Nemesis vs. Gradius

[NOAH]

I've tried to figure this out on my own but I received a lot of contradictory information in my reading. So I figured I'd ask the knowledgeable crowd here.

What differences are there between these two arcade games aside from the title screen, hardware, and cost?

[Despatche]

I've been wondering about this too, and the same goes for Life Force US vs Salamander JP, and Vulcan Venture vs the handful of Gradius II JP versions.

I heard that at least the default extend settings are different. This old version of MAME (0.99) gives me 20K/70K for Gradius and 50K/100K for Nemesis, though that's probably off.

[Moniker]

Nemesis gives you a bunch of powerup enemies upon respawn so you don't have to start from scratch. Might be other differences; I'll check.

Edit: Yeah, it's the same through stage 3 which is as far as I felt like checking. May be subtle differences I'm missing.

As far as Life Force/Salamander go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamander ... ifferences

[Seahawk]

Gradius has a small wait period after death; Nemesis starts you up playing again right away.

Gradius has a gradual warm up period on the volcanoes; Nemesis has them spewing rocks at full range from the start.

Nemesis is a harder game with faster bullets, but it spams recovery enemies for you when you die.

Gradius has a harder high loop, return fire seems to appear much more consistently than with Nemesis.

I can't think of anything else.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

The versions I played in arcades are identical. I think the one which spams recovery enemies was a rom hack.

[Moniker]

The versions I played in arcades are identical. I think the one which spams recovery enemies was a rom hack.

A quick web search seems to confirm this. Odd. Gradius ReBirth (Wii) gives you a smattering of powerup items on respawn when playing on easy; I assumed this was a page taken from Nemesis. I also wonder how a romhack became the standard MAME version.

[Seahawk]

Konami's port of the game to the Konami Arcade Collection on the DS has the extra spawned enemies when you die. It's entirely possible that the devs just slapped whatever ROMs they could find into that game though.

It might be good to know the situation with the ports to the Playstation and the Saturn, since those are probably more faithful.

[BrianC]

Konami's port of the game to the Konami Arcade Collection on the DS has the extra spawned enemies when you die. It's entirely possible that the devs just slapped whatever ROMs they could find into that game though.

The game plays the original JP version of Gradius when you set a DS's language to Japanese (though for newer models like DSi or 3DS, you need a Japanese DSi or 3DS). I'm not aware other any other games in the collection with drastic differences from the originals (aside from name changes for a few games for the US version of the Konami DS collection), though some pieces of music in a couple games (Rush 'n Attack and Track 'n Field) were changed due to copyright reasons. I know Contra shows the JP title screen with the DS language set to Japanese, but I didn't notice anything else different. The PSX and Saturn versions of Gradius are based on the original JP version.

M2 did both the Konami Arcade DS collection and Gradius Rebirth, so I'm guessing the reference to the odd Nemesis variant was intentional.

I'm not sure why Konami changed the names for some games with the US DS arcade collection since the JP one kept the original names for the games, including the Nemesis name for the variant when the game is played on a DS set to English. I'm guessing they thought the games weren't well known, but it makes very little sense since some of the renamed games like Tutankham and Super Basketball had US arcade releases (Tutankham even had US ports to Colecovision and 2600).

[NOAH]

Nemesis gives you a bunch of powerup enemies upon respawn so you don't have to start from scratch. Might be other differences; I'll check.

I noticed someone mentioning the abundance of powerups after death in Nemesis earlier and wasn't sure if that was true or not. So Nemesis indeed does slather you with powerups after death?

Also, did Gradius run on both the Bubble hardware AND the GX400 hardware or just the Bubble?

[Ex-Cyber]

Also, did Gradius run on both the Bubble hardware AND the GX400 hardware or just the Bubble?

AFAICT, Bubble System is "the GX400 hardware" ("GX400" itself being the designation of the original Gradius/Nemesis release), and generic references to "GX400" really just refer to later variations of the core hardware of Bubble System used for ROM-based releases. I'd be happy to be corrected on this, though (by someone who has more direct knowledge and isn't just looking them up on Wikipedia, natch).

[bcass]

Am I remembering this wrong or did one have smart bombs and the other didn't? Or was that a setting?

[NOAH]

Well the guy that I bought the Nemesis pcb from yesterday just backed out and sent me a refund. At least I was able to get both games running in MAME today. Still pretty pissed though.

[Mortificator]

That sucks, brah.

So Nemesis indeed does slather you with powerups after death?

It does, as emulated in MAME. I don't have first-hand knowledge whether that board is a hack or not, but it isn't listed as one.

A difference that hasn't been mentioned is that Gradius doesn't support continues, while Nemesis lets you continue up to three time before kicking you back to the title screen. Also, Nemesis doesn't have the warm-up countdown.

[Ex-Cyber]

It does, as emulated in MAME. I don't have first-hand knowledge whether that board is a hack or not, but it isn't listed as one.

ISTR that it actually was listed as "Nemesis (hacked?)" for quite a few years, but at the moment can't be bothered to download an old MAME source to check.

[Despatche]

There's a "Nemesis" and a "Nemesis (World?)" in older MAME, probably newer MAME too. Which one is which? Maybe the World? version is the Hacked? version mentioned above?

[dave4shmups]

Are there any differences in the gameplay between the two? AFIK, at least with Nemesis on the Gameboy, there isn't, but I could be wrong.

[alamone]

AFAIK:

Nemesis D version: For America, this one has the extra power-up enemies on recovery and you can continue.

Nemesis E version: For Europe (and Asia?), very similar to Gradius except some minor details (title screen, pauses taken out for better income potential, multiple instead of option, etc)

You can easily switch between D and E version by EPROM swap.

Gradius bubble memory version

Gradius ROM version: This is very rare and is extremely expensive ($3000+?), I'm not sure it was in wide distribution, might have only been sent as replacements for faulty bubble memory versions

The PCBs for Nemesis E and Gradius ROM are completely different, so you cannot just EPROM swap them