Around the late-80s during the NES craze, Nintendo decided to take some of their top titles and convert them in arcade games. You had games like Vs. Super Mario Bros, Vs. Baseball, Vs. Castlevania, and others like that. The one addition that struck me as odd was Vs. Gradius, which is the NES port of the original arcade game Gradius. Curious. Out of all the NES games they could have converted to the arcade Vs system, they had to choose a game which started out as an arcade game… and a pretty good arcade shooter. In any case, I’ll review this game for what it really is: an arcade port of an NES port of an arcade game.
STORY: What story? You flew your little fighter plane, shot little alien ships down and blew up statues from Easter Island. What else is there to know? 2/10
GRAPHICS: The graphics really come off as uninspired. I understand this is an arcade port of an NES port of an arcade game. More could have been done, even if it was just slight details or a better color palette. Nothing particularly enhanced here either. 4/10
SOUND: Argh. I’ve never heard more horrid music and sound effects coming from a Nintendo system in my life. Fortunately, that’s not the case in Vs Gradius. However, it’s not like the audio aspect of the game is spectacular stuff to begin with. 3/10
GAMEPLAY: Even in this department, Vs. Gradius turns out to be a disappointment. While the NES version was limited to how powered up your ship could be (understandable since the NES didn’t have the processing power to have that many on-screen items at once without heavy slowdown), the problem could have been resolved here… not so. Control is just fine; your ship is as sluggish as ever. 4/10
CHALLENGE: Vs. Gradius retains the NES version’s difficulty level. Then again, the NES version retains the original Gradius arcade game’s difficulty level somewhat. That’s the only good thing about this game. 7/10
REPLAY VALUE: None whatsoever. 1/10
OVERALL: I really wanted to like this game. Perhaps if I were reviewing the home NES version of the game, I would have been a little easier. Perhaps if this game was an original instead of a port of an NES port of an arcade game, I would have eased up on various points of the game. Unfortunately, Vs. Gradius is not worth the effort, especially since the original Gradius arcade is a much better game worth the quarters despite its age. Thanks, but I’ll pass. 3/10
dtm666 