Parodius da!: Shinwa kara Owarai he (1990)

Preliminary: (Playing the arcade version) At first the space background and slow movement were a bit meh, plus the usual one hit kill factor, but the cute sea themed background I soon got to and the dolphins and the good music and robust power-ups/different ship selections are adding up. Still not sure how far I will play into this, but proving to be neat. 10 stages seems potentially doable tho. And hopefully there's a speed power-up cuz my movement feels sluggish. Also glad to see it eases into the difficulty, tho that is quickly climbing, at least it started chill.

Ooo nice speed upgrade indeed. May not do all 10 stages, but this surprised me in being worth a proper playtest.

Day 1

Holy crap I think I just got a nuke power-up? The whole screen faded from the explosion lol. I quickly remembered how the bells worked in the original Parodius and was using them to my advantage. (Playing as the Octopus ship).

Oh dang the first boss came quick and ... it's a cat ship! lol

Oh wait that wasn't the boss? I think the penguin-esque character was? I dunno. I'm back in a space theme tho ha and it didn't say stage 2.

Day 2

Yes, this does seem to be Stage 2. I'm not as in love with the circus themed situation going on here, but I do love the nighttime city skyline in the background. And the music continues to be entertaining enough and the power-ups are nice. Savestates help so that I can maintain my power-ups, no desire to return to lower speeds or worse weapons, but with that modern convenience, this is a real fun shmup. Without it, not sure that I would enjoy it as much, tho the Sound is nice and the Look of the backgrounds have been great so far. Plus some cute boss enemies. Things are getting a bit crowded and over-the-top in Stage 2, but with savestates and the robust variety of power-ups (and with the knowledge there are other ships I could've played as), this feels like a very full and cool shmup.

Welp lol right after typing that, I went back to playing and savestated as I died on accident lol, thought I was entering a "new area" of the stage so I savestated, but didn't realize a bullet was on its way to me apparently :-p Woops. This'll be the true test of whether this is worthy of a full playthrough.

Luckily it didn't take long to get a few power-ups again but dang, it's starting that absolute swarm of enemies "technique" that plagues shmups and especially cute em ups.

Ugh neat idea but really hate this walking woman boss situation where you have to navigate between her legs (based on a video I watched). I couldn't figure out a solution on my own, cuz the screen doesn't scroll quickly enough so she eventually catches up to you.

I got through it tho thanks to savestates. And I'm always grateful for the modern niceties one would expect from a 1990 shmup (shoot away most projectiles, frequent power-ups, etc.)

Yeahhhh without savestates/infinite coins I would've hated the 3rd stage's sort of maze situation. Hate that that's becoming some common in shmups and is just a blatant coin eating tactic where you could only figure out where to go through trial and error, not quick reflexes and fun. Lame. However, the tune is a jam lol an absurd like hypey version of the nutcracker song.

Yeahhhh stage 3 was awful. Ugh shmups after the mid-80s got so obsessed with difficulty. Well, most games did.

Yeah it was during the cherry blossom tree sequence of Stage 4 that I called it quits. Not that that was the hardest part, I just recognized I wasn't having fun and beginning to have to abuse savestates.

Look: 8/10

Sound: 8/10

Play: 7/10 Nice variety of power-ups and different ships and whatnot help bolster an otherwise quite frustrating mid and [presumably] late game

Feel: 7.5/10 Cute idea bogged down by the usual shmup mentality of brutal difficulty. At least it had a first stage to enjoy! Haha. But for real... some don't even have that.

Attachment: 7/10 I don't see myself often returning to the overly difficult shmup era. Just the classic arcade ones that were slow and clunky, but fun and simple.

Overall: 7.5/10

Completion: Part way through Stage 4

Playtime: ~25 minss

Beat on difficulty 6 as the spaceship. I was not inclined to play as one of the silly ship types though did appreciate that each has different abilities. Since the laser disabled my upward shot I chose not to use the laser at all, which also led me to not be able to use the shield or ultimate for some reason. Every time I tried to activate "?!" it would reset all of my powerups, so I just ignored it for the rest of the game.

While the silly graphics were somewhat amusing, I found the technical quality of the game to be worse than Gradius 3 with there being less precise shooting required for bosses and often times not much feedback that you are actually doing damage. I struggled hard at one point in the game where the screen is swarmed with a huge stream of umbrella like enemies because of the sheer quantity of them and how much health they have. It took quite a few tries to beat that. The rest of the game after that was a joke in comparison and there was no challenging final boss.

Platform:

Turbografx-16 version.

Graphics/Sound:

Of course I am playing this game for the graphics. Not necessarily because they're better than in other shmups, but because they're uniquely themed with showgirls and octopusses in space. It's cheeky, it's cute and it's on acid. The sound didn't particularly stand out.

Gameplay:

It's a horizontal shmup, essentially copying gradius in gameplay, but I have to say that I didn't play gradius before this game. As most horizontal shmups this features, besides the obvious killing of enemies, having to dodge the scenery and moving through mazes of partly destructible and indestructible scenery. There is different ships to choose from, and the powerup system leaves choice to the player what he wants to level up.

Difficulty:

Shmups are never easy. This one also has a set back mechanism, where when you die you start at a checkpoint instead of where you died, which makes it a bit harder. Also some of the levels are a bit unfair in that you can only make it through when you already know what's coming and where to go. But it didn't feel overly ridiculous like other games in the genre.

It's cute nice looking shmup, a change from the usually dark and cold presentation of most games in the genre. I found dodging huge showgirl legs with my flying octopus hilarious, but other than that it's not like I would sit there laughing all the time. It's friendly, but usually not that ha ha funny to me, it's just random weird stuff combined, and other shmups do that too, so no problem. The level design is solid though and with the choice of ships to fly makes this a really good entry in this genre.