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Gradius ReBirth: U.S. to destroy the core soon

November 1st, 2008 by Chris Greenhough

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Click to enter gallery.

Keen ESRB-spotter Spencer at Siliconera has located a welcome addition to the ESRB’s database: Gradius ReBirth. While Japan has been pew pewing itself silly since early September, this is the first solid sign that the 1000 Point WiiWare game will be leaving its native country.

Input the code and shoot the core down the break for footage of the first two stages.

Gallery: Gradius ReBirth

Gradius ReBirth: U.S. to destroy the core soon originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted in , gradius, konami, esrb, shmup, gradius-rebirth | No Comments »

Crank the core with this Gradius music box

November 21st, 2007 by JC Fletcher

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This rare Gradius music box has to be one of the coolest limited-edition game-related items we've ever seen. It's not much to look at -- pretty much just a wooden box with the Gradius logo printed on it -- but it's a Gradius music box. It is a mechanical music box that plays Gradius music. We don't think we have to explain the amazingness of such an item.

Specifically, it plays a 15-second version of "Farewell" from Gradius II GOFER no Yabou. We found an actual recording of the music box in action here. This item was only available as a mail-in offer to people who purchased three Gradius soundtrack CDs.

We don't even get the opportunity to buy soundtrack CDs most of the time over here, and Japanese fans get to listen to those soundtracks as music boxes. Now we just have to ask ourselves: is the best fifteen seconds of Gradius music ever in a box worth $99?

[Via GameSniped]
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Posted in , gradius, ebay, promo, music-box | No Comments »

VC Tuesday: Balloon Fight wasn’t already out?

November 13th, 2007 by JC Fletcher

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The biggest surprise for us this week is right there in the title. Balloon Fight is one of the canonical first-generation NES games. It's already out in the U.S. and Europe, and it was even remade for the DS in Japan in a Club Nintendo-exclusive Tingle version. So why has it taken so long to show up on the Virtual Console in Japan? In the time that Japanese Wii owners have been waiting for Balloon Fight, they've gotten two versions of Wonder Boy in Monster World. Similarly, today brings the second version of Gradius II.

Speaking of repeat performances, we'd like to point out how awesomely Treasure is represented on the VC. Light Crusader is the fourth Treasure game to appear on the VC so far, and we appreciate every one. Even Light Crusader.
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Posted in , gradius, vctuesday, baseball-stars-2, balloon-fight, balloonfight, dragon-spirit, dragonspirit, light-crusader | No Comments »

Japan’s November VC releases: Nuts

October 28th, 2007 by JC Fletcher

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... and also Milk. November's Virtual Console outlook for Japan looks pretty excellent, with a lot of delightfully niche stuff. That includes King's Knight, the medieval-themed vertical shooter (!) from Square(!) that nobody likes but us ( ....) It will also bring Sega's Eternal Champions, the goofy Mortal Kombat-influenced fighting game that we poured hundreds of hours into. But it also includes stuff that non-us people will enjoy, like Panel de Pon, which, released in the U.S. as Tetris Attack, is the most popular version of the Puzzle League puzzle games. Light Crusader is notable for being an RPG from Treasure, and not much else.

Of course, the big news for a lot of us is that SNK has turned the King of Fighters faucet on, ensuring a constant stream of fighting games with overdone storylines and ridiculous outfits for at least a year.
Here's the full lineup for November, assuming some of them don't get bumped or pushed back into December (they will):

Famicom: Ganbare Goemon, Balloon Fight, Makaimura (Ghosts 'n Goblins), Nuts and Milk, King's Knight
Super Famicom: Panel de Pon
Mega Drive: Ecco Jr., Light Crusader, Eternal Champions
PC Engine: Dynastic Hero (Wonder Boy in Monster World), Dragon Spirit, Take the A-Train 3, Kawa no Nushi Tsuri (Legend of the River King), Gradius II GOFER no Yabou
Neo Geo: The King of Fighters '94, Baseball Stars 2, Top Hunter
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Posted in , snes, neogeo, king-of-fighters, nes, gradius, tg16, genesis, baseball-stars-2, ecco-jr, eternal-champions, ganbare-goemon, kings-knight, nuts-and-milk, top-hunter | No Comments »

An ad for a Virtual Console release?!

October 7th, 2007 by Eric Caoili

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It's Sunday, and you know what that means -- a new edition of Promotional Consideration! Well, that's what it would mean were this post on DS Fanboy, but since the sign we're featuring is for a Virtual Console title, this will have to be a Promotional Consideration article only in spirit.

We haven't come across many Virtual Console advertisements in the states; in fact, we haven't come across any at all. We're reminded of this travesty every morning when we see the lines of blood soaked through VC fanatic JC Fletcher's shirt, traces of his nightly self-flagellation rituals wherein he begs his retro-video-gaming gods to deliver us more ads for classic titles.

The Gradius/Nemesis sign pictured above was found at the Musashi-Urawa train station in Saitama, Japan late last May. When was the last time you saw an ad for a shoot-em-up displayed in a public space? As much as we'd love to see Virtual Console advertisements and posters of enlarged screenshots from 2D games brought over to the US, especially for JC's sake, we doubt that Nintendo of America will ever follow suit.
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Posted in , japan, gradius, konami, advertisement, nemesis, shmup, shoot-em-up, train-station | No Comments »

VC Tuesday: The Terror of Druaga

September 25th, 2007 by JC Fletcher

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Many American gamers would consider today's Japanese VC update to have two winners: the isometric RPG Landstalker, and Konami's wonderful SNES shooter Gradius III. Japanese gamers, for whom, of course, this update is intended, would be just as likely to gravitate toward the Famicom version of Namco arcade "classic" The Tower of Druaga, which, uh, they can enjoy with our compliments. We keep getting fooled by Druaga's appearances in Namco Museum collections into thinking that it's really a good game and we're just missing something, but we really don't think we are. It's a brutally hard maze game with unresponsive controls and no point. It's part RPG and part action game and all arrrrrrggghhhh.

This week's Japanese Virtual Console releases:
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Posted in , druaga, gradius, gradius-iii, gradiusiii, landstalker, vctuesday | No Comments »