Gradius II (Arcade/PS1) Full Run on Very Difficult

Gradius II: Gofer's Ambition (グラディウスII GOFERの野望)
System: PlayStation 1 (Gradius Deluxe Pack)
Settings: Very Difficult (Hardest), Wait Control Off, Extend at 20K then every 150K

0:00 Start
1:00 Stage 1 - Burning Heat
3:53 Stage 2 - Synthetic Life
6:27 Stage 3 - Crystal Word
9:39 Stage 4 - A Way Out of Difficulty
12:32 Stage 5 - The Old Stone Age
18:12 Stage 6 - Maximum Speed
20:03 Stage 7 - Boss Rush
24:17 Stage 8 - Into Hostile Ship
29:02 Final Boss + Ending

This video shows a full run, one credit clear (1CC) of Gradius II arcade from the Gradius Deluxe Pack (PS1 import) on the highest difficulty. This footage was captured from real Playstation hardware (modded to play imports) using the legit disc. No emulators, cheats, hacks, or any of that crap was used in this video.

It was smooth sailing until the Moai stage where I take a stray bullet unexpectedly. Quite difficult to recover at that point, and I thought for sure I was done but somehow passed the boss.

This game actually took me only a handful of runs to beat, and I'd actually rank Gradius 1 as being more difficult (at least under the highest difficulty setting on the PS1 version). Unlike in Gradius III, turning the wait off doesn't really make the game much harder, except for perhaps the Crystal stage.