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This game is the third in
the Parodius series which is a parody of the great 2D
horizontal shooter Graddius.
The premise of these games
is that a dev team at Konami (I think it was the team
who eventually broke away and formed Treasure) took the
Gradius series and reskinned it with totally bonkers
graphics and sounds. The game retains the great Gradius
gameplay but adds a great degree of humour to the
proceedings.
Another feature of the
series is the variety of characters you can pick - each
with their own power up scheme that really does change
how you approach the different levels. Oshaberi has the
same big roster of characters (11) as its predecessor
and 8 new but equally mad levels.
The first level has a disco
theme (A great version of "That's the way I like it" is
the soundtrack) - and has you shooting penguins in
multi-coloured afros. The boss is a giant glittery disco
ball that when beaten releases the panda from level 1 of
Fantastic Journey - this time he is singing at a
microphone - shooting musical notes at you. Again this
game demonstrates lovely little touches - the Koitsu
character (the stick man on the paperplane) drops bombs
that are copies of himself - in this level they
sometimes stop running along looking for enemies and
start disco-dancing - on occasions even emulating John
Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
Despite touches like this,
this is the 3rd in the series and the novelty is
starting to wear off - rehashed ideas are on display -
but they take the form of marvellous in-jokes to those
who have played the earlier games. Konami started
ransacking its other franchises for this game too. For
example there is a Mystical Ninja level with a Goemon
boss and a Twinbee level the boss of which is a giant
Twinbee sporting a large pair of comedy breasts in a
pink frilly bra! There's even a Lethal Enforcer level
where you fly through a shooting gallery being shot at
by two guns in the foreground. To cap it off there's
also a bosserama level giving you back-to-back bosses
from Gradius and the earlier Parodius games.
The sound effects on this
game are as always brilliantly bizarre and the
soundtrack is based around remixes of famous tunes -
this time you also get an insane Japanese commentator
shouting away in the background. In 2 player
simultaneous mode you get a female commentator shouting
and ranting along with him.
There are two extra score
challenge levels on offer that you don't have to unlock.
One is a straight score attack level as before - but the
other is themed like a race around a track - shooting
enemies and collecting power-ups without hitting the
sides of the track - best lap times and high scores are
kept.
In the main game you can
save your current position at any time in 1 of 3 slots –
it’s the only 2D shooter I know of that offers this
feature. The option mode boasts lots of gameplay tweaks,
including an arrange mode that changes the enemy
patterns, and there's hoards of statistics that are
stored against each character - best score, level
reached etc and all sorts of percentages. It’s all in
Japanese but it’s not too hard to figure out. There's
actually a very good FAQ for this game at gamefaqs.com.
There is also a sub mission
in the main game. Throughout the game's levels there are
a large number of hidden fairies, much like the hidden
dogs in Radiant Silvergun they will reveal themselves
when certain parts of the level furniture are hit a few
times - and one of the option screens keep track of how
many you have found - a hint that some features are
unlocked by finding them all (see the FAQ).
This version of Parodius
screams hardcore - its obsession with stat tracking
hints at this but there are other indicators such as the
status display showing the difficulty level you are
playing at and also the game loop count for those who
are good enough!
Despite it starting to reuse
ideas this is a Parodius game and therefore you just
won't find this type of game anywhere else (with the
possible exception of the one-off title Gamers Paradise
by the normally dire Jaleco).
Highly recommended to shmup
fans - you will have loads of fun playing this and
spotting the clever little references to other Konami
games and popular cultural icons like John Travolta's
disco dancing moves!
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