Gradius II on Famicom NES How About That
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- Опубліковано 9 лис 2024
- For best results view at 1080p60fps. It's another episode of "How About That!," the series in which I take a look at a game that is either really good or somehow noteworthy for the system on which it appears. This time around, here's the Famicom / NES port of Gradius II! This one kicks things up a notch and was really a bit TOO ambitious for the hardware it was on. So what makes it worth looking at? Watch this complete playthrough with commentary to find out!
This is a long play or let's play style video.
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#gradiusII #famicom #konami #NES #complete #completegame #longplay #letsplay #comparison #retrogaming #16bit #8bit #commentary #chiptunes #impressive
Always look forward to your vids man :D
Thanks, glad you like 'em!
Being a Master System kid and getting to know more about many stuff we didn't have available back then, it's always impressive what a console can achieve when it is supported for many years way into the next gen as the Famicom, PS1, PS2 and others. Their commercial success ensured many talented developers would break limits that were unthinkable at first. First gen titles on the Famicom from '83 and a few years later can't compare to the likes of Batman: Return of the Joker, sure this is true due to help from the extra chips and so on, but it also comes to show that many consoles that didn't have the same success never truly achieved its best, such as the 3DO, 32X, Jaguar, Saturn and more. What the Famicom/NES reached technically over the years is amazing for an '83 mass entertainment piece of hardware.
Yeah, always interesting to see what talented devs could do with mature hardware. Yes, in the case of the NES it was often with add-on chips. But still, I bet no one in 1983 expected to see a game like this on the system!
@@InglebardGaming absolutely, some games, specially Japan exclusives have 16-bit features you wouldn't normally see on 8-bit consoles, even the PC-Engine, such as parallax and many sprites on screen without slowdowns and so on. The other video about the C64 you showed some impressive stuff going on there, too.
@@InglebardGaming Sprite flickering and slowdown never bothered me. I never even noticed it really. I enjoy the slowdown in the arcade versions of Double Dragon, it makes the game feel weightier when you elbow the shit out of someone :] I love it when devs go balls out on games like this and R-Type on the Master System. Hell yeah give me sprite flickering but keep most of the details of the arcade game.
What's funny is when you click to pause your video here though, half the sprites on the screen disappear, lol.
Yup, half the sprites vanish because of that old gag where the devs draw certain sprites every other frame on alternating frames to show more than the system is really capable of 😁
@@PlasticCogLiquid Slowdown never bothered me as well, specially when many things are happening on screen, nor flickering and I can't even remember noticing it back then. Like you, I think the controls/gameplay feels heavier and more dramatic at times, it's one of those unintended side-effects that are actually caused by hardware constraints. Some slowdowns, though are intentional, such as many of the impacts on Street Fighter 2, specially CE and the later ST, if a character is hit by a fireball the game slows down, specially while in the air and basically any hit finishing the round is also in slo-mo.
gret conversion.. would have loved this when i was a kid
They definitely did a nice job considering the hardware.
Nes Gradius 2 is amazing. Konami did an amazing job. Love the difference from the arcade version. Loved how Konami used custom mapper chips to enhance performance. Check out Crisis force, another example of Konami excellence 👏
Yeah, they did a great job on it. Konami had an amazing (but not perfect) track record with Famicom/NES titles!
Great video as always. Love this version, I think I played it first than the arcade. Yeah, the hardware limitations are evident but it's still very playable and fun. Good game. Oh and just like Salamander, this one has also a romhack that changes the game to look more like the arcade, starting with the ship, various enemies and bosses, changing palettes and stuff, it's pretty good.
And by the way, "Intruder" is the name of the fire dragons (Starting on Salamander Stage 3 boss). The ship with the tentacles it's called "Tetran" :)
Thanks, but you are mistaken about the boss names my friend 😁 As is most of the internet. Here's a scan from the NES manual:
twitter.com/Inglebard4/status/1644760742195855360?t=KXSGzoQqkD_ia5inY_o4Jw&s=19
I thought sure the Rolling Option variant first appeared in the SNES version of Gradius III. The more you know. . . 🥴
Always interesting what stuff turns up in these good old games!
Do enjoy watching your playthroughs and I am constantly impressed with what the NES could achieve on such humble hardware. Make me sad the Master System was deprived of so many 3rd party titles that were on the NES with Nintendo's hold on publishers at that time.
Well, definitely true, but I've already recorded a nice playthrough for an SMS edition of How About That in a week or two 😁
@@InglebardGaming That's great, I look forward to some Master System goodness!
Konami was awesome in the 80's and 90's, wasn't it? My first NES/Famicom game was Akumajo Special: Boku Dracula-kun (aka Kid Dracula, Castlevania Jr etc). I was so in awe at the time, graphics were incredible. Enemies didn't repeat from level to level, how many other games from that generation (or the next one) do that?! When I went to play other games on the system some time later I had a hard time believing they were from the same platform.
I did play a little bit of the FC version in an emulator, seemed like an okay port but had no idea it was changed so drastically in some ways! may have to track down a cart just to play these new-ish levels on actual hardware! I do have a lot of love for the AC original I bought the arcade classics collection konami put out a few years ago primarily so I could have AC Gradius II on a home console! (will eventually upgrade to the arcade archives version, but this does me just fine for the moment.)
i own a loose copy of this one....very good port all things considered...i too prefer salamander over this, though
the vrc4 is the problem that this game didn't release on US
Once again 8-Bit is not up to stuff