After revisiting R-Type DX I decided to randomly boot up Gradius' offering to the Game Boy. This is actually known as "Nemesis II" in Japan/PAL, both it and the first Nemesis on Game Boy are apparently noncanon and considered spinoffs. Exactly two people on this entire site might care about that, so I'm cutting that subject short and before we all get confused by Konami's idiotic naming conventions. Seriously, it's very confusing what they did.

You know how some of these games have an escape sequence at the end of the game? Well this one begins with one, not gonna lie it took me a bit by surprise. Interstellar Assault/Nemesis II/Artist Formerly Known As Gradius definitely feels like a spinoff, it does a lot of subversions and still carries the feel of a Gradius game down to the "piss easy until you die and lose your shit" style of gameplay, though thankfully this game is nowhere near as ballcrushingly punishing as Gradius III or anything. At least a few people will be disappointed by that, I know who you are. Sadly, Moai are completely absent from this title. A huge dealbreaker for everyone I'm sure, but this game is still fairly fun.

Only five stages, but the game feels pretty good to play and is also fairly cinematic at times? A decent amount of in-game cutscenes in this one, I think my favorite is the shot of one of the bosses burning up on re-entry into a planet's atmosphere after being defeated. Quite enjoyed how every stage transitioned seemlessly into eachother with cuts rarely being used, I wanna say that's not normally done in Gradius.

Was good enough for me to play through with occasional save stating in one sitting, good stuff.