how easy it is do die. But even with that extra help from Konami the Gradius series continues to offer a very, very difficult challenge. That's because Gradius (and its sequels) was one of those games where one single shot would wipe you out and waste a life. This becomes most apparent when you load up the hardest game in the collection: Gradius III.

Some other interesting extras include t fine tuned settings for each game that make the game more playable on the PSP. These include a default 16:9 aspect ratio of the PSP a reduced collision area for your ship, making it slightly harder to hit in each game and a cool gallery that lets you play each game's classic theme music.

There are a few notable omissions from this collection like the 1987 NES classic Life Force, and the recent Gradius V. The latter title wasn't included probably because it's a lot newer than the rest, so we shouldn't expect too much from Konami. Also excluded was the two-player mode introduced in Gradius IV, which would have been a nice addition to the collection. Nevertheless, the Gradius Collection still stands proud and tall as the ultimate collection of classic space shooters released in the last decade, so these minor gripes don't detract too much in the grand scheme of things.

Ultimately the Gradius Collection is a must have for anyone that wiled away countless hours with these wonderful shooters in the 80's and 90's. If you love space shoot 'em ups and like challenging classic games then this collection is for you.