Keio Flying Squadron (Sega Mega CD)

Developer:

Victor

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Release Date:

1994 (1993 in Japan)

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Systems:

Sega Mega CD

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing a shoot 'em up on the Mega CD!

I haven't really written about a Mega CD game since Popful Mail six years ago, and it's been a while since I've played a shoot 'em up as well. The trouble with shoot 'em ups, is they're either really hard, in which case all I end up writing about is the various ways I got my dude exploded, or they're really easy, in which case all I write is "I'm still shooting at things," and "I'm kind of bored now."

But I figured I should give you at least one proper old-school side-scrolling shooter this year, so I went with the game where you play as a girl wearing a 1960s Playboy bunny suit in 1860s Japan. I checked a list of games I've written about so far, and it's an under-represented sub-genre.

Oh here's some trivia for you, straight from Wikipedia: the December 1994 issue of Sega Pro CD magazine included a demo disc for the game that ended after the first level. But you can use a level select cheat to skip past the part that sends you back to the title screen and keep playing it to the end, because they secretly included the entire full game on the disc.

Parodius (Arcade)

Today I'm taking a short look at Parodius, the second game in the Parodius series, confusingly. They call it パロディウスだ! －神話からお笑いへ－ in Japan, which translates to It's Parodius! From Myth to Laughter, a play on Gradius III's subtitle 'From Legend To Myth'. Because Parodius is a parody of Gradius you see! You'd think it'd be impossible to make a comedy spoof of a side scrolling shoot 'em up, but they went and did it anyway.

The game originally hit Japanese arcades in April 1990 and was happy enough to stay there for whatever reason, though most of its various console ports eventually made it over to the West. Well they were released in Europe anyway; poor America was left out entirely for whatever reason.

Magical Chase (TurboGrafx-16)

Another requested game. Somehow looking at that title screen I'm getting the feeling that Magical Chase might be one of those 'witch on a broomstick' cute 'em up shoot 'em ups. I mean 1993 seems a bit early for it to be a Quiddich sports game, and what else can you do on a broomstick but fly around and zap things?

Plus it's on the TurboGrafx, the console of shoot 'em ups.