A developer has fully rebuilt the traditional Gradius arcade game, first introduced in 1985, using ASCII. The newly launched Steam PC recreation web page boasts that Battle for Asciion “is not just styled like text — it is text.” Nevertheless, the recorded on-screen motion exhibits this ‘bullets flying horizontal’ scrolling shoot ‘em up shares lots of the lures of the old-school pixel-based authentic. As a 2026 bonus, the reimagined ASCII Gradius remake may be very RAMpocalypse-friendly, with its advisable specs of a mere dual-core 2.0 GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM.
“There are no sprites, no textures, no PNGs hidden behind the scenes,” the Battle for Asciion devs guarantee players. “What you see on screen is literal text.” This doesn’t imply the tempo of the motion is restrained in any manner, although. Videos present the sport operating quick and fluid, and in some methods, it is surprisingly detailed.
As shoot ‘em up aficionados may count on, your ASCII ship within the recreation might be upgraded via levels to wield spectacular firepower. Moreover, there are 5 lengthy levels, with big end-of-level bosses to cope with, to beat the Battle for Ascension.
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Some various historical past retro-style touches have been added to the configuration choices for Battle for Asciion. The devs have applied a number of show modes impressed by previous displays, together with scanlines and simulated inexperienced, amber, or white phosphor dots. The recreation could possibly be tailored to run on historical MSX or PCW machines linked to real CRTs, hinted the dev on social media.
It is recommended to play Battle for Asciion PC/Steam using a keyboard “for precision and that ‘terminal shooter’ feel.” That’s entirely optional, though, as this 2026 release features full controller support via Steam Input and is listed as Steam Deck compatible.
The game’s ‘Textshot’ feature is fittingly unique. Instead of saving screenshots as images, this feature saves the current gameplay screen as a plain .TXT file, which can be edited, shared, or printed just like any ASCII file.
If you think the Battle for Asciion looks kinda familiar, and not just because of its Gradius-a-like gameplay, you may have played an earlier version of the game on the web in 2012. That was back when Adobe Flash was still a dominant interactive player supported by web browsers, and portals like Newgrounds and Miniclip still thrived.
Developer Relevo goes back even further than that in retro gaming terms, even though it was only set up in 2009. It has released games, not just for PC and web, but for classic retro hardware like the MSX, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC.
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