Similar to Taito's Sagaia, this game uses a once-international title for an earlier game in the series to represent a mostly original project.

A sequel, Nemesis II, was released for the same platform in 1991.

Nemesis retains the basic power-up meter commonly used in most Gradius games, but with the addition of multi-level missiles not present in the original Gradius.

The game consists of only five stages, each with a unique core boss.

Like other Game Boy titles developed by Konami, the game presents the player with a stage selection screen before starting.