Parodius Da! (PS1) - 1-ALL Clear (3,858,300 to 2-2)

Parodius Da! Shinwa kara Owaraie
パロディウスだ！神話からお笑いへ
It's Parodius! From Myth to Laughter (PS1 version)
©1990 Konami

It's Parodius! Again.

Turns out the Parodius games were the first to get the "Deluxe Pack" treatment from Konami. In 1994 (that early??), Parodius Da! and Gokujou Parodius were bundled together on the fittingly named Gokujou Parodius Da! Deluxe Pack, released for the Playstation and Sega Saturn.

While the two games included are mostly based on their arcade counterparts, a few subtle changes were made, most particularly to Da!. If you've seen either of my recent videos covering the arcade version (   • Parodius Da! (Arcade) - 1-ALL Clear (...  ), (   • (CC) Parodius Da! (Arcade) - 1-ALL Cl...  ), or even if you've done any research into the arcade version, you'd probably know that the rank in that game... well, it can get a little ridiculous. And by a little, I mean you better play with 1 Speed-Up and no Shield for the whole game, or you'll have suicide bullets by stage 6.

Apparently, even Konami must've known that they took it a little too far with this game. The NES, SNES, and Game Boy ports all have significantly toned down rank systems. And when they ported the arcade version to the Playstation and Sega Saturn for their compilations, they did the same thing. I don't know what exactly they changed, but you'll see I use mostly the same strategies in this run as I did in my two runs of the actual arcade version, and the rank gets nowhere near as insane. It really does make the game a slightly more enjoyable experience. (Now, if only they made the same call for Gokujou...)

There's a few other differences worth mentioning. The aspect ratio and cropping for this port is... well, poor. A good chunk of the right side of the screen is cut off, making some boss fights look weird. There's hardly any slowdown, which actually makes the game slightly harder in some areas (mainly stage 8). Also, the scores given from yellow bells and bosses are completely broken--10,000 point bells give you 25,000 points, bosses that should also have you 10,000 have the same issue, and the final boss that you can suicide against for farming gives over 400k! Someone really screwed up there, and it's because of that (and probably the rank system as well) that scores between this and the actual arcade version can't be fairly compared. Some of these changes actually carried over to the PSP port on Parodius Portable, while the aspect ratio and a few inexplicably altered enemy formations were fixed.

While I wish I could've made it a tiny bit farther into loop 2, I'm pretty content with this run. I managed to make it to the final boss without dying so I could use all my lives to farm from it, and I only dropped one yellow bell chain in all of loop 1. If you want to play this game but find the arcade version too damn hard, this is the next best thing. It's still not the easiest game in the world, but you have to worry far less about rank management, and it makes for a game that's a bit more relaxing to play through.

Played using Duckstation.