Gradius ReBirth | Type C 3-ALL 1 credit clear (Autofire)

Time: 15 hours
Autofire has been used.

I'm surprised that I managed to do four (4!) recoveries on 3-5 because it's the last level of the 3-ALL run and it'd be a shame if I died in 3-5 too easily.
It is currently the last shoot 'em up entry in the Gradius franchise that has been developed by M2 and published by Konami in Japan in 2008, in Europe and North America in 2009 for Wii. An interesting thing is that it's a WiiWare title (so, no physical distribution) and it shows: with its size of just 30 megabytes, the music had to be compressed enough to fit into this size, while designing the graphics of the game in the pixel art style that is somewhat remiscient of Gradius Gaiden's one.
One thing that M2 screwed up is artificial slowdown (Wii is much more powerful than arcade Gradius games' hardware or PlayStation), which is rarely triggered and even then on stage 3 (very many Moai rings), stage 4 (many enemies at once at the beginning or skeleton frags) and stage 5 (many elevator turrets at once) and is not affected by revenge bullets at all. However, one thing that M2 didn't screw up is the music - it's a big deal when Manabu Namiki himself composed it!!!
Is the game good? It's pretty good, I guess.
The game offers fives types for you to play - Vic Viper as Type A, B, C, Metalion as Type D and (presumably) Black Viper as Type E. I found Type C to be the best for survival thanks to its high damage per second and recovery capability (Vertical is a useful weapon for recovery in fifth stage or to complete the second special stage in fourth stage, for example). Type D and E are supposedly useful for high loop gameplay, but I didn't try them much, so I can't say a lot on this matter.
When playing as Type C, you'd go for Twin Laser. However, you want to use Vertical to pass the second special stage and to recover in fifth stage's fourth checkpoint.
I avoid second and fourth stage bosses by entering special stages because the bosses are hectic, especially on recovery. This leaves the first boss (easy), third boss (A bit hard when on recovery, but very much possible) and the final boss. (Gradius final bosses are [almost] always free to beat, remember?)
At least on the first three loops every checkpoint is possible to recover from, but with various degree of difficulty. For example, 3-2 and 3-5 recoveries are hard and require strict routes.
I still wait for the new Gradius game btw.