Re-release this: Gradius 2

This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Gradius naming conventions are a treat. The original game, Gradius, is known as such in Japan only. In North America and Europe, it was called Nemesis. But that was only true in arcades: the NES port of Nemesis, released a year after that game came to North America, used the Gradius name. Salamander was Salamander in Japan, and then Life Force in North America, and then Life Force in Japan, too, in an instance where all three of those were the same game, but not really.

And then there’s Gradius II vs. Gradius 2. They are not the same game, and not in the Salamander vs. Life Force way, either. Gradius II released in 1988, first in arcades and then eventually ported to home platforms like the Famicom and PC Engine. As far as the mainline games timeline goes, it’s the official second Gradius. The second Gradius in chronological order, however, if you skip Salamander/Life Force, is Gradius 2. Which did not release in arcades first, but is instead a direct sequel to the MSX port of the original Gradius, made for the same computer platform.

In Japan, the game is Gradius 2. In Europe, where the MSX was also available, it was Nemesis 2, which is also what the MSX port of the original game was titled, unlike when Konami decided sure, let North Americans have Gradius on the NES. This Nemesis 2 should not be confused for Nemesis II, which is the Game Boy sequel to Nemesis, a 1990 Game Boy not-quite-a-port, original-ish entry in the Gradius series, which carried that name for the first time in Japan as well as Europe North America. The aforementioned Game Boy sequel, Nemesis II, was given that name in Japan, the subtitle “The Return of Hero” in Europe, and in North America, it was instead named Gradius: The Interstellar Assault, foregoing all Nemesis branding and subtitling.

This whole feature won’t be about untangling a mess of names — okay, one more, you don’t fly the Vic Viper in Gradius 2 but you do fly the Metalion — but you can see why some clarity is required when discussing Gradius 2, which is also known as Nemesis 2, but is not Gradius II nor Nemesis II. Gradius 2 is a pretty good game that could have been a great game, if not for some structural issues, and also serves to — just like with Salamander/Life Force — include some of the significant tweaks to the series that would make Gradius II look like such a leap over its predecessor if you skipped everything in between. Like how Salamander introduced boss variety, the ripple laser, and the second player ship, the Lord British to Gradius, Gradius 2 brings in bonus stages — which would also be included in the Gradius parody series, Parodius — and helps to further settle Gradius into the types of stages you’d be seeing regularly in this game, environment-wise.

What stands out most about Gradius 2, however, is what isn’t in other games in the series. Those bonus stages grant you the use of special weapons that you can’t otherwise get a hold of, assuming you can complete them after flying into them post-boss fight. There is an Up Laser and there’s a Down Laser — guess what those do? Unlike the standard laser that fires forward, these don’t replace your normal shot, but do allow you to attack things directly above or below you instead of having to angle like with Double shot, or with the missile that first travels at an angle before moving along the surface. The Napalm Missile is basically a combination of the standard missile in Gradius as well as what would become the Spread Bomb. You can upgrade these special weapons just like your usual ones — they’re replacements for something else on your power bar, which, like in the original Gradius (and later versions of Life Force), is used to customize your upgrades how you want to using the pickups dropped by downed enemies.

There is also some Gradius 2-specific stuff that is not great. Like how once you play through the game’s seven stages, you then have to play them again, in reverse order, in order to get to the boss. The level design is good and all, but it’s not that good, you know? It would be a more satisfying playthrough if Konami had just designed things to have the eight stages in a row, rather than one through seven, seven through one, then a level “zero” to conclude things. Just make it the eighth stage don’t be weird.

Without question, the greatest part of Gradius 2 is its soundtrack. That’s not even meant a a knock on the gameplay or anything like that, because that’s all good stuff. The soundtrack is incredible, though. For one, it uses a proprietary Konami sound chip, the SCC, which added five additional wave sound channels on top of the three the MSX’s programmable sound chip had. Which is a technical way of saying that a whole lot more sound can be pumped out of this game than would be otherwise — fuller, more varied, more kick ass sound. Kinuyo Yamashita was one of three composers on Gradius 2 — you might know her as the composer responsible for “Vampire Killer,” among other classic Castlevania tracks from the original Famicom and NES edition of the game. Motoaki Furukawa and Masahiro Ikariko were credited as composers, as well, and the trio took as much advantage of all of that extra sound channel capability as possible. Gradius 2’s music sounds like it belongs in an arcade cabinet, and is frankly a little out of place with the MSX’s whole visual vibe and performance, but that doesn’t detract from how great it sounds at all. It’s just funny to consider, in kind of the same way that later Ys I & II remakes had seriously thrashing guitars exploding out of the speakers, playing over bump combat and old-school gameplay and sprites.

Graphically, Gradius 2 does much better in terms of art design than it does in the actual visuals for sprites and such — the MSX was only so powerful, and quite a bit ends up happening on screen at once. Scrolling is choppy just as a starting point, so hoping for some huge, detailed sprites outside of the bosses would be asking for too much here. However, the backgrounds have quite a bit of detail in them when they aren’t just “space with stars in them,” and really things would be viewed more positively if the MSX edition was just up against an NES port or what have you instead of cutting-edge 16-bit arcade technology that made Gradius look exceptional in 1985, and Gradius II look even better just one year after this first sequel.

That choppy scrolling, though… it doesn’t ruin the game by any means, but it’s much harder to enjoy it than if it wasn’t there, especially in the sections “before” the levels where the screen floods with waves of enemies for you to earn power-ups from to help you through those middle sections and boss fights. Slowdown in a shoot ‘em up is perfectly fine, and sometimes even helpful. Choppy scrolling, though… it’s kind of a wonder the MSX ended up with so many STG on it, considering how unfortunate that scrolling problem is. The choppy scrolling was retained in some later collections or re-releases of Gradius 2, such as Konami’s MSX Antiques Collection on the Sega Saturn, despite the fact such hardware would have handled an enhanced version of the game that was otherwise unchanged with ease.

Luckily, the version of Gradius 2 found on the Playstation Portable on the Salamander Portable collection is enhanced a bit — it still looks old-school and not overtly modern by any means, retaining much of what the MSX release’s whole vibe was albeit with more colors, but the choppy scrolling has been removed in favor of smooth scrolling. The problem is that the Salamander Portable collection was only released in Japan, not in North America. And also it costs nearly $100 on the secondhand market as of this writing, even if it’s just a loose UMD. So you’re kind of out of luck there unless you really want to play Gradius 2 while paying for it, and you don’t have an MSX.

There are other versions of Gradius 2, as well. Nemesis ‘90 Kai is considered the best of the bunch, as it’s an X68000-exclusive that was reworked for the more powerful platform, and makes it all look, as Hardcore Gaming 101 pointed out, like it has much more in common with Gradius III visually than the MSX releases. This is one of the tougher ones to get your hands on and playing unless you’re already deep into X68000 emulation, though. South Korea received an unlicensed Sega Master System port of Nemesis 2, courtesy developer Zemina, who was also responsible for the Master System’s port of the original Gradius. Until the Saturn, there just weren’t official Gradius releases on Sega platforms, but at least you had the wild west era of some developers deciding they were just going to do it anyway.

If you find the ROM of SMS Nemesis 2 around somewhere, just know that, for some reason, this particular dump has you stuck playing as Penta from Penguin Adventure, aka Hideo Kojima’s first credit in the video game industry. The MSX edition of Gradius 2 had some hidden goodies that let you change up sprites and power-ups and such depending on what other Konami MSX title was also slotted into the computer while you played Gradius 2/Nemesis 2, so the basis of this being in Zemina’s unlicensed port is all sound. That for some reason we’re stuck with that version of the ROM, though, is both weird and also pretty damn funny. Shooting little hearts out of a flying space penguin to take down alien ships, and not having an option otherwise, is a little bit proto-Parodius.

Gradius 2 is nowhere to be found these days, not since the Wii U Virtual Console went down — yes, outside of the United States, the Wii U’s Virtual Console included MSX titles. It wasn’t included in 2025’s Gradius Origins collection, which is arcade-focused, but maybe it’ll end up in a second collection focusing more on the non-arcade side of the series in the future. That, or you’re just going to have to figure out how to emulate one old piece of hardware or another to see what this game was about.

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