This is a gameboy shmup game that struggles to run at 15FPS, and somehow it's the best Gradius game that I've played in the past few months.

Differently from the games it is based on, in GB Nemesis it doesn't feel impossible to recover once you die and lose all your power ups. Somehow the level design accomodates that possibility, and in general the game feels considerably more fair than its arcade counterparts.

It does have some funkiness to it admitedly. It runs like shit, and I imagine the stage, select being enabled from the start was due to the game not being able to save(?). Also the game allows you to start with 99 lives which might've been a little too much lol.

Either way, it's a short and sweet game that serves its purpose as a portable Gradius experience masterfully, if only lacking in the technical department, likely due to its early release in the GameBoy lifespan.