Sexy Parodius

Sexy Parodius

Title screen

Developer:	Konami
Music:	Mayuko Kageshita Naomitsu Ariyama Mutsuhiko Izumi Kazuhiro Senoo
Program:	Tokuda Tsukasa Ohji Paiman
Art:	Shūjirō Hamakawa Chiyoko Hanano Natsumi Bouike Misugi Inagaki Kaori Nishimura Koji Namikoshi
Release date:	Arcade: March 1996 PlayStation/Sega Saturn : November 1, 1996 PlayStation Portable: January 25, 2007
Previous game:	Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius
Next game:	Gradius Gaiden

Sexy Parodius (Japanese: セクシーパロディウス "Sekushī Parodiusu") is a shmup developed and published by Konami in 1996. It is the fifth installment in the Parodius series succeeding Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius (Konami 1995). It is the last of the three arcade games from the series.

Sexy Parodius received ports on the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and PlayStation Portable.

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

Gameplay Overview

Controls

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There are 3 Power up schemes to choose from in this game: Manual, Semi-Auto, and Auto. These also influence your button layout/button functions.

	Auto Power-Up	Semi-Auto Power-Up	Manual Power-Up
A button		Select Power-Up	Select Power-Up
B button	Primary weapon (shot/double/laser) Secondary weapon (missile) Bell power	Primary weapon (shot/double/laser) Secondary weapon (missile) Bell power	Primary weapon (shot/double/laser)
C button			Secondary weapon (missile) Bell power

Characters

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Sexy Parodius has 8 characters, 5 of them return from Gokujou Parodius while the other 3 are completely new. Each character has a counterpart when using 2P side, but it's only a cosmetic difference.

1P side	2P side
Vic Viper	Lord British

1P side	2P side
Ivan	Toby

1P side	2P side
Hikaru	Akane

1P side	2P side
Mambo	Samba

1P side	2P side
Michael	Gabriel

1P side	2P side
Koitsu	Aitsu

1P side	2P side
Option	Multiple

1P side	2P side
Shooting Star	Black Viper

Power Meter

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The Power Meter system in Sexy Parodius uses icons for each upgrade. When the player picks up a red capsule, the next box in the Power Meter sequence gets highlighted; when a red capsule is picked up at position 7, it will jump back to position 1.

Although the Power Meter has general properties (Speed Up, Missile, and Shield), all eight characters have an individual set of upgrades.

Items

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An item pops up either if the player destroys certain enemy waves fully or destroys a red enemy.

	Red Capsule Advances the Power Meter by 1.
	Roulette Capsule Starts roulette mode in the Power Meter. Visually indistinguishable from regular Red Capsules. Found in fixed enemies/locations.
	Blue Capsule Clears the screen from all enemies (no points are awarded for these).
	Yellow Bell Score item. Value increases with subsequent collection: 500 > 1000 > 2,500 > 5,000 > 10,000. Value resets when a Yellow Bell goes off screen or upon death.
	Blue Bell Adds a screen clearing bomb to the player's bell stock. Additional bombs can be picked up for a maximum of three.
	White Bell When picked up, a pink ball named Alex will help you out by attacking enemies. It has its own HP pool, starting at 10 out of a maximum of 20 regaining HP by eating bells.
	Green Bell When picked up, all regular weapons are disabled for a certain amount of time and the player sprite increases in size granting invincibility and extra speed.
	Red Bell Adds 3 laser barriers to the player's bell stock. These barriers cover almost the whole screen vertically and destroy all enemies and bullets touching them.
	Purple Bell When picked up, all enemies are turned into regular items.

All regular items appear in the following item cycle. Roulette Capsules have no effect, but the cycle can be affected by Purple Bells.

Item Cycle

The bell cycle starts at yellow. Hitting a Yellow Bell five times makes it advance to the next color. Every other color takes a single hit to make the cycle go to the next yellow again. This is not affected by missing bells or picking them up.

Bell Cycle

Extra Lives

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On default settings, the player is awarded with two score based extends, one at 300,000 and the second at 800,000. Via dipswitch settings these can be changed to set the first life at 200,000 and the second at 700,000. It can also be set to 500,000 only.

Rank

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Sexy Parodius has by far the most aggressive and unforgiving rank system in the Parodius series. Rank is almost completely uncontrollable, and is essentially guaranteed to get extremely high.

Total Rank is given by this equation

Total Rank
Power Up Mode (0 to 2) + Mission Completion (0 to 11) + Speed Ups (0 to 2) + Power Ups (0 to 6) + Frame Rank (0 to 31)

Base Rank is capped at 39. When Total Rank exceeds 31, Revenge bullets will appear. How the values of these factors are calculated is explained in the following five sections.

1. Power up Mode

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The Power Up mode selected will change the starting base rank.

Auto	0
Semi-Auto	1
Manual	2

2. Mission Completion

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Completing or failing to complete missions changes the rank increase from clearing the stage.

Mission Completed	+1
Mission Incomplete	+2

Stage 6 does not add to Mission completion rank. During the Boss Rush emergency stage, the game will subtract all Mission Rank, and will add it back once the stage is cleared. Completing the emergency mission will add +1 to mission rank while failing it will add nothing.

If on the Special Stage, Stage completion rank will always be 11. The Special stage has a minimum rank that is based on difficulty. Total Rank will not decrease if it is greater than the minimum rank. Note that on the Asian version, the minimum rank is higher by 8.

Difficulty	Minimum Rank
1	26
2	28
3	30
4	32
5	34
6	36
7	38
8	39

3. Speed Up level

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The rank increases depending on the number of speed ups equipped

0-1 Speed Ups	0
2-3 Speed Ups	1
4-5 Speed ups	2

4. Power Ups

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Depending on the power ups equipped. If your power ups change (from either activating power ups, or dying/activating OH!), so does the rank increase. Note that having an active Shield, or bell (both held, and active) is a flat +1 to rank, and as soon as the power ends, it decreases back to 0 with no other penalties.

If using Vic Viper, Ivan, Hikaru (Hawkwind and Spread bomb are both equal as missiles), or Shooting Star (Auto Option is his missile), Power Up rank is calculated according to the table below.

	Shot	Double	Laser	Missile
				Shot	Double	Laser
No Options	0	0	0	0	0	0
1 Option	0	1	1	1	1	1
2 Options	0	1	1	1	2	2
3 Options	1	2	2	2	3	3
4 Options	1	2	2	2	3	3

If using Mambo, Power up Rank is calculated using the formula below.

Power Up Rank
(Missile (+2 if bubble missile option has been equipped) + all option types currently equipped + 1) / 8 (the output value is then truncated)

Option types are these values

Bubble Missile	3
Control Laser	4
Screw Laser	4
Search Laser	5

If using Michael or Koitsu, Power up Rank is calculated according to the table below.

	Shot	Double	Laser	Missile
				Shot	Double	Laser
No Grade Ups	0	0	0	0	1	0
1 Grade Up	0	1	1	1	2	1
2 Grade Ups	0	2	1	1	3	2
3 Grade Ups	1	3	2	2	4	3
4 Grade Ups	1	3	2	2	5	3

If using Option, Power up Rank is calculated according to the table below.

Sonoba Power	Shot	Thunder Cross Modoki	Koitsu/Michael Modoki
0	0	0	0
1	0	0	1
2	0	1	2
3-4	1	2	3

5. Frame Rank

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The Frame Rank consists of a main counter and an incremental counter. The incremental counter goes +1 for every X frames passed (see tables below). When the incremental counter surpasses 255, the main counter and thereby the Frame Rank increases by +1. Only this number of the main counter has then an effect on the calculation of the Total Rank.

The starting value of Frame Rank is based on Difficulty. Note that on the Asian version, these values are higher by 8

Difficulty	Starting Rank
1	0
2	2
3	4
4	6
5	8
6	10
7	12
8	14

The incremental counter can increase at a higher rate and is affected by Frame Rank's current value, the Power Up mode, and the number of speed ups equipped

Current Frame Rank value
	Auto	Semi-Auto	Manual	3 or more Speed Ups
				Auto	Semi-Auto	Manual
Lower than 4	3.2f	2.909f	2.667f	2.667f	2.461f	2.286f
Lower than 8	6.4f	5.818f	5.333f	5.333f	4.923f	4.571f
Lower than 16	12.8f	11.636f	10.667f	10.667f	9.846f	9.143
Higher than 16	25.6f	23.272f	21.333f	21.333f	19.692f	18.286f

This means that the lower Frame Rank is, the faster it increases. Frame rank is capped at 31. Frame rank will only increase during gameplay and not during cutscenes, or death transitions.

For every death, the main counter of the Frame Rank decreases by -3 and the incremental counter resets to 0. This means that dying with a high incremental counter can make the main counter decrease by almost -4 at times. Dying when the counter is 2 sets the Frame rank to 0. Frame rank will be set to it's starting value based on difficulty upon continuing unless the Frame Rank is below the starting value.

6. 2 Player

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In 2 player mode, each player has their own individual Total Ranks, the game references the player with the lower total rank to determine the Total Rank used.

Loops

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Unlike games of the Gradius series, the arcade version of Parodius Da! does not feature infinite loops and ends after Loop 2. There are no requirements for the second loop so that upon beating 1-10 the player will always enter 2-1.

Upon entering 2-1, the player loses all of their Power Ups and starts in the default state again. If the Power Meter was highlighted at any position at the end of Loop 1, it will be highlighted on the first position "Speed Up" beginning with Loop 2. This is very helpful in order to quickly gain more upgrades again.

Minimum rank is much higher during the loop (see above). Moreover, there's a flag for Loop 2 that will always activate single revenge bullets. On higher rank, additional revenge bullets can spawn after the first revenge bullet. These additional revenge bullets often spawn with a significant delay which makes them particularly troublesome to dodge.

Loops

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Sexy Parodius does not loop, but clearing every mission unlocks a special stage.

Strategy

WIP