goemon

Parodius (パロディウス ～タコは地球を救う～ Parodiusu: Tako wa Chikyū o Sukū?, lit. Parodius: The Octopus Saves the Earth) is a horizontal scrolling shooter video game developed by Konami for the MSX home computer, released on April 28, 1988 in Japan. The game is notable for being the very first title in the Parodius series, although it is often confused with its sequel, Parodius Da!

The name itself is a portmanteau of "Gradius" and "parody" and, true to it, the game is a parody of the Gradius series of space-based horizontally scrolling shooters. Many of the characters and enemies are derived from that famous shooter series, while other elements are extracted from other Konami titles, such as Antarctic Adventure and TwinBee.

This game is of particular interest in the series for being heavily infused with Japanese culture and folklore.

Goemon from the Ganbare Goemon series appears as a guest playable character.

Gameplay

Gameplay is very similar to that present in games from the Gradius series, with the inclusion of other aspects from games such as TwinBee. However, the spaceships are replaced with silly characters taken from either these or other Konami games, as well as from Japanese folklore, and the music is mostly conformed by famous classical music pieces.

The player can play as either Tako (father of Takosuke), an octopus, the Penguin (father of Pentaro) from Antarctic Adventure and the exclusive MSX game Penguin Adventure, Goemon from the Ganbare Goemon series, the Popolon knight from the MSX game Knightmare, or the Vic Viper spaceship from Gradius.

The game is composed of six stages consisting of various obstacles and enemies, such as penguins and bees, as well as more traditional Gradius enemies, such as Moai.

As with Gradius, the game utilizes a similar selection bar based power-up system. However, when a random power-up is picked up, then a feature called Bellpower/Roulette will automatically make the player's power bar to start skipping powers until the player presses the button to stop the roulette,, thus having the risk of landing on the undesirable 'OH!' "power-up" instead of the '?' sign or the Options.

Mobile phone and PSP version

After the release of the first remake for mobile phone of same name on 2003, Parodius was released for mobile phones with enhanced graphics on December 1, 2006 in Japan, and was released for PlayStation Portable as Parodius Portable on January 25, 2007 in Japan.

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