Gradius II/Stage 7


 * In lieu of some of the omitted or condensed stages from the arcade version, the Famicom version extends the biological portion at the end of the final level into a full-fledged stage that is very reminiscent of the first stage of Life Force. You must survive this journey to reach the final boss and complete the game.
 * In the first portion of the stage, you fly through some tissue which drips (both up and down) small blue cellular organisms. They start out round as they fall up or down to the opposite side from where they originate.  After they come to rest, they resemble the amoebas that you may have encountered in previous games.  When they do this, they fly straight towards the current position of the Vic Viper.  If you have enough firepower, you should easily overwhelm them and destroy them shortly after they begin to fall.


 * The amoeba section ends with a large blue organism that floats around and releases eight flashing corpuscles outward. The corpuscles are destroyed when they touch a boundary, and they can easily be destroyed with your weapons.  Concentrate your fire on the organism to remove it.
 * Next, you will reach a long uninterrupted section of webbing, very similar to that which you found in the . However, similar to Life Force, you will find cellular life forms hiding within the webbing.  The red amoebas don't provide anything special, but the orange ones will leave power-up capsules behind when destroyed.  Note that activating the Rolling Option ability can be very helpful when carving out a path through this section.


 * Next you will fly through a tunnel. In this tunnel, you will see three "fingers" reach down to the middle of the tunnel.  This is quickly followed by three more finger which rise up from the bottom and meet the top fingers in the middle.  Time your flight through this tunnel carefully.  Blast through it after both sets of fingers have risen, and are making their way back down.
 * Once you fly through this tunnel, hang back more to the left so that you are not surprised by the next encounter; at this time, tissue will expand quite rapidly from the top or bottom walls.  They never form straight lines, rather these tissue growths extend in curves.  Since they can be hard to predict, you may wish to remain back towards the left to see where they appear and plan your flight path through the tunnels they leave behind accordingly.
 * However, after the third growth appears (from both the top and the bottom, leaving a narrow tunnel behind,) it is in your best interest to advance far to the right. Two more growths will appear from both the top and the bottom, and close off any path to the right.  Fly out ahead of them before they seal off access to the remainder of the stage.

Boss: Gofer
When you reach the end of this stage, you will discover Gofer, the mastermind behind the Bacterion's second invasion of Gradius. Unlike his arcade counter-part, you can't shoot out the stalks which connect his brain to the rest of the tissue. Also unlike the arcade, this version of Gofer has the slight ability to defend itself by releasing small bubbles which float outward from his mouth. However, he does not begin to do this until he has taken sufficient damage. The only location that is vulnerable to your weaponry are his eyes. Shoot them consistently (watching out for the stay bubble that wanders your way) until Gofer is defeated. The game will then present you with the ending and the staff credits before resuming from the first stage at a higher degree of difficulty. Congratulations!