 Do you like bird pirates? How about a wooden ship with a cat head? Or giant mermaids shouting huge Japanese letters at you? Or cranky old men yelling at you as you play? Well, you're in luck because the Super Nintendo has three of the most bat shit crazy and sane games you'll ever play in your life that feature all of these things. Starting with Perodius Da, Takogachikyu Osuku, or simply Perodius for you PAL region folks. Later came Gokujo Perodius, which for convenience sake I'm just going to refer to as Perodius 2. And finally there was Jikyu Oshibiri Perodius, or what I'll call Perodius 3. Perodius as you might have guessed is a comedic take on the Gradius titles, with each game featuring nearly the exact same game engine and gameplay mechanics as the Gradius series. Only it's like somebody bent the circuits and sprinkled some LSD all over the circuit board. Yes, this is quite literally a parody of Gradius, and what you come across in these games is beyond belief, if not freaking hilarious. There's also all sorts of other references to other Konami games tossed in there for good measure, like Goemon and Twinbee for example. Let's start with the first Perodius game. The title in full translates to From Myth to Laughter, and yeah, that's pretty appropriate. This received ports to all sorts of other systems, and yes, like I mentioned earlier, this got a PAL region release, but not one in North America. And also this is an arcade port, easily one of the best on the system too if you compare the two games, since they're nearly identical. That's pretty rare for the time. But yeah, the Gradius power-up structure is here, of course, and most of the weapons are the same too, and the game plays the same way in terms of spacing and speed. In fact, all three do for the most part. There's still the red pods you collect, and you have the freedom to use them quickly or to save up for more powerful weapons. In addition to the red pods though, there's the colored bells from the Twinbee games. They bounce around horizontally, shoot them and make them change color, and you can obtain points and even obtain a megaphone thing and shout Japanese at enemies until they go boom. The big difference between Perodius and Gradius very obviously comes in the settings, enemies, music, and the playable characters. You can play as Vic Viper, the same ship as Gradius, but there's also Octopus, Twinbee, and Pentaru. Yes, a penguin, and no, I don't get it either, but it's pretty funny. You fly through a graveyard, a pirate ship, and a circus to name a few areas. And yeah, I don't want to belabor the point too much, but this series stands out because it's just so colorful and so insane. It looks like I'm looking at a moving bowl of fruity pebbles. Let's move on quickly to Gokujo Perodius, Kako no Aikuo Motome de, which translates to Ultimate Perodius, seeking the former glory, and yeah, it seeks it a little too closely because the problem is that there's hardly anything new here. I know that most times with a sequel, you just want more of what the original game did well, but this game gets to the point where I can't even tell where the first game stops and the second game starts. It's a little too samey. That may not be a bad thing for some people, but the sensory overload these games bring about kind of wears on you after a while. I mean, maybe there are a few new things here and there, but I can't tell because my eyes and my brain have just been pounded in a mush at this point. There are at least four new characters here in addition to the four in the original game, and the game does introduce a respawn option where you can continue right where you died or go back to a checkpoint. That really makes the game easier to digest. The third game is Jikyu Oshaberi Perodius, or Chatting Perodius, named as such because an old Japanese man yells at you the entire game. I should just stop talking the rest of the video and let this guy take over. This game is much more distinct for a number of reasons. Number one is the obvious old man shouting. Also, there's 16 playable characters here. Also, the respawn option here works in two-player mode, so if you die, a second player can resume right where you died instead of starting at a checkpoint. It's not quite co-op, but it's still a nice feature to have. The stages in Perodius 3 are also a little more distinct. You fly through a high school, a pseudo twin bee stage, and what comes across as a Konami sightseeing tour stage, with references to other Konami games showing up all over the place. The third game is the funniest of the three because it's a bit more focused instead of just all-out insanity. Also, the level design here is a bit different. It's not just bullet hell type stuff with waves of enemies. This time around, the overall level layout is a bit more varied. Now, I have to address a few things that apply to all three of these games. First is, how bad is the infamous Super Nintendo shooter slowdown? It's not as bad as something like Super R-type or the original Gradius 3, but it's certainly present. The first game has the least amount of slowdown that I could tell, and the third game has the worst. Next, how hard are these games? Well, all three are pretty damn tough, with the third being by far the hardest to get through, even with save states I had a hard time. The first game is probably the easiest out of the three, but yeah. No part of any of these games are easy, even for shoot-em-up veterans. So yeah, even after playing all three of these games for hours, it's still hard to discern between the three. I will say the first game is a very good game, a top five shoot-em-up on the Super Nintendo for sure. The second is a little disappointing because it feels like more of the same. The third game is the most ambitious, the funniest, and the most difficult with the most slowdown problems, so that makes it the least accessible for casual players. So yeah, if you're a shoot-em-up regular, don't be afraid of the third game, but if you're not, stick with the first two games. You can't go wrong. Just be prepared for your brain to end up fried like an egg.