Sneaking in there ahead of Capcom’s Mega Man 9, Konami’s Gradius Rebirth is the first uber-retro to hit WiiWare, looking for all the world like a SNES game.

It’s essentially identical in concept to the original Gradius - a rock hard side-scroller with waves of enemies to zap and a progressive power-up system that resets to nothing when you die, lumbering you with a painfully slow ship with no firepower, and making a hard game even harder.

Of course, the answer is simple: don’t die! But that’s easier said than done here, with some fiendish (and occasionally downright unfair) design that will have you breaking out the swears faster than Peter Kenyon on transfer deadline day. I’ve been playing for the past hour and only just made it to Stage 3.

With plenty of options to tweak the game’s difficulty (I dread to think what Very Hard is like if this is considered Normal) and a score attack mode, not to mention the ability to save replays of your best attempts - or most heinous failures - Gradius Rebirth certainly offers plenty of content for your 1000 points. Whether you’ll actually enjoy it depends on your patience/hardcore gaming skills.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm by Chris Schilling
Nostalgia, Wii, WiiWare.