Parodius: Non-Sense Fantasy (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Konami's 1992 shoot 'em up game for the Super NES, Parodius: Non-Sense Fantasy.

Played through a single loop as the Vic Viper on the default difficulty level. The next loop begins directly following the credits, so I paused the game and entered the Konami code to kill myself to end the game at that point. Directly following that, at 46:31, I show a round of the Lollipop mode.

For as much as the PAL territories tended to get neglected in the 80s and 90s when it came to localization efforts, Europe did get its own share of exclusive English releases, many of them thanks to efforts made by Konami.

The Parodius games are a good example of this - Europe got a fair number of them in English on several platforms, and the US has never officially received any of them.

(The English version of the sequel:    • Fantastic Journey (Saturn) Playthroug...   )

Parodius: Non-Sense Fantasy is a localization of the SNES port of Parodius Da! From Myth to Laughter, and per usual for the series, it lives up to its title, which is a portmanteau of the words parody and Gradius. Featuring characters from a multitude of Konami games, it uses Gradius's core gameplay mechanics and adds in a dash of Twin-bee with the bell power-up system.

The result is a game that is just as solid as any of the core Gradius titles, but one with a ludicrous sense of humor. You'll be attacked by patriotic bald eagles, Vegas show girls, penguins that stumble and face-plant as they try to attack - the game really prizes itself on being absurd (not to mention suggestive!), and Konami pulled it off brilliantly. The graphics are sharp and vibrant, the soundtrack is surreal but brilliant in its cheesy enthusiasm, and each of the ships provide a unique play experience thanks to the diverse weapon loadouts. And true to form for Konami, it's fairly difficult. Don't let its goofy tone lull you into thinking it's a cakewalk - it even adjusts its difficulty on-the-fly based on how well you're playing.

It's also very well-done port of the original arcade game. A few cuts were made, but its overall surprisingly faithful to the coin op, and it runs far. far better than Gradius III's port did on the hardware. It's immediately obvious that Konami was much more comfortable with the SNES's hardware this time around, and the PAL conversion was nicely handled - it doesn't play slower than the Japanese NTSC version, nor are there any giant black bars bordering the screen.

Parodius is an excellent game, and its goofy personality makes for a refreshing change of pace from the typical shooter fare. I loved it.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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