overdrive's Nemesis review

I think a more appropriate comparison for Nemesis isn't other games in the Gradius series but rather Solar Striker, R&D1's contemporaneous shooter. Despite being designed by people intimately familiar with the GB's hardware, Solar Striker makes a lot of compromises to maintain its consistent frame rate and to be playable on the monochrome screen. Nemesis, despite being released a month later feels leaps and bounds better.

I really like Nemesis having upfront difficulty and lives settings. It's such a small thing, but it makes the game way better for hand held play. As you say, the rest of the series (including the Parodious on GB--Penguins FTW) are objectively better, but I think Nemesis fairs better when kept in the context of its release.

I can see that point. Well, to a degree, as I never played Solar Striker. If I can ever get it finished, I did play and am reviewing the latter GB Gradius game (Gradius: The Interstellar Assault) and, whoa, that game was very impressive by small-screen standards. Levels had legit connections and stuff and they did new things with old boss concepts. Like, the Big Core boss was there, but this time, it was combined with the rock-spewing volcano to add an additional attack to its arsenal besides its lasers.

Overall, it was definitely tougher than Nemesis, but in my eyes, it felt like a legitimate game that stands on its own merits, as opposed to my view of Nemesis as a game made to give a portable system as Gradius of its own. But that's probably the difference between being released early in the GameBoy's life, as compared to after a couple years. I mean, I can still recall the huge gap in quality between the first GB Super Mario game and Six Golden Coins. The first felt like a quickly-made cash-in; the second felt like a truly legit installment in the series.