I LOVE Parodius a LOT. It's one of the first games I ever imported for my SNES after seeing Let's Plays of it like 9 years ago. When I went to Japan back in 2013 I was so excited to have found the Parodius Portable collection on PSP so I'd have all of them in one place (mind you the Arcade versions and not the SFC/Saturn versions I'm more familiar with)! But it took me until now (in traditional me-fashion) to finally get around to messing around with that version. I took an hour and played through Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius this morning, which apparently has a subtitle for ports not the SFC version :P .
It's still same old Parodius (parody of Gradius) in all its glory and then some. It's a damn solid shooting game that's like Gradius but with a more fun theme and a more fair difficulty/design. I still think this is an awesome game just like I used to, so this review will focus mostly around differences I noticed between this "original" of sorts and the SFC port I'm more familiar with.
First of all, something I also noticed in the arcade version of Gokujou Parodius on this collection, that the song in the first stage is totally different. Past that you obviously have better music quality, but also some just brand new/changed content. There's a decent portion of just general visual improvements/flair added compared to the SFC version, as to be expected, as well as some minor graphical changes to certain bosses. Some bosses also have attacks they didn't have previously (like the giant girl at the end of stage 2 having a large bullet after-effect to her hair-flip attack). As well as the boss-rush in stage-7 no longer being an assortment of random bosses, but it's a series of bosses with almost identical attack patterns based off of the game Shinme! Taisen Pazurudama (some Konami puzzle game I'd never heard of), where previously there was just one boss in the SFC version based on it (who is in this version, but he's a totally different boss fight) as the boss of level 6. The last big change is that the boss actually at the end of stage 6 is the third in the kitty-cat vehicle bosses from the previous two games (pirate ship and then submarine) as Kitty Cat Subway Train! He's a tough cookie too! Xp
Edit: I nearly forgot the mention! The Lethal Enforcers level that proceeds the Kitty Cat Subway Train actually has the two Lethal Enforcers' guns shooting at you while you fly though it! It makes a hard level WAY harder, I'll tell ya that much for free x3
It's pretty nice emulation, but some weird slowdown is still present when the screen gets really crazy. It's really accelerated slowdown as well. You'll be doing fine and then BOOM super slow and then BOOM back up to normal speed. It makes the game harder if anything though XP
Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you love Parodius and don't mind using a PSP, this is a great way to have the original 5 game's original versions all in one portable package~. It's not the PSN store in any region, though, so a physical UMD is unfortunately the only way to go. It's be really awesome if Paro Wars was in here too to round out the whole series, but you can't have everything I suppose :P
It's still same old Parodius (parody of Gradius) in all its glory and then some. It's a damn solid shooting game that's like Gradius but with a more fun theme and a more fair difficulty/design. I still think this is an awesome game just like I used to, so this review will focus mostly around differences I noticed between this "original" of sorts and the SFC port I'm more familiar with.
First of all, something I also noticed in the arcade version of Gokujou Parodius on this collection, that the song in the first stage is totally different. Past that you obviously have better music quality, but also some just brand new/changed content. There's a decent portion of just general visual improvements/flair added compared to the SFC version, as to be expected, as well as some minor graphical changes to certain bosses. Some bosses also have attacks they didn't have previously (like the giant girl at the end of stage 2 having a large bullet after-effect to her hair-flip attack). As well as the boss-rush in stage-7 no longer being an assortment of random bosses, but it's a series of bosses with almost identical attack patterns based off of the game Shinme! Taisen Pazurudama (some Konami puzzle game I'd never heard of), where previously there was just one boss in the SFC version based on it (who is in this version, but he's a totally different boss fight) as the boss of level 6. The last big change is that the boss actually at the end of stage 6 is the third in the kitty-cat vehicle bosses from the previous two games (pirate ship and then submarine) as Kitty Cat Subway Train! He's a tough cookie too! Xp
Edit: I nearly forgot the mention! The Lethal Enforcers level that proceeds the Kitty Cat Subway Train actually has the two Lethal Enforcers' guns shooting at you while you fly though it! It makes a hard level WAY harder, I'll tell ya that much for free x3
It's pretty nice emulation, but some weird slowdown is still present when the screen gets really crazy. It's really accelerated slowdown as well. You'll be doing fine and then BOOM super slow and then BOOM back up to normal speed. It makes the game harder if anything though XP
Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you love Parodius and don't mind using a PSP, this is a great way to have the original 5 game's original versions all in one portable package~. It's not the PSN store in any region, though, so a physical UMD is unfortunately the only way to go. It's be really awesome if Paro Wars was in here too to round out the whole series, but you can't have everything I suppose :P