Games of the Abstract: Fantastic Journey (1994)

 

a.k.a. Gokujo Parodius

Publisher: Konami

Developer: Konami

Two Player

Arcade/Saturn/Playstation One/Super Famicom/Mobile (Saturn Version Played)

 

At last. I've found the past glory!

Out of all the games I played in my youth, barring all the pro wrestling games, there were only a handful which were on multiple rotations. The Sega Saturn, an obscurer console to have in the family household, least had two. Sonic R (1997), a strange racing spin-off for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise when an actual sequel never came, was one of them, which with my older sister we played against how it was meant to be used, i.e. not follow the racetrack but wander about. The other has sadly become obscurer and, as a European only release for the console, more expensive to find, which is Parodius. Effectively a compilation of two of the Konami parody shooters, Parodius Da! (1990) and the English dubbed Fantastic Journey, Fantastic Journey was the one played the most, and returning to said game, I see why with ease. That is not even a mean remark against the older game, which I merely did not play enough of at all, but Fantastic Journey itself caught my attention back them with justification.

It is strange to return to, least in mind that the Konami who made this, who made a variety of games including scrolling shooters being part of their bread-and-butter, are a very different group decades later. They have not done themselves well to video gamers in the late 2010s - between deciding to invest more in pachinko machines using franchises, cancelling a Silent Hill sequel with a huge group of collaborators¹, and their very messy divorce with auteur Hideo Kojima where, as he went to his own studio to make Death Stranding (2019), they really came off as villains. Parodius in general as a franchise, a parody series based on another of their sci-fi scrolling shooter franchises called Gradius, comes from a very different time and Fantastic Journey was mid-way through this franchise which started in the late eighties.

Without any context, Fantastic Journey was a deliciously strange game that fed my imagination in my youth, and it is still a deliciously strange (and eventually hard) scrolling shooter whose artistic quality, originally as an arcade game, is proudly on display to bring a smile on the viewer's face. As its designer Shujirou Hamakawa once said on record², the game was meant to make a player laugh whilst pushing coins into it in a Japanese arcade, and it succeeds completely, Parodius, just from this game, is deeply silly and a tribute to their entire back catalogue of scrolling shooters, which is established from the character roster. With two duplicates of each, for two players, you have the following: two Gradius-like ships to nod to that franchise; octopi; two ocean sunfish based from an obscure Konami obscure shooter Space Manbow (1989); two fleshed out stick people riding paper planes; angel pigs; two penguins, based on the protagonist of Antarctic Adventure (1983); two robotic figures from another shooter Twinbee (1985); and the one I used, Hikaru (or Akane), a woman in a Playboy Bunny costume riding a rocket. That might come off as crass as a character, but like another uses of that specific costume (singlet, bunny ears stockings), it is clear Japanese pop culture ran with the costumes separate to Playboy themselves as something they found likable as a costume.

Immediately, on the Saturn, Fantastic Journey is a gorgeous game to look at. A vibrant extravaganza, only slowing down in jerky frame rate once in an underwater sequence on Level 2, it is matched by the world, of an era where a dream logic sans story was more commonplace. It begins with Level 1 mashing a giant, enterable UFO catcher crossed with Las Vegas casino palace, with catcher claws dropping giant toys from above and the many reoccurring enemies appearing for the first time, from the many penguins that reappear as the real antagonists and background characters among many positions, to the flying Moai heads in various forms. If this does not make you fully aware of the absurdity of the game, when your first boss in a panda ballerina robot, with a sentiment duck head as headgear, this should cement this. The music as well is as much part of the game's personality, with referrals back to Konami's back catalogue but also existing music, such as jazz tune In the Mood by Joe Garland for Level One.

And the game hurdles on. Level 2 a nautical theme, with penguin pirates on a sentiment cat submarine, against a giant mermaid as a boss. The first two levels are simpler to get into, but whilst this is not the extremes of the later "bullet hell" scrolling shooters, where technology allowed developers to fill whole screens with coloured bullets of death, a pertinent aspect of Fantastic Journey is having to weave and negotiate around hazards as much as it is shooting, enemies baring a couple destroyable with one shot and the overpowered nature of the power ups when acquired meaning dexterity and obstacle courses are more a concern. Level 3 finally emphasises this sense, even if the Saturn version allows up to nine continues with three lives per one, Parodius a challenge as much for pattern recognition but also obstacle negotiation when the cake themed world naturally has barriers of Battenberg to shoot through that cause death on contact, matched by hazards coming in on all sizes, destroyable giant slices of kiwi and un-destroyable blocks of gems to cause the short level's negotiation to be more hazardous. This makes it almost a cakewalk, forgive the pun and if you realise the boss will once try to run into you, that you finish the level fighting spaceship which fires giant whipped cream lasers afterwards.

Power ups, as mentioned, allow you to gain more and more firepower, arguably to the point that, numerous early in the levels, losing them by losing a life poses a great handicap. Bells, of a variety of colours, add another factor to exploit. Gold is just for points, but others, provided you have not shot them into another colour (usually gold), are helpful, be they screen filling explosions, a giant mode which makes you invulnerable and damages all you smother, a trio of energy barriers, and a megaphone, allowing you to destroy on mass all under the range of your shouted words, translated in the English version for strange sentences.

How well you play does dictate moment how the game changes, the most prominent being whether a bonus level is used early on, accessed after the first three levels or so, or later on, when the game feels you have gotten cocky and decides to briefly crush you. (This can be used as a strategy even in terms of endurance if you can beat the level or sacrifice lives, as if you do lose a continue, thankfully you never have to play the level again.) Set in space against an entire spaceship commanded by Moai heads, it also does not feel out-of-place, hardcore and intense in a way appropriately over-the-top even in the remix of Ride of the Valkyries you get in the section. And this is where the game, even before getting to the later half, already has a virtue.

There are moments when the game does show its age, but only a few. If you do not get the right options set up in the European Saturn release, each life lost leads to you having to go back to the character selection, and the wrong option chosen leads to the confusion mechanic of having to store power ups to charge weapons on your choice, when Automatic and merely focusing on dodging your enemies is a challenge enough. Life saving aspects found in modern video games would have to be added if this ever got a new release, but it is never evil for the sake of it, and when it is difficult, it is still funny and entertaining.

And the challenges are as much done with a sense of humour, being forced in Level 4 to go through a giant traffic jam of chickens, not humanised but regular shape, in clothes pretending to be people, be it salary men to police, all whilst leading to a giant traffic light robot parodying a reoccurring boss in the Gradius games called a "Gun Wall". Only now, decades later, do I actually bother to move down or up depending when the giant hammer and claw move at me, but the game's barrage of strangeness, and how moving is a greater concern, including into the corner of the screen being a very effective defensive tool, is something that only can be appreciated now. Knowing I am not a great player, there is however a simplicity to the mechanics which you can learn to appreciate, especially as this is as much a challenge just to move to the right place quickly. Shooting is arguably less an issue even with the bosses, who only take a few shots as long as you hit the right spot (indicated in the game before each one), the environment and bullets being fired back the true challenges.

Even its sense of humour is more appreciated now as an adult. For example, Level 4's traffic zone with a running gag as a series of hazards based on yellow signs - danger of rock collapses, warning for deer leading to cute deer head falling from the sky, and an exclamation warning for danger leading to giant exclamation marks - jokes with more appreciation especially when they are part of the hazards themselves. Like a lot of these scrolling shooters, as I come to them more appreciative, the more inventive and strange ones (like this or Harmful Park (1997), an obscure Japanese only Playstation One release) putting animation and jokes in the background you may never see focused on staying alive but come to appreciate when noticed, such as the penguins not only the protagonists and antagonists here but everywhere onscreen among other details.

Particularly returning to my childhood, and just looking at the Saturn's PAL territory catalogue, for European and Australian releases, we like the United States barely got a lot of the Japanese titles for the system, instead from the likes of an early Electronic Arts, a surprising amount of series shooters based around air planes or futuristic craft, and a lot of sports games, which made those exclusively released in the PAL territories a surprise, this among this. Finally getting to the end of the game, the creativity is not lost, and as an arcade game rather than a long play campaign, it never burns out at all. Level 5, which I once got to before as a child, is a conventional outer space level, but even here the gag is having a boss called Capsule Monster Cappuccino, magnificently named, a giant living power up who can hurt players on contact, but is useless and can only fire regular power ups at you, making an easy way to acquire firepower for Level 6, where the game's country of origin is clear.

How else do you explain going to the Moon and finding rabbits there, based on a myth originating from China and circulating around Asia of the Moon Rabbit based on the shadows on the dark side, or that your boss is Princess Kaguya, the figure of one of the oldest Japanese tales, though here a wooden cut-out when you learn the truth of her presence. The sense that this will end soon after is funnier knowing, the final level set at an intergalactic penguin disco, that for how difficult the section is, dodging moving platforms and bullets from all sides, the closest thing to a boss is actually dodging the limbs from a giant Las Vegas showgirl, a reoccurring trope of the series, and the actual one is completely harmless². An actual challenge comes in the Secret Stage you enter afterwards, but in a wonderful piece of accessibility, once you beat the game once, you can play it as an additional option, with up to eight continues in my case for a game of "my first bullet hell". So much so, the end boss to that segment, a mecha robot penguin, was a complimentary mint after the hard work of the level itself.

Fantastic Journey was in the middle of this franchise, the last being Sexy Parodius (1996), which has cheesecake but suggests less than that title actually implies, extended a little longer to the 2010s if you include the pachinko machines that tied into the franchise. Even the Gradius series, with its last non-pachinko entry in 2010 sadly, has become dusty on the shelves too. The closest thing in terms of Konami continuing, between 2007 and 2011 with three games, is the Otomedius series, where space ships from their scrolling shooters where anthropomorphized as women. The one thing that stands out about this franchise, only learning of this franchise for this review, is that alongside polygonal graphics is the appeal both to fan service in terms of referencing the companies' old games but also the sexual kind. To be blunt, the character designs alone focus more of sexualisation, where there are character costumes, to apologise to any female readers or anyone reading this, barely there to be able to support characters which large busts, without top straps physically impossible to actually cup anything if you were to look at the designs. Even in mind there is a token male character with bared chest in the first game, this is sad in terms of having to chase a trend when Parodius, alongside having its occasional titillating moment, was so much more compelling as a bonkers cartoon world.

But Konami, and frankly any publisher, had to move on, and scrolling shooters after their time in the sun are a niche, one beloved and carried on by the likes of Cave alongside other companies, who went for bullet hell sub-genre games, whilst Parodius is not as easily accessible as it should be. It is a franchise that would be exceptional to see as a compilation in the modern day even if a new game was never made. Certainly as retro arcade games have become as popular as they are, Fantastic Journey by itself, at the stage where there had been entries before in this series to work out the tone, and with the graphical qualities of the era, is a little gem. Even in mind of an old Saturn copy which may succumb to laser rot, unless the console was the go first, it was one game that in hindsight is one of my favourites just in terms of all the memories it has given me.

 

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1) Hideo Kojima, Oscar winner film maker Guillermo Del Toro, American actor Norman Reedus, and acclaimed Japanese manga author Junji Ito. Even if the game had turned out disappointing, and in mind its playable trailer, P.T. (2014), became a legendary piece of gaming in its own right, the death of the project lost us a huge landmark of creativity.

2) A wonderfully detailed and translated interview with key staff on this game can be found HERE, thankfully archived.

2) [Major Spoiler] Even the actual ending, a cut scene where after finding treasure, all you get is a bomb and being blown up, with the intergalactic disco destroyed, is appropriately absurd for a dark conclusion from out of nowhere. [Spoiler Ends]