A developer has completely rebuilt the classic Gradius arcade game, first introduced in 1985, using ASCII. The newly launched Steam PC game page boasts that Battle for Asciion “is not just styled like text — it is text.” Nevertheless, the recorded on-screen action shows this 'bullets flying horizontal' scrolling shoot ‘em up shares many of the lures of the old-school pixel-based original. As a 2026 bonus, the reimagined ASCII Gradius remake is very RAMpocalypse-friendly, with its recommended specs of a mere dual-core 2.0 GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM.
