This week in 1986, the release of Gradius ushered in the era of the Konami Code, a series of button presses that would become synonymous with not just gaming on the NES, but gaming in general.

Manga creator Mine Yoshizaki, best known for Sgt. Frog, recently went to the shore, where he left a sand drawing for all to see. This is it.

YouTube user rickonami has done a wonderful thing. He's remade the intro to Star Fox on the SNES, only now it's in fancy HD, and includes some nods to the N64 game.

If you grew up in the 1980s and played video games, you know the Konami Code. It's very easy to remember. Kazuhisa Hashimoto, inventor of the Konami Code, said there's a reason for that.

So, blogger RoboRay bought himself a model kit of a Vic Viper fighter from classic shooter series Gradius. Upon completion, he took some photos. Not boring inside photos. Wonderful outside, pretend-the-Vic-Viper-is-actually-flying photos.

A new, official LEGO set called "Earth Defense HQ" may look at first glance to be just another space-based LEGO set. Upon closer examination, though, it not only pays tribute to classic shooter Gradius, but something more important.

The side-scrolling shmup that's part Gradius, part anime fetish fulfillment, Otomedius Excellent, is coming to the Xbox 360 later this year. Konami reassured fans of Gradius gameplay today that the brightly colored arcade shooter that features girls-as-spaceships is still on the cards with a handful of new screen…

Back in 2005, Tokyo-based game maker Konami revealed it was working on a handful of titles for the then unreleased PS3. Games like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Gradius. MGS4 was released, but Gradius VI wasn't.

Scribblenauts is now out in Japan, and to make up for the delay, some extra characters have been added to the game. Like who? Well, the fact it's been published by Konami might give you an idea or two...

The star of Konami's classic side-scrolling shoot 'em up Gradius has been remixed, re-imagined and rebuilt hundreds of times in LEGO brick form, perhaps most notably by late brick enthusiast Nate Nielson. So it was remixed again this past "Nnovvember."

Konami's cute-'em-up Otomedius (think Gradius meets boobs) was supposed to be this year in The Land of the Rising Sun. Supposed to be, because it won't.

Konami offered a single level's worth of its next great titillating side-scrolling shoot 'em up, Otomedius Excellent, at this year's Tokyo Game Show. Being a fan of Gradius-style gameplay and cleavage, we had to go hands on.

Konami's cute-em-up shooter with ample chests is coming to the Xbox 360 and it's coming to North America, the publisher announced today. Otomedius Gorgeous will feature more sidescrolling sexy shooting, with a few new girls-as-Konami-characters.

This year's gathering of some of the world's biggest LEGO fans—they call themselves Adult Fans of LEGO—at Brickworld 2010 will combine their brick engineering talents for two major video game themed collaborations, one adorably Call of Duty-themed.

In 1998, Stanford University's Henry Lowood began preserving video games and video game artifacts. Lowood, along with a four member committee, has announced a game canon, for the Library of Congress. Japan begs to differ.

A new trademark from PlayStation 3 maker Sony lends more credibility to the rumor that its forthcoming motion controller—still officially the PlayStation Motion Controller—will be called Arc. Konami's new Gradius Arc trademark, however, is something else.

November now has a theme we can all get behind, with a Flickr group kicking off Novvember, a month-long event aimed at building as many LEGO Vic Vipers from Gradius as is humanly possible.

You can never be too thin, too rich or have too many Vic Viper spaceships from the Gradius series. That's why it's so easy to recommend the latest, a special Gradius II edition.