In order to celebrate this site getting the royal with cheese treatment from Yahoo! I got two GBA games Gradius Galaxies and Megaman and Bass.
First of all I just want to say how much the new Konami Logo sucks and I miss the old one. When It booted up it was a sign of good things to come. The new logo looks like a copier maker.
You know they just don't make 2d space ship shooters like they used to. Well that is not true they still do they just don't come out as much as they once did.
Back in the 8-bit and 16-bit era you could not take a walk with out tripping over a good 2d space ship shooters but they have gotten as rare as Chinese pandas who will not screw to save their species.
Looks like it is out of print and I got it used for under ten bucks and that is a shame because it deserves better.
Gradius Galaxies is a newish game for the Gameboy Advance but it remains true and celebrates it heritage of Gradius games since 1985. Despite Gradius 3 and 4 enjoying a limited release on the PS2 this game feels like the descendant of Gradius 3 for the Super Nintendo. But it is not just a lame port of an old SNES game it stands on it's own as a damn fun space ship shooter.
The game play is classic Gradius and that is Ok with me. Tons of space Moas heads and slow moving bullets that you have to fly around. Also you can continue at different points of the stage so you don't have to start at the beginning all the time. This was very cool since the some times abrupt game play environments of the GBA.
The graphics are very nice and they take advantage of the transparency and Mode 7 type scaling that the GBA can do. It might be a little hard to see the small ships on the original GBA but it looked perfect on the GBA SP.
I like the music and the voice samples of the announcer was very retro and cool.
The classic Konami code is still there when you start a level you can pause and enter Up Up Down down Left Button Right Button Left Button Right button A B Start and your ship will power up to the max. But if you use the directional pad instead of the left and right buttons your ship will self destruct ala Gradius 3 for Snes.
The good news is that Ikaruga is coming to the States for the Gamecube and there are several other 2d Space ship shooters on the GBA and other systems. The team that did Ikaruga is going to be designing Gradius 5 so that has the potential to be the best space ship shooter ever.
Gradius Galaxies is a damn fine addition to any gamer's GBA collection who remembers the days of 2d space ship shooters on the 16 bit era. Here is hoping for a Paradious game on the GBA!
it`s a very good game