Parodius
Game Overview
Along with the Castlevania series, Konami has made a name for themselves in a few other genres. One of the most popular for the game developer was their series of scrolling shooting games. They had two very popular scrolling shooters franchises with the vertically scrolling TwinBee series (launching in 1985 with the arcade title, TwinBee) and the horizontally scrolling series Gradius (which technically is semi-related to the 1981 arcade title Scramble but then launched as its own series with the 1985 arcade game Gradius, aka Nemesis outside of Japan for its initial release). As a Castlevania site, these shooters generally fall outside the purview of our coverage except for one key area: the Parodius series.
Debuting in 1988, Parodius (aka Parodius: The Octopus Saves the Earth) is a horizontally scrolling, mascot-crossover, parody shooter (aka, a “cute ‘em up”) that featured many of Konami’s home-grown characters. These included Pentaru, Goemon, Popolon, and the Vic Viper. The game was developed exclusively for the MSX, built on the engine for Nemesis 2 (aka Gradius 2, although it acted as a sequel to the MSX version of Nemesis and was not related to the arcade game, Gradius II, because this series is confusing). And it proved popular enough that it launched a new franchise for Konami.
The basics of Parodius should be familiar to anyone that played a previous Gradius game. Your ship (be it one of the four characters) flies from left to right in a fixed, scrolling meter, shooting at enemies as they fly towards it. Defeating enemies will cause them to drop power-up orbs, and these orbs are collected and saved up to fill the power-up meter for the ship. The meter fills until the player decides to cash in the meter for a selected power-up, and then that unlocks on the ship for automatic use. Alongside these power-ups are also bells, which act as the boosters from TwinBee. Shooting these will change their color, and collecting these colored bells will grant different effects, from various types of short-lived power boosters to points and other effects.
As the first in the series, and built exclusively for the relatively underpowered MSX machine, there are a number of things about this first game that would change in later releases. Naturally, due to the limitations of the MSX, the graphics for the game are fairly primitive. Even the first sequel, Parodius Da!The sequel to the MSX-only Parodius, this second game pushes the format slightly forward with more colorful graphics and a couple of more characters. Most importantly, though, it moves the series to arcades where it could really find its audience., featured more detailed, more colorful graphics than this first game, something the series would become known for. And in this game all the characters functionally play the same. They all receive the same power-ups (even if they look different graphically) and they all have the same abilities. The only difference is in how they look, a factor the later games would change, adding more variety and replayability to the concept.
Still, this first game, which is amusingly weird and delightful, did set a standard that the rest of the series strived for. It’s a fundamental title, giving Konami more ways to use their mascots, and more games they could sell, all while providing a play experience players didn’t even realize they wanted until suddenly it was right there. You could say that the rest was history (but we’re not tacky enough to actually say that).