A shoot'em up arcade game and the second title in the Parodius series. Similar to the first game the player has a choice of characters to play as: Tako the Octopus (aka Mr. Parodius), Pentarou (son of the penguin from Antarctic Adventure), Twin Bee (main character of TwinBee) and the Vic Viper spaceship from Gradius. However in this game they each have unique weapons and upgrades. The game has ten stages and like the first game it features a mix of characters and enemies from different Konami series as well as absurd fantasy elements.
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A parody of Gradius with fever dream visuals. It still plays as well as the real deal, but the difficulty does get stupid sometimes.
If you at one point in your life ever decided to play a Gradius game, but you just didn’t think that there was enough Japan in the game to please your needs, then Parodius may be able to satiate your cravings, while making you break your hands in the process of trying to beat it for yourself. This was close to the experience I had when checking out the original game, which was basically your typical Gradius game that came with all the sweet powerups and the insane difficulty that you would expect, but right alongside that was a whole bunch of charming oddities, which range from the enemies and the music, all the way up to the bosses, which made me have a good time with the game as a whole, even if the gameplay was nothing to write home about. Nevertheless, I assume that that original game was pretty successful back when it first came out, because it would then spawn its own series of games that would be released right alongside Gradius, starting with the sequel to the game, Parodius! From Myth to Laughter.
Out of all of the games in the series, this was the one I was most familiar with before going into it, not because I had played it before, but I had seen a good chunk of the game in a video I made a long time ago, and while I hadn’t seen the full thing in action, I pretty much knew what I was getting into. You know, aside from the fact that this was just another Gradius game, so it was probably gonna play just like all the others, and WHADDYA KNOW, that is exactly what we get here. However, once again, the insanity of the visuals and designs of the stages, enemies, and bosses present make the game wonderful to play, and aside from one or two issues that I have with the game as a whole (which you could probably guess), it was a really good time from start to finish.
The story is fairly simple, yet weird for a shmup like this, where the Great Octopus threatens to destroy Earth and all of the inhabitants that live on it, so it is up to Tako, the octopus from the last game, to set out to stop this from happening, right alongside his pals, Vic Viper, TwinBee, and Pentarou, which is pretty much exactly what I expected from the premise of one of these games, and I wouldn’t change it any other way. The graphics are wonderful, not only being very vibrant and colorful for most of the stages, but also having plenty of detailed, goofy, and insane designs for many of the enemies and bosses, which are quite bewildering to see in the best way possible, the music is just as weird as the visuals, with most of the songs either being remixes of classic Gradius tunes (I will never get tired of this track, no matter what game it appears in), but also zany remixes of classical music as well, which is oddly fitting for this game, and I ended up loving a lot of the tracks, and the gameplay/control has basically been imprinted into your brain to where you will automatically know what to do right from the get go, but you can play as a penguin flying in space that can get other penguins following him to shoot projectiles, which automatically makes this game a masterpiece.
The game is a horizontally scrolling shmup, where you take control of one of the weird and wonderful characters I mentioned earlier, each with their own unique movesets and configurations for the weapons, go through plenty of different stages through many varied and odd environments, shoot down every single living thing that you see on screen, because more than likely, that thing will try to kill you in one way or another, gather plenty of different power ups that you can equip and upgrade whenever you need to, or find bells that you can shoot to get different kinds of power ups that will give you plenty of different, temporary advantages, and take on plenty of silly and absurd, yet challenging bosses that will keep you on your toes, unless you have the laser ability with four options following you, in which case you can just blaze right through them in most instances. If you have experience with any other Gradius game released before this and since, you will know what to expect from this game, but if you love this style of gameplay like me, and you don’t mind a dash of weirdness sprinkled in there, then you will feel right at home when you play this title.
Like with the previous game, the main thing that makes this game stand out from all of the others is the odd selection of… things that you will be seeing throughout your journey, which a newcomer like me would look at and wonder what drug he took before he started playing this, while others may be used to this type of imagery and be completely fine with it. Most of the enemies you encounter will consist of penguins, along with plenty of other random animals like fish, crabs, hornets, and whatever else the game decides to pull out of its ass, like clowns that will shoot at you and lips that will shoot their own teeth at you. That’s not even getting into the bosses either, which are without a doubt both the most horrifying and wonderful aspects of this game, where you will encounter such creatures as a flying pirate ship with a cat head on the front, and eagle dressed like Uncle Sam, a puffer fish that will inflate to cover almost the entire screen while you shoot at it, a random sumo wrestler, and a giant naked woman covering herself with a sheet while deploying babies in bubbles to kill you. I can only imagine that this is all relatively tame compared to what other games in the series probably throw at the player, and I would question why the hell any of this is here, but at this point, I have just decided to accept the madness and ride along with it, and I end up having a lot of fun with that mindset.
Obviously, one of the things that holds this game back is that it is a Gradius game, so it does practically nothing to change up the gameplay or innovate on the genre as a whole, but that doesn’t matter so much to me in this case, given how fun the gameplay can still be, and how satisfying it us to fully upgrade yourself to where you can start to decimate everything around you. However, that in itself is a little hard to do, due to this game’s difficulty, because HOLY FUCK, they aren’t pulling punches this time around. I know, I know, I always say these games are hard, and that is never gonna change anytime soon, but I swear, this might just be the hardest Gradius game I have played so far. You need to have the reflexes of a god or the ability to slow down time in order to avoid some of the shit this game throws at you, and while you can get pretty lucky at some points, it almost never tones the difficulty down whatsoever, making it so that I died hundreds of times before I was able to finish it off. I have never seen so many dead penguins in one place before, and now that I have, I can say with great certainty that I don’t feel bad about killing that giant space octopus whatsoever.
Overall, despite a lack of change and the difficulty still managing to surprise me with just how unforgiving it can be, this is still yet another solid entry in this sub-series and franchise as a whole, providing the same fun and addicting experience that fans have come to love with this series, while also still providing enough weird and insane elements to where you wanna see it all out just to know what else the game will pull out of its ass by the end. I would definitely recommend it for fans of the Gradius series as a whole, as well as those who are big fans of other shmups or cute ‘em ups, because while this may not be as crazy or weird as others out there, it still managed to make me laugh and smile for most of the journey, and I’m sure the same can apply to many others as well. Now, if you excuse me, I need to go stare at the ceiling for like a good hour or so, just so that I can get all of the insanity out of my mind. Gotta be well-rested and prepared for the next time I try to play one of these games, y’know.
Game #551
Out of all of the games in the series, this was the one I was most familiar with before going into it, not because I had played it before, but I had seen a good chunk of the game in a video I made a long time ago, and while I hadn’t seen the full thing in action, I pretty much knew what I was getting into. You know, aside from the fact that this was just another Gradius game, so it was probably gonna play just like all the others, and WHADDYA KNOW, that is exactly what we get here. However, once again, the insanity of the visuals and designs of the stages, enemies, and bosses present make the game wonderful to play, and aside from one or two issues that I have with the game as a whole (which you could probably guess), it was a really good time from start to finish.
The story is fairly simple, yet weird for a shmup like this, where the Great Octopus threatens to destroy Earth and all of the inhabitants that live on it, so it is up to Tako, the octopus from the last game, to set out to stop this from happening, right alongside his pals, Vic Viper, TwinBee, and Pentarou, which is pretty much exactly what I expected from the premise of one of these games, and I wouldn’t change it any other way. The graphics are wonderful, not only being very vibrant and colorful for most of the stages, but also having plenty of detailed, goofy, and insane designs for many of the enemies and bosses, which are quite bewildering to see in the best way possible, the music is just as weird as the visuals, with most of the songs either being remixes of classic Gradius tunes (I will never get tired of this track, no matter what game it appears in), but also zany remixes of classical music as well, which is oddly fitting for this game, and I ended up loving a lot of the tracks, and the gameplay/control has basically been imprinted into your brain to where you will automatically know what to do right from the get go, but you can play as a penguin flying in space that can get other penguins following him to shoot projectiles, which automatically makes this game a masterpiece.
The game is a horizontally scrolling shmup, where you take control of one of the weird and wonderful characters I mentioned earlier, each with their own unique movesets and configurations for the weapons, go through plenty of different stages through many varied and odd environments, shoot down every single living thing that you see on screen, because more than likely, that thing will try to kill you in one way or another, gather plenty of different power ups that you can equip and upgrade whenever you need to, or find bells that you can shoot to get different kinds of power ups that will give you plenty of different, temporary advantages, and take on plenty of silly and absurd, yet challenging bosses that will keep you on your toes, unless you have the laser ability with four options following you, in which case you can just blaze right through them in most instances. If you have experience with any other Gradius game released before this and since, you will know what to expect from this game, but if you love this style of gameplay like me, and you don’t mind a dash of weirdness sprinkled in there, then you will feel right at home when you play this title.
Like with the previous game, the main thing that makes this game stand out from all of the others is the odd selection of… things that you will be seeing throughout your journey, which a newcomer like me would look at and wonder what drug he took before he started playing this, while others may be used to this type of imagery and be completely fine with it. Most of the enemies you encounter will consist of penguins, along with plenty of other random animals like fish, crabs, hornets, and whatever else the game decides to pull out of its ass, like clowns that will shoot at you and lips that will shoot their own teeth at you. That’s not even getting into the bosses either, which are without a doubt both the most horrifying and wonderful aspects of this game, where you will encounter such creatures as a flying pirate ship with a cat head on the front, and eagle dressed like Uncle Sam, a puffer fish that will inflate to cover almost the entire screen while you shoot at it, a random sumo wrestler, and a giant naked woman covering herself with a sheet while deploying babies in bubbles to kill you. I can only imagine that this is all relatively tame compared to what other games in the series probably throw at the player, and I would question why the hell any of this is here, but at this point, I have just decided to accept the madness and ride along with it, and I end up having a lot of fun with that mindset.
Obviously, one of the things that holds this game back is that it is a Gradius game, so it does practically nothing to change up the gameplay or innovate on the genre as a whole, but that doesn’t matter so much to me in this case, given how fun the gameplay can still be, and how satisfying it us to fully upgrade yourself to where you can start to decimate everything around you. However, that in itself is a little hard to do, due to this game’s difficulty, because HOLY FUCK, they aren’t pulling punches this time around. I know, I know, I always say these games are hard, and that is never gonna change anytime soon, but I swear, this might just be the hardest Gradius game I have played so far. You need to have the reflexes of a god or the ability to slow down time in order to avoid some of the shit this game throws at you, and while you can get pretty lucky at some points, it almost never tones the difficulty down whatsoever, making it so that I died hundreds of times before I was able to finish it off. I have never seen so many dead penguins in one place before, and now that I have, I can say with great certainty that I don’t feel bad about killing that giant space octopus whatsoever.
Overall, despite a lack of change and the difficulty still managing to surprise me with just how unforgiving it can be, this is still yet another solid entry in this sub-series and franchise as a whole, providing the same fun and addicting experience that fans have come to love with this series, while also still providing enough weird and insane elements to where you wanna see it all out just to know what else the game will pull out of its ass by the end. I would definitely recommend it for fans of the Gradius series as a whole, as well as those who are big fans of other shmups or cute ‘em ups, because while this may not be as crazy or weird as others out there, it still managed to make me laugh and smile for most of the journey, and I’m sure the same can apply to many others as well. Now, if you excuse me, I need to go stare at the ceiling for like a good hour or so, just so that I can get all of the insanity out of my mind. Gotta be well-rested and prepared for the next time I try to play one of these games, y’know.
Game #551
Nice creativity and gorgeous graphics but not much easier than the game it parodies. It can be quite frustrating actually with many cheap traps.
Almost beaten it but there is a point at the last stage which respawns you with no powerups and the barrage of enemies are quite hard to deal with (those damn bees). I just said f it at that point.
Parodius overall is still a good game but has too many frustrating elements which are keeping it down for me.
Almost beaten it but there is a point at the last stage which respawns you with no powerups and the barrage of enemies are quite hard to deal with (those damn bees). I just said f it at that point.
Parodius overall is still a good game but has too many frustrating elements which are keeping it down for me.
I'm going to say it right now before I say anything. Parodius is a good game. I want to say this before I probably get punted for my opinion I'm going to give. I think it's a good game but I also don't enjoy the game.
Parodius feels like a celebration while also being a parody of the Gradius series and Salamander. You get control of 4 different ships which uses powerups from Gradius 1 if you pick Vic Viper, Salamander if you pick Octopus, Twinbee if you pick Twinbee, and Gradius 2 is you pick Pentarou. You go through 10 stages going through a wide variety of stages.
One big part about Parodius is just how wild and out there the themes are while also parodying certain iconic moments of the previous games like the weird spider mech thing from 2 is now a giant sexy mardi gras lady, The volcanos from Gradius 1 now have faces and erupt eggplants out of them, and even some of the moais have funny looks to them. This is easily the best part of the game is to see what's around the corner.
Powerups are done like how they have been done in Gradius 1 and 2, just get a capsule and pick which one you want depending on how many you collected at the moment. The bells from Twinbee are also here and provide items like a megaphone to shout out stuff I can't read or even an ability to grow big and be invincible. I honestly like them more then how actual Twinbee handles it.
Ok so you might be wondering, why do I not like it then? Well it's more of a me problem I guess you could say a skill issue as the cool people say it. I just for some reason don't have fun. They just shoot so much at you, like I at least felt like I had a chance at most places in Gradius 1 and 2 to survive but here it just feels like everything is out to kill you immediately. There's some moments that are just frustrating and combined that with being put back at a checkpoint after death makes it even worse.
But that's not even the worst part. The shield item for the ships is worthless. I swear they were not this bad in actual Gradius but here it just never helps, it's baffling how bad it actually is. Then there's the !? item. What does it do? It resets you back to how you started the game, NOTHING! Why would they do this? It's such awful design. What's worse is some capsules you collect make the bar a roulette and you have to time what you want but when you're fully decked out, odds are you will get this and then you just cry. If this is in later Parodius games I will actually be upset.
The bosses are actually inconsistent in difficulty for me. Some of them aren't too bad but others can be annoying but overall they are some of the cooler parts of this game. Shoutouts to the naked lady as one of the bosses. Also what's with these games and having the final bosses being so easy? Is it a joke? I don't get this, I'm not complaining I just really am wondering why.
The game is pretty gorgeous and again I could just gush on how much I like the work that was done on here. All the colors and varied locations are some of the highlights here. Sadly the game does have a lot of bad slowdown which does hamper the experience. The music is good and a lot of it is music I recognize, it's like old classical music. It gives it a nice charm that's for sure but it was weird hearing music like that and not just new original songs but again not complaining, it's still good to the ears.
I want to enjoy Parodius but I just don't which is weird considering I enjoy Gradius. There are still other versions for me to play before the sequel comes around so maybe by then I'll grow to like but idk how likely that is. I respect you Parodius but man I wish I could also love you but I'm just not that person.
Parodius feels like a celebration while also being a parody of the Gradius series and Salamander. You get control of 4 different ships which uses powerups from Gradius 1 if you pick Vic Viper, Salamander if you pick Octopus, Twinbee if you pick Twinbee, and Gradius 2 is you pick Pentarou. You go through 10 stages going through a wide variety of stages.
One big part about Parodius is just how wild and out there the themes are while also parodying certain iconic moments of the previous games like the weird spider mech thing from 2 is now a giant sexy mardi gras lady, The volcanos from Gradius 1 now have faces and erupt eggplants out of them, and even some of the moais have funny looks to them. This is easily the best part of the game is to see what's around the corner.
Powerups are done like how they have been done in Gradius 1 and 2, just get a capsule and pick which one you want depending on how many you collected at the moment. The bells from Twinbee are also here and provide items like a megaphone to shout out stuff I can't read or even an ability to grow big and be invincible. I honestly like them more then how actual Twinbee handles it.
Ok so you might be wondering, why do I not like it then? Well it's more of a me problem I guess you could say a skill issue as the cool people say it. I just for some reason don't have fun. They just shoot so much at you, like I at least felt like I had a chance at most places in Gradius 1 and 2 to survive but here it just feels like everything is out to kill you immediately. There's some moments that are just frustrating and combined that with being put back at a checkpoint after death makes it even worse.
But that's not even the worst part. The shield item for the ships is worthless. I swear they were not this bad in actual Gradius but here it just never helps, it's baffling how bad it actually is. Then there's the !? item. What does it do? It resets you back to how you started the game, NOTHING! Why would they do this? It's such awful design. What's worse is some capsules you collect make the bar a roulette and you have to time what you want but when you're fully decked out, odds are you will get this and then you just cry. If this is in later Parodius games I will actually be upset.
The bosses are actually inconsistent in difficulty for me. Some of them aren't too bad but others can be annoying but overall they are some of the cooler parts of this game. Shoutouts to the naked lady as one of the bosses. Also what's with these games and having the final bosses being so easy? Is it a joke? I don't get this, I'm not complaining I just really am wondering why.
The game is pretty gorgeous and again I could just gush on how much I like the work that was done on here. All the colors and varied locations are some of the highlights here. Sadly the game does have a lot of bad slowdown which does hamper the experience. The music is good and a lot of it is music I recognize, it's like old classical music. It gives it a nice charm that's for sure but it was weird hearing music like that and not just new original songs but again not complaining, it's still good to the ears.
I want to enjoy Parodius but I just don't which is weird considering I enjoy Gradius. There are still other versions for me to play before the sequel comes around so maybe by then I'll grow to like but idk how likely that is. I respect you Parodius but man I wish I could also love you but I'm just not that person.
bona fide classic.
Not a big Gradius guy, never really got into any of them, but this is really something else. Any game where you can beat a boss by shouting "SHAVING IS BORING" at them through a megaphone is alright in my book.