Rank: Penguin Editor in Chief
Groups: Newsie, {pDs} Member
Joined: 6/15/2006
Posts: 594
Points: 486
Location: Scotland, Geographical Penguin Shit
|
 (Oh this isn´t even half of the gibberish you'll be seeing)
 (Nope, still not half of it by FAR))
CLASSIC GAMING
Parodius Series
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Year: 1988 - 1996
Genre: Shooter
System: Arcade/MSX/NES/SNES/PS1/Sega Saturn/PSP
Who here loves shooters? Well lots of people do, the thrill of blasting enemies and strafing their fire is one of the purest thrills in videogames, which can either be enhanced or impeded if you have a story with it. But does it still hold true when you have ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT´S GOING ON?!?
Well sadly I couldn't get enough of Cho Aniki to actually tell you about how they work (and therefore without any sudden naked men, the boss won't be coming back here awhile), so why dontcha have a look at this, in honour of this glorious site and its mascot.
Story - I really wish I had a story for you about this series, so lemme just explain WHAT this series is exactly.
Parodius is a series of five horizontal shooter games which play exactly like Gradius but as a massive parody of pretty much everything that is Konami back then as well as various weird-ass Japanese things.
There are five of these games. Parodius, Parodius Da, Gokujo Parodius, Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius and finally, Sexy Parodius.
Also there are penguins.
 (RED PENGUINS! GREEN PENGUINS!)
Each new instalment of the game merely adds to the balls-insane hilarious concept starting from the rather meh original Parodius to the absolutely fantastic Sexy Parodius which has slightly more explanation in that Parodius seems to be the name of some randomly-made up mercenary agency who try to save the world against their nemesis Takosuke the giant octopus.
Yeah that´s all you´re gonna get.
 (THE SHIP IS A CAT BEING CONTROLLED BY PENGUINS. WHAT IS THIS DR SEUSS SHIT?!?)
Graphics - Mostly the graphics remain the same from the original arcade version (except for the NES Parodius of course) and they are just absolutely blinding with colour and shit that you are not gonna understand if you don´t have a thorough grounding in Japanese culture, which even then is going to be pretty damn confusing.
But thankfully you don't need that to get good with the game or even enjoy it, in fact it might be more fun if you DON'T understand any of it.
Of course, each sequel improves the graphics in terms of colour, how much stuff is happening on screen, all the way up to pseudo-3D ideas with a few bosses in later instalments.
And Sexy Parodius has some rather.....sexy characters in it :3
 (A young innocent penguin is lured by the huge Vegas showgirl. Don´t worry he's legal...in Europe)
Gameplay - Now, time to actually discuss what the fuck happens in these games. Each game has the exact same controls of Gradius. You fly through stages, shooting down ANYTHING you see, you grab powerups which go to a bar at the bottom.
This bar can either be Auto, Semi-Auto or Manual. Auto makes the game decide what powerups you get, Semi-Auto it decides half the time until a certain point, and Manual is entirely your choice.
The powerups are increasing speed, changing the type of weapon you shoot, adding a few extras, extra miniature allies to shoot MORE at your enemies and a shield.
Later games also have the Oh! which you'll say before "FUCK!" when it erases ALL of your powerups, a little booby prize in the mix shall we say.
 (The penguins pray that the women mistake them for loofahs to rub all over their soapy featherless bodies)
Each stage has a small space section to get acquainted to and test your flying capacity before heading into the actual stage which is a massive clusterfuck of penguins, octopuses, statues, Japanese....things, and so forth. And it only gets weirder with each game.
But regardless, it is just like Gradius, dammit the games even HAVE the Vic Viper from Gradius as a playable character, and if you enjoy that sort of shooter, you will love this, hell it might even be more of a challenge when you don´t know what to expect, as well as some magnificently quirky bosses.
Out of them all though, Sexy Parodius is the most difficult one, for the extra challenges it has AND it has branching paths of levels depending if you finished the objective in the level or not, like collect 300 coins or rescue 200 girls.
 (DISCO PENGUINS GONNA PARTEH LIKE IT'S 1979!)
Music/Sound - Now this, THIS is the greatest thing about the series. It doesn't matter if you like the gameplay or not, it doesn't matter if you understand anything about the game or not. What does matter, is it has one of the greatest soundtracks for a shooter series EVER.
The Parodius series makes a habit of making every stage a remix of something. 80% of the music in the games are just very strange and wonderful remixes of folk songs, classical music, a few recent pop songs, even music from other Konami games.
All of them have wonderful soundtracks, with the console ports doing a marvellous job on capturing the feel of all the original arcade pieces, and each new game just gets a better and better soundtrack. The best ones are the last three, Gokujo, Jikkyou Oshaberi and Sexy Parodius, hell I can't stop listening to them at all, they're just literally that fantastic to listen to.
 (The Penguinator. Fires rockets. Breathes fire. Makes mini-robo penguins. W. D. F.)
So, okay, I couldn't really review much out of this, hell I reviewed less out of this than I could from Gradius which actually DOES have a story, but it is fun, it is hilarious, and it is just utterly magically insane for your eyes and ears.
It's such a shame that it might have been too crazy for the rest of the world to not play this, because it really deserves to be known more than goddamn Cho Aniki, which is a terrible series with awesome music, whereas Parodius is an awesome series with awesome music, therefore DOUBLE the awesome.
Fun and Innovation - 4
Replayability - 5
Gameplay - 3
Presentation - 4"Videogames are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n' roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto  Hail Slither, The Eternal Champion!
|
Rank: Fecal Impaction For the Win!
Groups: Ogamer, Registered User
Joined: 5/9/2006
Posts: 1,664
Points: 2,472
Location: La Habra, Orange, CA
|
To be fair, it's actually "Parodeisu" as in "Paradise" 'cuz fucked up penguins and showgirls are a japanese man's paradise apparently. I need to find me an emulator of this epic awesome. Or even a DS version. silverwasp wrote:Be careful what you wish for... I have 10 younger siblings and I am only 20....
Yes.... Same parents WarMachine wrote:meh...maybe if he hadn't been handed a burning house he could have done great things, but right now he has won the Prize for what? Damage Control?
|
Rank: Penguin Editor in Chief
Groups: Newsie, {pDs} Member
Joined: 6/15/2006
Posts: 594
Points: 486
Location: Scotland, Geographical Penguin Shit
|
HolyJaw wrote:To be fair, it's actually "Parodeisu" as in "Paradise" 'cuz fucked up penguins and showgirls are a japanese man's paradise apparently.
I need to find me an emulator of this epic awesome. Or even a DS version. The first four games can all be found as SNES roms for emulation (personally I use ZSNES), but the fifth is for arcade, PS1 and Sega Saturn only so I got the Arcade ROM of it for MAME. But I have heard of the entire series compiled onto one PSP game called Parodius Portable. No idea if it's sold out of Japan though. Shame. Anyways go look here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parodius_%28series%29"Videogames are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n' roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto Hail Slither, The Eternal Champion!
|
Rank: Fecal Impaction For the Win!
Groups: Ogamer, Registered User
Joined: 5/9/2006
Posts: 1,664
Points: 2,472
Location: La Habra, Orange, CA
|
Oh lawd a wiki article that makes me want to do something... a rarity in and of itself. I'll be getting my hands on these shortly. Great review again FG. silverwasp wrote:Be careful what you wish for... I have 10 younger siblings and I am only 20....
Yes.... Same parents WarMachine wrote:meh...maybe if he hadn't been handed a burning house he could have done great things, but right now he has won the Prize for what? Damage Control?
|
| Users browsing this topic |