Paro Wars
Game Overview
It was pretty clear, by 1997, that the Parodius series needed a bit of a shakeup. The previous three years had seen back-to-back-to-back releases (Gokujō Parodius!The second game in the Parodius series to hit arcades (and third overall), this title was designed from the ground up to be the most difficult and most engaging of the games, elevating the exerpience to the next level for players., Jikkyō Oshaberi ParodiusA home console exclusive edition of the Parodius series, this fourth entry came out just a year after the arcade-ready Fantastic Journey, and featured much of the same gameplay and style of its predecessor., and Sexy ParodiusThe last title in the series to hit arcades, Sexy Parodius swapped out the standard weird and crazy graphics for, yes, a sexier style (that, okay, was also weird and crazy).) and those three games had essentially beaten all the freshness out of the franchise. The games were fun, but the silliness and strange twists and turns the series could take were no longer surprising but expected. Another shooter for the series in the vein of all the shooters that had been seen before wasn’t going to have the same weight it once did.
So Konami served. Much like with the Gradius series, which had Cosmic Wars, and rival series R-Type (by Irem) which eventually released R-Type Tactics years later, it was time for Parodius to throw off the space shooter genre and get into the tactical sim game. It was time for Paro Wars. Built in the same style as Cosmic Wars, and often considered a sequel to that game as much as a continuation of the Parodius series, Paro Wars pitted the armies of the Parodius characters, including all the octopi and penguins you’d expect, against the various factions rivalling for control of the world of Parodius.
Does any of that make a lick of sense? Absolutely not, but then neither has much else in the Parodius series up until now. What mattered was whether the game had all the weirdness and fast paced action that the Parodius series was known for. When it came to silliness, the game did succeed, with representation of so many of the parody series’ classic characters showing up. Octopuses, penguins, cats, stick-men, pigs, and more make up the various forces of the game, letting you battle it out with all the strange creatures you’d expect in a sim game like this.
But when it came to action, the game wasn’t quite as thrilling. If you were a fan of the tactical sim genre (through games like Nintendo Wars, Fire Emblem, Nobunaga's Ambition, et al) then the pace and style of gameplay likely made sense. You’d have your army and move them around like pieces on a board. The enemy had their forces and moved them likewise. When various pieces of your army got in range of their army, a little battle sequence would occur, showing how many of each side were defeated. Play continued on, turn by turn, until all the forces were defeated or some kind of other goal was achieved (take over a build, kill a commander, etc.). It works in the form of the genre… but it feels very slow in comparison to the scrolling shooters that had come before.
When you come to the game from the fast paced, twitch gameplay of the previous titles you’re confronted by the fact that (of course) you’re playing a very different game. Konami stuck closely to the bounds of the tactical sim genre, as dictated by the previous Cosmic Wars, without really adapting the game to the expectations of the Parodius series. For some players this might have been expected, if they remembered Cosmic Wars and came into the game expecting a sequel to that title (just with a Parodius skin on top), but for anyone not familiar with that game (say someone from the U.S. writing an article about an obscure Japanese tactical sim for a Castlevania website) the pacing and gameplay feels so different, so slow, that it’s practically from a different series (which, in effect, it is).
With all that said, the game was something of a minor hit. Although sales numbers are hard to find for games this old from other countries, we do know that a year after the video game debuted Paro Wars received a board game adaptation. That kind of after the fact merchandising at least implies a certain audience eager for this kind of gameplay. With that said, this was the last in the Cosmic Wars / Paro Wars series, implying that sales figures, while not terrible, weren’t enough to keep the franchise going any further. After this, the Konami Wars series ended while the Parodius series shifted into the OtomediusThe marriage of Gradius gameplay and cute schoolgirls, this title was the spiritual successor to the Parodius series, and the first Konami shooter to hit arcades since Gradius IV: Resurrection in 1999. series ten years later for two more entries.