Super Hydorah

If you hold fond memories of the old 8 and 16*Bit shmups of yore, then Super Hydorah will likely delight you with its beautiful sprite work and bold, even epic, level designs. Indeed, the game is a clear homage to Gradius and similar fare, although it still boasts enough of its own character to remain distinct. Its one drawback is an uneven difficulty curve, with some levels that are strangely short and easy, while others are long, arduous affairs. Worse, running out of lives means repeating the entire stage again, which, for those really long levels, is nothing short of maddening. Nevertheless, this is still a fine game for the skilled and patient. Just be prepared for some intense replays on the more extensive courses.

the game is dope if you like old school shoot em ups this is for you it reminds me of gradius and it also has dope music

It looks wonderful and controls well. But it sucks to play. It's harsh and one hit has you redoing WAY too much. I regret buying it.

Awesome horizontal throwback for fans of Defender, Scramble and R-Type. Challenging but fair with solid controls, beautiful 8 bit graphics and great music. Highly recommend, especially to over-30 gamers like myself who love the nostalgia mixed with modern playability.

As a huge Gradius fan (I own one or more versions of 1-5, Salamander/Life Force and have played ReBirth, Gaiden and Salamander 2) I bought this game as soon as I heard it described as a love letter to Gradius. Let me be clear: if you go in expecting a Gradius style game, you will be disappointed. Gradius is a power fantasy where you can end the first level of most entries armed to the teeth, excited to see what comes next and paced exceptionally well to make players engage enough to want to keep trying over and over again. Sadly, no matter how much Super Hydorah may borrow visually from Gradius or how many levels it has, it still captures none of the qualities I listed. It suffers from poor pacing, locks most weapons until later points in the game and mixes a branching map and saved progression with utterly baffling design decisions (like penalizing you for failing attempts by auto-saving deductions to your file). It is neither retro goodness nor approachably moden.