Vandal Hearts II is an obscure strategy RPG sequel produced by Konami at the end of the PS1’s life. Few played it but many who did will cherish it forever. Now its oldest and weirdest mystery has finally be solved. A reference to Konami’s classic shoot ’em up series Gradius mentioned a special sword in the game’s files that no one could ever get to spawn without hacks. Fans thought up all sorts of wild theories about the “intended” way to unlock the secret, including maybe needing very specific save files from other Konami games like Suikoden. It turns out that they actually needed a super-rare demo disc.
The Gradius Sword in Vandal Hearts II isn’t just a fun little Easter egg. The weapon contains a powerful spell called “Ripple Laser” that summons an actual 3D model of Gradius‘ ship, the Vic Viper, to fly across the battlefield and blow up enemies. It’s pretty powerful and has a surprisingly ornate animation for something that no one was ever able to discover in the game naturally. The result has been decades of random threads across message boards like GameFAQs and elsewhere as fans tried to figure out what you could actually do in the game to trigger the Gradius Sword to appear.
Three years ago, the tiny YouTube account Dragon Quarter reposted footage of the Ripple Laser skill in action that was originally uploaded in 2010. Then last night, Dragon Quarter returned with a major update. “After getting a tip from a follower (who I realize now got their tip from a recent post on GameFAQs) of Twitch streamer Karkalla, who is currently playing through Vandal Hearts II for the first time, I have confirmed the Gradius Sword was originally unlocked by downloading a special save data file from Dengeki PlayStation D22 (SLPM-80471), a demo disc included with Dengeki PlayStation Magazine Issue 116 (dated 1999-09-24),” they posted on ResetEra on Friday.
According to GameFAQs user Kern, the discovery came after finding a reference to the demo disc on an older Japanese site. “Someone on a discord who had some old discs found the file on the D22 disc (which you can get from ebay),” they wrote. “I wasn’t able to verify it personally myself but he posted images of the file, and he was able to open the save file on an English copy and the Gradius sword was available for purchase.” Dragon Quarter has since confirmed it as well.
This is the kind of deep gaming lore I thrive on. For years, random players on forums have claimed to have found the weapon early on in Vandal Hearts II just by chance. Is it possible there’s some one in a million chance for it to just spawn randomly without the demo disc data? Who knows. It seems clear that Konami at least intended for it to be an exclusive bonus for owners of the demo disc, similar to the deluxe edition pre-orders of today that let players begin a game with unique upgrades and gear.
The most absurd theory by far was that you needed to have a final Gregminster save point from the original Suikoden on a memory card to get the Gradius Sword to appear in the shop. When that was debunked a couple of years ago, many players had resigned themselves to the weapon only being available via some hacked save file from “Jean” that was uploaded to GameFAQs over a decade ago. Now players can get it the “official” way by downloading a copy of the demo disc save and using a PS3 memory card converter to get the data onto a PS1 memory card.
