I’m feeling pretty dang sunny after the jolly Panic Restaurant, so why not keep the lighthearted groove going another week with that staple of vintage Japanese gaming, the cute-’em-up? Allow me to introduce Kaneko and Hudson Soft’s Star Parodier. This 1992 Super CD-ROM release is most often described, and dismissed, as a simple rip-off of Konami’s already established Parodius franchise. There’s some truth to that, too. The shared naming convention, for instance. Parodius is parody Gradius, Star Parodier is parody Star Soldier. Subtle it’s not. The two also share the core conceit of disparate characters and settings from the publisher’s back catalog colliding in absurd ways, as the Caesar ship from Star Soldier now fights alongside Bomberman and an anthropomorphic version of the PC Engine console itself.
But does originality really matter all that much in the context of a work this silly? This isn’t a storytelling or world building exercise, it’s an excuse for a flying game console to drop bombs on walruses. I mean, the heroes launch their campaign against the forces of the evil Mother Brain from a space carrier ship modeled on the short-lived PC Engine SuperGrafx unit. It’s awfully tough to nitpick when you’re grinning from ear-to-ear at touches like that.
A skilled run through the game’s eight vertical scrolling stages will take you around forty minutes. You also have the option of practicing a standalone “Caravan” score attack level, despite Star Parodier never actually being the focus of an All-Japan Caravan Festival. The general flow of the action is based closely on the three previous 16-bit Star Soldier entries, with the occasional cheeky nod to Blazing Lazers for good measure. In other words, it’s top-notch stuff; fast, smooth, and addictive. Veterans will spot many familiar enemy patterns and boss designs through their wacky new coats of paint.
The three playable characters are what give Star Parodier’s gameplay an identity of its own, preventing it from lapsing into pure retread. Each hero has his, her, or its own selection of three main shot types and two supplementary pickups, as well as a unique super bomb blast effect. Bomberman is all about dealing big damage. PC Engine focuses on defense, with weaker weapons that cover more of the screen. Caesar (or rather ParoCaesar, as it’s dubbed here) aims to strike a balance between the latter two extremes. It’s a well conceived, well implemented system and seeing the PC Engine launch HuCards and CDs to mow down the opposition is practically worth the price of admission on it its own. That said, I can’t help but wish we’d been treated to an even bigger roster of classic Hudson stars. Imagine how cool it would be to play as Master Higgins/Takahashi Meijin from Adventure Island, complete with stone axe and boomerang weapons.
It’s an ancient reviewer cliché to observe that a cutesy game isn’t nearly as soft as it lets on. In the case of Star Parodier, however, looks aren’t deceiving in the least. It’s more forgiving than any of the proper Star Soldier installments that came before. In fact, it’s the overall easiest PC Engine shooter I’ve played to date. I’ve yet to legitimately game over on it and had to go out of my way to kill myself off in order to test whether or not it offers unlimited continues. It does. Only the final boss and a couple very brief sections in the later stages were able to give me the slightest pause. Needless to say, this is great news for newcomers to the genre. Experts will want to head into the options menu and crank the difficulty up first thing.
As expected, Star Parodier’s graphics skew bright and colorful throughout. The sprite and background design clearly owes a lot to the TwinBee series. Regardless of whether you’re inclined to judge that copying or homage, it’s executed fine. The music by Hiroshi Saito, Jin Watanabe, and Shinichi Sakamoto is primarily cheery synthesizer fare. It edges into prog rock territory when things get intense, though, and that’s how I like it best. One section from a boss theme could have come straight out of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s “Tarkus.” I guess Nobuo Uematsu isn’t the only fan of that one.
Star Parodier delivers on multiple fronts. If you’re into cute stuff, overhead shooters, or the Star Soldier saga in particular, you’re all but guaranteed to find something to love about it. Fans of all three will be in hog heaven. Too bad it debuted toward the end of the classic shooter era, a time when fighters, beat-’em-ups, and mascot platformers dominated the medium. Thus, it never benefited from the many refining sequels the older Parodius did. A planned North American localization, Fantasy Star Soldier, was ultimately shelved due to the TurboGrafx-CD’s dismal sales. Star Parodier would remain a region-locked obscurity for years until it was finally reissued digitally on the Wii in 2008. Most recently, it was made available physically for the first time outside Japan on the 2020 PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Mini consoles. However you manage to access this one, you’re in for a walrus-blasting good time.
Twentieth Century Gamer 