Parodius

Description

The PAL release of Parodius marks the series’ first official appearance outside Japan, localised from Parodius Da! – Shinwa kara Owarai e and published by Konami in 1992. The game retained its distinctive Japanese visual style and absurd humour — blending shoot-’em-up mechanics with parodic references to Gradius, TwinBee, and a host of Konami franchises. You can select multiple characters, including Vic Viper, Octopus, and Penguin, each with unique weapon sets and upgrade paths, navigating surreal levels filled with flying bathhouses, dancing women, and giant cats.

Gameplay sticks closely to classic horizontal shooter conventions, with power-up capsules, end-of-stage bosses, and memorisation-heavy level design. What distinguishes this PAL version is its relatively minimal adaptation beyond packaging: English screen text is present, but the game’s soundtrack, sprite work, and core systems remain unchanged from the Japanese release. This helped preserve the original’s eccentric tone, even as it introduced European and Australian players to one of Konami’s most deliberately unorthodox franchises.

Being released in 1992, this pre-dates Nintendo UK and in this case, Nintendo Australia. As such it is branded with Bandai and Mattel distributor packaging respectively. To my knowledge it was not re-released and early on was identified as being somewhat rare.