(CC) Nemesis (Game Boy) - 4-ALL Clear (1,044,400 to 5-5)

(Subtitles/CC available for gameplay tips and additional notes)
Nemesis GB
©1990 Konami

This game tends to trip a lot of people up, since at first glance (and for the first few seconds of playing it), it seems like it's just the original Gradius/Nemesis ported on the Game Boy. Well, actually, despite sharing a title, it's an entirely different game. The game does go by Gradius in Japan, but this is the North American version.

Obviously, a lot of compromises had to be made to fit this game onto such a limited system. Stage design is simplistic, the Laser is a bit less impressive than usual, and there's only 5 stages per loop. It's still a very well-made game, and plays well for the system it's on. The music is decent overall, with most tracks being taken either from the original Gradius, Gradius II NES, or Nemesis 2 MSX.

And that's really it as far as this game goes. It's really easy to pick up and learn if you want to try out a Gradius game, though the quality is significantly lower than other titles. I myself was able to 1CC it the very first time I ever played it (though, to be fair, I have a lot of experience with these games and I've seen playthroughs of this game before, so I wasn't going in completely blind). Would recommend for people who are already fans of the series, but maybe not as your first game if you want to get into it.

Note that there are a handful of lag spikes (caused by my PC being dumb) near the end of the run. In fact, a lag spike was what caused me to game over (though, I probably would've game overed there anyways). This may hinder the viewing experience for you, and I'm sorry about that. I didn't really care about it ending the run, I was already mentally done playing after hitting a million points and didn't really care to keep going for much longer anyways. Multi-looping this game isn't super rewarding since the game barely gets harder after loop 1, but I felt like doing it anyways. I also chose not to play on Hard because that would essentially be the same as starting on loop 2, which I did clear in this run, so it wouldn't have proven anything. It is saying something that I had to get to the end of the 5th loop to squeak past a million points, though.

Played using the BGB emulator.