Over its lifetime, Super Play reviewed more Super Nintendo games than any other magazine in the United Kingdom - 596 to be precise - so picking a sixth of them, let alone the order of merit, would never be an easy task. For the uninitiated, here at Postcards of Pop Culture we're breaking down all 100 titles from Super Play’s ranking from bottom to top. And while Super Play’s word was regarded among the most reliable around, it wasn’t the only publication with an opinion.
As always, the Super Play overview provided in the entry post for Parodius was from the top 100 itself. The verdict from issue #5 reads:-
Yet again, for me this verdict is pretty much spot on. Visually and tonally a more accessible Konami shooter, Parodius is a very amusing alternative to Gradius. Super Play understand that. But what about the view of other mags at the time? Given its release in the earlier months of the console, Parodius was covered by most of the video game mags of the time. Incredibly however, not Nintendo Magazine System. So let’s start somewhere different. Can you guess from the below?
Did you get it? That’s right, it was Mean Machines issue #23, shortly before it became a Sega dedicated magazine. Parodius even made the cover:
Mean Machines loved Parodius. I will forever remain in love with its visuals and artwork more than the experience itself, but Parodius, like Pop ‘n’ Twinbee, represents an era of great yet original and quirky shoot em ups.
Total! Magazine’s coverage came in issue #17, scoring higher than the verdicts would suggest, with the traditional Gradius preferred.
A rare Game Zone review is up next, a mag that ran initially for twelve issues before splitting into two separate publications, Sega Zone and Nintendo Game Zone. The latter reviewed Parodius in its third issue.
The highest score so far, and the highest praise also. It’s worth nothing here that 94/100 was the second highest score given out for the entire life of the mag, and was also awarded to Super Mario Kart, Street Fighter II Turbo and, er, Lemmings. Yeah.
And finally, Super Pro’s stance is more in line with Super Play’s, lamenting a lack of “lastability” which is definitely not a word. But we get it.
In terms of review scoring overall, Parodius walks away with an average review score of 89.6%, with Super Play again scoring the lowest of the lot. Had Super Play used its review scores to determine ranking within the top 100, Parodius would sit at least 30 places higher! Furthermore, across the entire UK magazine average review scores for the SNES, there are only 71 titles ranked higher than Parodius. None of this means anything by the way, I just enjoy the research. I hope you do too.
Come back next time for the review fallout of the next Super Play top 100 entry!