Shooter Parodies

As pointed out recently on the shmups forum, 1up has published a nice 3 page article on shooter parodies, titled "Schtick 'em up: What happens when a straight-laced genre gets weird?" . The first paragaph puts my passion for arcade shooters into perspective:

"Shooters are the foundation of the video game industry, dating back all the way to the 1960's with Steve Russell's classic Spacewar. Since that time, the genre has been responsible for bringing much depth to the world of interactive entertainment, popularizing vital concepts like the power-up and the end-of-level boss which are still used in many of today's greatest games."

To quote again from the article, here is the general idea behind shooter parodies:

"In the early 1990's, the designers at Konami felt like having some fun at the expensive of its first shoot-em-up, the genre-defining Gradius. They whipped up this spin-off which replaced the killer satellites, the laser cannons, and the combat droids of Gradius with waddling penguins, fifty-foot tall Vegas showgirls, and treasure chests loaded with hornets."

Its nice to read today's gaming journalists still acknowledging the shooters genre, much less the small faction of shooter parodies. A fun read, which even has a reference to my favorite defunct TV show Futurama!