A cutesy shooter that's addictive and easy enough for kids to play at the same time.
The basic gameplay is surprisingly similar to the Star Soldier series. In fact it's a parody of the Star Soldier series, similar to how Parodius is a parody to the Gradius series. It's a single player game, so no co-op here! It's a vertical shooter where the goal to shoot a bunch of stuff and then fight the level boss. Each ship has three different shot types. The three ships are Bomberman, Paro Ceaser, and finally a flying PC Engine. There are other powerups that vary ship to ship. For example, Bomberman can have miniature Bombermans flying around him acting as extra firepower. Hearts and extra lives are also present. Collecting hearts means that whenever you die, you respawn right where you left off, similar to Contra or Lifeforce. Extra lives are self-explanitory. Not all the powerups are good though. One in particular (the only on in fact) decreases the ship's shot power, so be warned. The bosses are quirky like a flying roller coaster or a shape-forming tangram. If you feel that the game is getting too hard or too easy, there's an option mode where you can do things such as change the difficulty or listen to the game's music. Finally there's a two minute and five minute mode thats sole purpose is to get a high score in the limited amount of time given.
The controls of Star Parodier are pretty straight forward. II shoots, I does a big explosion that exterminates anything within it's range. The Run button pauses and finally the select button speeds up or slows down your ship. Overall the controls are pretty solid.
The graphics are quite bright and colorful for a PC-Engine game. Given the fact that the PC-Engine CD has the exact same color palette as the PC Engine makes them looks even more impressive.
As for the music, it's brilliant. Every song fits the levels theme perfectly. The voices however are left to be desired. They are extremely stratchy sounding and are played far too often. The worst part is, they can't be turned off. Other than that, everything else in the sound department is pretty solid.
As mentioned before, Cute-em-ups are a pretty strange genre that turn a lot of people off. If you don't mind the weirdness though, you'll find one of the greatest PC-Engine shooters ever made.