GRAPHICS SOUND CONTROL FRUSTRATION FUN FACTOR OVERALL

Famicom/Pirate Developer: Konami Publisher: Palcom Players: 2 Players Release Date: 1992 Genre: Side-scrolling/shooter Saving Option: No Saving Option For those of you who don't know already, this game is a parody of the shooter classic, Gradius, thus having the name Parodius. Yes, Konami made a parody on their own game just like what they did before with Kid Dracula (parody of Castlevania). Weird thing is that its actually more fun to play this than the first Gradius game! Bad thing is, it was never released outside Japan or Europe legally so maybe the only way to play this is by ROM or by pirate. Anyways, let's get started! Storyline: To tell you the truth I don't know any story to this at all! Four of Konami's characters have to save the world (galaxy) from a King Dedede-like pirate dude! Awesome! Graphics: The graphics are fun and brightly colored. Each stage is chocked full of weird and strange enemies ranging from whales to crabs to penguins... there's even a boss who is a pole dancer! In the beginning of each stage you start off in space and then the music changes to a completely different world. For example; the first level is a pirate-beach type level with crabs and penguins on the ceiling and ground while whales jump out of the background water at you and birds fly at you. But, like almost every Konami game, watch out for the attack of the killer flickering screens and slow motion (I guess this could be half good to slowdown the gameplay). Sound: The sound is awesome... your typical Konami-goodness. The famous Konami pause is back and the noise of destroying stuff seems lifted from Gradius which makes sense for obvious reasons. The sound when you die would drive anybody up the wall which adds even more anger in this already difficult shooter... I guess all is forgiven when you hear the merry tunes in the game such as: the Nutcracker song, opera tunes, and even more Christmas music... bizarre! Gameplay: It's a side-scrolling 2D space shooter. Oh no! Look out for that... baby chicken? Penguins? Crabs!? What the hell? Well this is pure Japanese humor. In which you have four different spaceships or animals to choose from, depending on which weapon setup you choose. There's the original Gradius ship, an octopus with a head-band on, and penguin (from Antarctic Adventure), and another ship that has boxing gloves (from Stinger and Twinbee). You fly around and shoot these other animals with your miniature whales or missiles. Dodge the other animals' bullets and dodge them from flying into you. There is some major slow-up thought when there's a lot of enemies and bullets on the screen, but it's ok since the slow-up helps you dodge it all. Control: Well, it's your common shooter: B button shoots, start pauses, and the control pad makes you go left/right or up/down. In the start of the game after choosing your character, you are offered the option to choose a power-up mode. Auto power-up mode has B Button for shooting and getting the power-ups like any other game and manual power-up mode has the classic Gradius-style power-up scheme where you would wait for the power-ups to scroll to an item on the bottom of the screen and then when it's right, push A button and you'll have it! Fun Factor: With fast-paced action, all sorts of power-ups, wacky villains, this could only be described as very fun. of course, it's so easy to die in this game just like in the Gradius series so don't be surprised with you sudden urge to chuck your controller or even NES through the wall! Frustration: Just like other Gradius games this one too is very hard, so buckle down and get ready for a rough and tough ride. The enemies just shoot out so many bullets and there's so many ships flying around, and the space in which you fly in can get so cramped, you sometimes, will have no other way out except death. This kind of works against the game, since no one really wants to play a game that they can almost NOT beat. BOTTOM LINE: An awesome shooter by the one-and-only Konami breaking out the old school Gradius style in a very bizarre way. It's just too bad Parodius was never officially released in the U.S. though. I wonder if you could get this baby as a pirate somewhere? -Jason Hogan