Nemesis / Gradius

Nemesis / Gradius

Manufacturer	Konami
Year	1985
Emulated	MAME, Sparcade

Nemesis, AKA Gradius, revolutionized shoot-em-ups when it appeared in 1985. A sort of semi-sequel to Konami's earlier Scramble, Nemesis set many of the precedents for the Golden Age of shooters. Its awesome array of collectible weaponry influenced many games, particularly R-Type, and it started something of a trend of updating older games by adding power-ups that led to titles such as Arkanoid and Blasteroids.
Nemesis spawned a long-running series of follow-ups such as Salamander, Vulcan Venture all the way to 2004's Gradius V. Konami also took the bizarre step of sending the game up in the Parodius series.

Controls

A standard joystick is used to move the ship around the screen. The first fire button controls your main weapon whilst the the second button unleashes your missiles. The third button is used to select your power-ups.

Weapons

In the game, a lone spacecraft (the 'Warp Rattler', although it was later referred to as 'Vic Viper') sets out to destroy evil bad guys the Bacterions, using the medium of horizontal scrolling. The power-up system was innovative. Shooting red aliens, or whole groups of special aliens, revealed a glowing 'power crystal'. Picking this up resulted in the next panel of your 'power meter' lighting up. At any time you could press the third fire button to activate the highlighted power. These powers were:-

Speed Up	Alters your ship's speed. Up to 5 levels, 2 is the recommended dose.
Missile	Falls to the ground, then slides along it until it hits something.
Double	Fires a bullet at 45 degrees up as well as forward.
Laser	Replaces your bullets with a blue beam.
Multiple	Orange blobs that follow you around, they have whatever weapons your ship has. You can have up to 4. Possibly the best power-up ever.
?	Force field, 2 blob-things that attach to the nose of your craft.

You couldn't have 'double' as well as 'laser', but other than that you could select your powers in any order you wanted.

Variants

Nemesis and Gradius are near identical, only the title screens seem different. There is, however, another ROM set for Nemesis floating about which has a couple of differences. This game has a continue feature, and, after dying and restarting, the first few aliens encountered will all be red, allowing you to quickly restock your weapons. Whether this ROM is a hacked bootleg, or an easier version for some territory is not known.

Emulation

Mame and Sparcade emulate both games. You'll need a RAT file in order to get Gradius to work with Sparcade.

Level Guide

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