Sexy Parodius

Sexy Parodius (セクシーパロディウス) is a 1996 scrolling shooter arcade game developed by Konami. It is the fifth installment of the Parodius series. Like the rest of the series, it is a parody of the Gradius series and other Konami games.

It also contains sexual level and enemy designs, as well as risqué innuendo. Many level bosses are women in various erotic costumes (such as the "bunny costume" modeled on Playboy Bunnies) or various states of undress.

Plot
Sexy Parodius has a plot, but it is not well touched upon. The story is that Lecher Tako A (aka Takosuke) has opened-up an agency of some sort that helps clients with problems and has hired Pentarou as his secretary. He has also recruited "workers" (the playable characters, who have gone their separate ways) that will solve the problems of each client. Near the end of the game, he is shown with a large bag of money, but gets comically crushed by the giant woman boss.

Gameplay
The gameplay in Sexy Parodius is similar to the rest of the series, but the player must complete a special mission for each stage. These missions range from collecting a certain amount of coins in a stage to destroying a certain object or enemies. Whether or not the player completes the mission determines whether the player can continue to the next stage or what the next stage will be. Unlike the past versions, home ports of the game (except the PSP version) have cooperative multiplayer intact. The game continues to play even when one player is choosing a character upon continuing.

In a 2-player game, when certain characters are near enough, a third shot appears between them which can be purple shots that swirl all over the screen, hearts that home in on enemies, or rockets that shoot straight ahead. This feature was first seen on Konami's arcade game, Lightning Fighters.

The playable characters in this game are:
 * Vic Viper
 * Michael/Gabriel
 * Hikaru/Akane
 * Ivan/Toby
 * Mambo/Samba
 * Koitsu/Aitsu
 * Option/Multiple
 * Shooting Star/Black Viper

Ports
Sexy Parodius was ported to the Sega Saturn and PlayStation and both versions were released on March 1 1996 in Japan. These versions allow the Special Stage to be selected on the Title Screen after finishing the game with all conditions passed. They also come with unlimited continues (the game doesn't keep track of credits). The PlayStation version was also included in Parodius Portable (albeit with music from some stages replaced with other remixed classical songs) for the PlayStation Portable.

Sexy Parodius was the last Parodius shoot'em up game, because next Parodius-related game, Paro Wars, is a strategy game like Cosmic Wars.

Reception
Japanese gaming publication Famitsu gave the PlayStation version of Sexy Parodius a score of 24 out of 40.