Clearing those five levels still represents a decent challenge for most players, but experts may feel slightly short-changed. With just five main levels, ReBirth is slightly smaller than previous editions, plus it lacks any multiplayer options. In other words, this is classic Gradius and anyone who’s familiar with the series will feel right at home. Once a life is lost however, it’s back to square one with a sluggish, almost useless ship. Things start off nice and easy, allowing the player to build up the Vic Viper’s arsenal and manoeuvrability to a seemingly near-invincible state by collecting and using the numerous power-up tokens. The gameplay is also reminiscent of those 1980s games, and so too, is the difficulty level. Making ReBirth look and sound retrograde provides it with no small amount of charm and gives the impression that it could slot somewhere into the timeline of the original trio of coin-ops. Whether this was a move brought about by file size limitations of the WiiWare service, or not, is unknown, but with hindsight it was certainly a good decision. Unlike the more recent entries in the series, ReBirth eschews polygons in favour of vintage-look 2D graphics. This is a trend that continues with the latest entry in the series, Gradius ReBirth. The fact that most of these follow-ups rarely strayed too far from the original game’s template underlines just how well-executed it was all those years ago.
It introduced and popularised many features that are still evident in even the latest bullet-crazed shmups from Japan.Īs well as being heavily copied by others, it’s a game that has also given Konami a lot of mileage over the years, both in terms of direct sequels, and spin-offs. Released in 1985 by Konami, the original Gradius was quite a revelation and hugely influential.
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