Taking place roughly a decade after the Third Bacterian War, the planet Gradius is facing an assault by a planet shaped fortress which has already swallowed up anything that got in its way. Now its up to the heroes of Gradius to deal with this menace.

Solar Assault takes the Gradius series to the third dimension. Players choose from one of three ships; the Vic Viper, Alpina, or Lord British. Each ship has its unique weapon set with the usual setup of a Gradius game, meaning each ship has a missile type, double type, laser type, option type, and ? type. Weapons get powered up by defeating enemies and collecting power orbs. Players have to play through five stages and have to defeat a boss enemy at the end of each stage.

The game later seen a revised edition for its international release that added another stage called Fierce Blaze to make for a total of six stages to play through plus a few other tweaks to the game.

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