Bullet Club
Banned
80 Goemon Story https://youtu.be/ZLrbschVK_Y
72 Twinbee! Be There With Bells On https://youtu.be/Dh-ISK4mngU
Partial Transcript
The 5 games in the Parodius series were released in Japan from 1988 to 1996, and there are a few others related to these came out around that time.
Under normal circumstances Parodius would have been a forgotten series of games that no one really got to play. But, Parodius is still remembered, revered, and lives on thanks to dedicated die hard fans. As well, new fans are brought in through periodic lessons in the series that come from these fans, that help expand the games awareness, and then new converts in-turn do likewise, amplifying the games reach. Probably you, the ones who are watching this video fit into this complex web somewhere! And I’m glad your here because this video is going be a great celebration of the Parodius series! If you’re a newcomer, this is actually the 3rd in a series of videos highlighting Konami games that were brilliant and massive hits in Japan, but Western gamers got the short end of the stick. For parts 1 and 2 go check out the Twinbee and Goemon Stories! Here we go!
Since I’ve covered this in part before, I’m going to skip many of the platitudes about Gradius. We already know how great and groundbreaking it was, yada yada yada. But for the complete story though kept short, the origin point of all of this goes back to 1981 with a game called Scramble, Konami’s first scrolling shooter and one of many games released in the early 80s space shooter game craze. When it came time for Scramble 2, Konami ended up releasing 2 games in 1985 that evolved from that development. Twinbee, which actually came first and Gradius.
The two games coexisted and the differences were solidified in that Twinbee would move, horiz.. wait.. up and down … left and right is.. Twinbee would be vertical! Gradius would be horizontal, Twinbee colorful and cute, Gradius dark and serious. Twinbee on Earth or Earth like places, Gradius in alien worlds. Twinbee could be co-op. Gradius strictly single player. And the two games would keep this formula strictly, Salamander not withstanding….
But in that iron clad rule that Konami created for itself, a loophole existed, Gradius could and would spin off into different creations so Gradius could stay pure and the gameplay style that was challenging and enjoyable could be exported to other games.
And so in 1988 Konami gave us Parodius! A Portmanteau of Parody and Gradius! It was the 6th Gradius style game to come down the pike in 3 years, so you could see how hot the demand was for more games in the series
Now on the surface its easy to say that Konami just took Twinbee and Gradius and kind of mixed them together but the formula that gave us the first Parodius was an alignment of the starts rarely happens!