The music also keeps up the usual silliness, with the sugarized version of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” being the standout. The sound, too, maintains the excellent standards, with each character now having their own voices when enabling power-ups, adding even more to their personalities. (You can be a jerk and knock him over.) You’ll also come across UFOs that explode and leave behind a point value in an old school font. (Except one, which has a balding muscular man named “Catherine” apparently.) Further, you can find the little karate guy from Yie Ar Kung Fu in all of his 8-bit glory, punching harmlessly at air. There’s an extraordinary amount of color painted throughout each and every corner.Īdditionally, the bath house stage has floating tubs in the middle featuring various girls, each with their name scrawled on the tub. The first stage takes place on a farm, with dancing flowers, milk jugs spewing out flying cows, mountains that bounce around the scenery, and an utterly gorgeous pastel backdrop. Ultimately what makes the experience as memorable as it is are all of the tiny details packed into each level. Sexy Parodius runs on the same arcade hardware as Gokujou, but it’s a substantially more attractive game, one practically bursting with energy and sight gags. (The game helpfully instructs “Don’t Shoot!” unless you want to trigger some nasty attacks.) There’s also another boss rush against old Parodius bosses (there’s a picture of a naked woman in the background, which is slowly revealed as you destroy more foes), and the final level is a lavish, pink, Indian-style palace. The boss of the mine level is a tremendous tanooki with an enormous nutsack. (Although the game does not generally reference other Konami titles like Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, the Castlevania influence is clear, as the music makes some references to it.) One stage is a factory that is stealing bunny girls and boxing them up, for some inexplicable reason. Another is a gothic castle filled with troublesome rodents, ending with a battle against a gigantic Medusa head.
The levels and bosses are some of the best the series has seen – one stage is a bathhouse along the lines of a Gradius-style high speed zone, which climaxes in a fight against a giant penguin wearing a toilet on his head. (Win the bathhouse level and the crew will attempt to sneak a peek at the women’s bath lose and they’ll be flushed down the toilet by the boss.) While it’s still quite easy overall, it lends to the replayability to see the different areas, and view the wacky cutaways at the end of each stage that change depending on the outcome. (Per usual Gradius standard, there is no real final boss – the gigantic naked lady as seen back in Parodius Da! ends up squashing Takosuke with her ample posterior.)Ī single playthrough is only seven levels long, but there are nine stages altogether, and a special epilogue if you manage to win on all of the levels. If you’re too slow, Takosuke will escape with his pile of money and prematurely end the game with a lousy ending get to the end and you’ll get the good ending. The final level is a little bit different, in that you’re on a timer, and need to advance through a cavalcade of core barriers in a short period of time. Meet the requirements and you’ll advance to the “A” stage fail and you’ll go to the “B” stage.
The Parodius games have always leaned on the easier side of the spectrum (compared to Gradius, especially), so Sexy Parodius gives each stage an extra challenge, usually a certain number of items to collect or enemies to defeat. That being said, it is pretty far from porn – it never goes beyond a PG-13 level of randiness. Parodius has always had some slightly bawdy elements, but this entry just takes that and ramps it up, with numerous bunny girls, lingerie-clad models, and lots and lots of cheesecake.
Of course, this mostly means that his subordinates do all of the work while the lecherous octopus sits in his office and fantasizes about legions of women folk.īoth the intro and the title of the game might suggest an erotic shooter, which isn’t entirely the case. In Sexy Parodius, Takosuke has drafted his fellows to begin a work-for-hire agency in a quest for riches, power, and world peace.