Gradius II arrived in the mail today (thanks bartre!) so I've been playing that some.
For an SCD, it doesn't seem very optimized. So much slowdown on the ice level. Spriggan is just a normal CD game and I think it has screens with just as much stuff going on, yet it doesn't seem to slow down as much as this. I wonder why...
Still, it's a fun game so far! Plenty challenging. As soon as I die, it pretty much means I lose all my remaining lives nearly instantly. I guess the trick is to shoot everything and avoid getting hit.