I should love this game… I’ve been trying for years to get in to it, keep thinking it will get better just round the corner but… It’s so damn tedious!
I’m at a point near the start where I’ve just fed the mouse/rat 3 bits of cheese and now I’m trying to climb up and…? Jump in some water? I just keep falling and dying over and over.
Just having a rant! Really want to like this game as much as others seem to…
A lot of early 3D console games - whether platformers or FPS games, have aged pretty poorly. Go try to play GoldenEye again and see how it feels compared to modern shooters. Really Super Mario 64 is kind of the outlier.
Conker and Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 are all cut from the same cloth at mid-90s Rare. The Xbox release version fixed a few things with Conker but broke others. Honestly Conker was one of the first “parody” type games (at least as major console releases went anyway) and it only works well if you have the nostalgia goggles to appreciate it as it existed in an era where if you wanted to play 3D platformers, you were mostly limited to baby games like Croc, Spyro, or the other Rare platformers.
Parodius was released in 1988, and I wouldn’t even definitively say it was the first.
Hell, Leisure Suit Larry came out in ‘87.
Leisure suit Larry is not really a parody like Conker was though, was it? I thought it was just a point and click adventure game with dirty jokes.
Forgive me, if I’m wrong on that. I actually have not really played the leisure suit Larry games. 
I think, Conker not only makes fun of platformer games and game mechanics in general, but directly references movies like Saving Private Ryan, the Alien franchise, and the Matrix. 
I think it had a mix of dirty jokes and parodies. It’s been ages since I’ve played it.
Hopefully someone who remembers it better can chime in, otherwise I guess I know what my weekend downtime plans are.
I guess it should have qualified it as a “major console release.”
Parodius to me isn’t a parody, but maybe I’m missing the references. It’s a shmup with funny sprites nnit? How does funny sprites equal a parody? Not being hostile, btw, just looking to get your POV.
Parodius is a parody of Gradius (hence the name).
is it just wordplay or is it a straight up parody?
It’s a “silly” version of Gradius. Wikipedia can explain it better than I can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parodius:_The_Octopus_Saves_the_Earth
“Many of the characters and enemies are derived from that famous shooter series [Gradius], while other elements are extracted from other Konami titles, such as Antarctic Adventure and TwinBee. This game is of particular note in the series as being heavily infused with Japanese culture and folklore.”
Thanks. Until now I thought Parodius was just trying to be a funny take on shmups. I understood the Gradius/parody portmanteau, but I didn’t realize it was a true parody (e.g., clearly borrowing characters/enemies in a humorous way).