If you’ve ever enjoyed playing Konami’s Gradius on the Nintendo Family Computer (a.k.a. NES, for those stateside) you need to see this interesting video, Averaging Gradius.

Some gamer, with too much free time on his hand, decided to overlay on top of each other a bunch of captured games for the level 1 of Gradius. “Averaging” is a misnomer since while the games were added up, no equivalent division by n was done.

In the process of creating the video (which is quite fascinating, geek-wise, in itself), Mr. LeFeuvre discovered many interesting factoids. One is that the boss at the end of the level actually self-destructs after 27 seconds, giving no bonus points to the player. Another is that the same boss actually has a bit of AI and does not move in a set pattern.