Gradius V Delisted from PSN

[Firehawke]

Was surprised nobody else had posted this info yet. Gradius 5 was delisted off PSN recently. It appears the primary reason is some piece of third party tooling (maybe the G.Rev engine?) that was in it had expired.

Here's an English source for this: https://automaton-media.com/en/news/kon ... e-release/
And a likely more accurate Japanese source: https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2025/06/10/153805.html

While Konami's official statement says "Regarding re-broadcasting or porting, there are various issues that cannot be resolved immediately and there are currently no plans for it," that's corpspeak for "We could be negotiating right now and even have it all but tied up, but we're not going to say anything until the ink on the contract is dry and we're ready to announce it."

My best guess is that they're waiting to see how Origins does before they commit to the cost of whatever piece of third party software they'd need to re-license in order do a modern port, and even then it'd be radio silence up until M2 has the port 80%+ done.

I don't think this is going to matter too much to most people here; the PS3 plays PS2 games pretty badly unless you have a first-gen unit with the proper hardware, and frankly PCSX2 has the game mostly worked out (though there's no good deinterlacing 'cheat' code, and you can't really increase the resolution on the special effects (e.g. explosions))

[alamone]

Probably some type of middleware whose license expired. As you said, PS3 probably the worst way to play PS2 games anyway.

For deinterlacing, forced 480P patching works great, I've used it on real hardware, only problem is that it will crash on trying to play the intro movie. In-game, no problems though.
https://www.psx-place.com/resources/ps2 ... odean.856/

[Necronom]

My best guess is that they're waiting to see how Origins does before they commit to the cost of whatever piece of third party software they'd need to re-license in order do a modern port, and even then it'd be radio silence up until M2 has the port 80%+ done.

Let's hope this is the case...
Until then, Gradius V is pretty much perfectly emulated, even in Retroarch. Looks beautiful in upsaled glory and a Trinitron shader applied.

[AGermanArtist]

Got it running on my Android phone and it looks and plays fantastic with NetherSX2. Of what I've played (around 4hrs) there are a couple of hotspots where the frame rate tanks and the audio is a little overdriven, but it's literally a couple of seconds when it happens, with the most prominent being the boss 1 enters section. This is on a $300 phone I paid $200 for (with an OLED screen), that also somehow runs Aka To Blue on full settings, flawlessly.