Nemesis

Copyright : Konami | Reviewed by : AndyH

Nemesis is a classic arcade shooter that set many standards. The conversion to 8-bits was inevitable, but does it stand up to the conversion?

The planet Gradius, a peaceful Earth-like world, was under attack by their long-time nemesis, beings from the sub-space star cluster known as Bacterion. The people of Gradius, in danger of being completely destroyed by the amoeboid Bacterions, have had to resort to using their secret weapon. To save themselves, the people of Gradius launched the prototype of their new hyper-space fighter, the BP-456X Warp Rattler. The entire galaxy awaited the outcome of the decisive battle between Gradius and the evil Bacterions.

Graphics

The game starts with the four colour high res loading screen that looks very impressive and faithful to the arcade. Once the game fires up you will recognise the Vic-viper (although more triangle wedge shaped) and all the main ships and scenery. The animation lets down the graphics some what, with the Vic lacking animation of any kind. Everything is bright and colourful and good use has been made of the Amstrad?s palette to create the same look and feel.

Sound

You get either a rendition of the Arcades music from level 1 or sound effects (but not both). The music is nice but brief and it gets repetitive. The sound effects could be better but do the job.

Gameplay

The arcade version of Nemesis (Gradius) is difficult but well balanced. It seems in the conversion to the 8-bits that many of its subtle features have been lost. For starters the game is very hard and collision detection can sometimes be less than perfect. As far as the 8-bit conversions go, the Amstrad holds up pretty well, but not as good as the C64 version for example.

You play the game over a horizontal scrolling playfield, shooting waves of attacking aliens. Very similar to any shooter right? Well Nemesis was the first game to give you power-ups you could use to choose how you upgraded your ship. It also had a distinct style that many games have copied since.

The first part of the game gives you the opportunity to get your ship upgraded with simple ?snake-like? patterns which leave a power up module if you destroy all of them. The first thing you upgrade is your speed, this is essential. After that you have choice of missiles, double shot, lasers, multiples and shields...if you can collect enough power ups that is. The Amstrad version is very tough and you will need to practice to get this!

What is disappointing in this version is that you can only collect one multiple, a glowing orb of energy that follows your Vic-viper and multiplies your firepower by shooting the same powerups you have. The second disappointment is the less than impressive laser power up. In the arcade original, you could have up to four multiples and the lasers had a very satisfying cut through anything quality to them.

However, get past this and Nemesis on the Amstrad is not a bad game, but it does suffer in several areas and could have been a much better conversion. It?s sequel, Salamander, was a good conversion but more about that in another review!