Jikkyo Oshaberi Parodius - Konami / Konami - 1995 - Side-Scrolling Shooter
Man must never underestimate the Konami.
Never. ._.
While I do enjoy the Gradius series to some degree, Gradius II in particular, Konami was never a company who's shmups I had much love for -- I much prefer Irem's R-Type series and Tehnosoft's Thunder Force. I'd even tried out one of the earlier Parodius titles on the . . . NES I believe, but it was still rather 'meh'. Imagine my surprise when I loaded this gem up one day and found something to rival R-Type III for my favorite shooter on the SNES.
If you are unaware, the Parodius series is a silly cross-over spin-off of the Gradius series, where you take control of various Konami characters flying through funny stages, collecting sometimes ridiculous powerups, and fighting (to put it lightly) amusing bosses. You know, kind of like this:
On top of these features, each character has a different weapon loadout, so using the Octopus isn't the same as using, say, the neutered cat, who, to my amusement, throws homing balls everywhere.
The best part of this game, though, is the announcer. This is one of the SNES games that has voice samples in it that sound great. This man is SOOO hype for anything I do, like sometimes he goes nuts for no reason as I'm flying through empty space and I'm all:
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It's not an important feature, especially since I have NO idea what he is saying/yelling, but it adds some seriously amusing flavor to the game and is a great addition.
Unfortunately, that's about all I have to say about this entry, but that's not because of poor quality, more that the game is really just a BETTER Gradius. It follows all of the same rules, collecting powerups to move the upgrade bar to which upgrade you want and then activating the bar, with missiles and lasers and ripple beams and shields and whatnot. If you are a Gradius fan, play this game; if you are a side-scrolling shmup fan, play this game; if you are looking for something quirky to play, play this game! I really like all four entries on this list today, but I think this is easily the best of the group, and it is most definitely . . .
an awesome game you should know about!