Harmful Park (also known as Harmful Park: High-Brow Gag Pure Shooting) is a 1997 Horizontal Scrolling Shooter made by Sky Think System, and a Cute 'em Up PlayStation game in the vein of Parodius and Boogie Wings.
And yes, the game's absolutely insane.
The game's story takes place at a huge newly-opened Amusement Park island known as Heartful Park, where two days after its grand opening, it's suddenly hijacked by its own creator, a Mad Scientist named Dr. Tequila, whose loyal minions invaded the park en masse while taking the innocent visitors hostage in the process. In due time, Dr. Tequila declares Heartful Park an independent nation and vows to wage war against the mainland in his first step towards world domination.
One of Dr. Tequila's former colleagues, Dr. Cassis vows to stop him from succeeding with his Evil Plan and to this end, she has her two slacker daughters, Lesca and Lemone use her prototype hover-cycles, armed to the teeth with assorted weapons so that they can make their way to the theme park in order to kick ass, save the hostages, and stop Dr. Tequila's minions, whose ranks includes a mechanical stuffed dinosaur, a gigantic hippie woman, sentient constellations, giant robots shaped like koi flags, and all kinds of nonsensical oddities.
Besides the main game, three mini-games - Punch-Ball, Sky Circuit and Tank Battle - are available as well.
This game was Sky Think System's last output before it folded at the end of 1997. Nowadays, it's somewhat a collector's item due to obscurity.
Welcome to Harmful Park!
- Amusement Park of Doom: The game is set in one of these, after Dr. Tequila took over the place.
- Auto-Scrolling Level: While regular gameplay averts this, where you're allowed full control of your sky-cycles, the mini-game "Sky Circuit" plays it straight by sending you dashing forward in a narrow canyon on automatic.
- "Bang!" Flag Gun: Dr. Tequila's mecha in his Final Boss battle will sometimes fire one of these from his guns. Which can still hurt you.
- Belly Mouth: The giant Emperor boss have a second face in his huge belly. With eyes in place of nipples and a smiling mouth that tries chomping you down.
- Big Boo's Haunt: One of the stages is set in the park's Haunted House, with plenty of ghost enemies, skeletons who can fill the screen with bone projectiles and even The Grim Reaper.
- Bilingual Bonus: The final stage is set in an Oriental-looking castle with banners in the background written in Japanese. One of the banners reads "好色一代", or "The Perverted Generation".
- Brutish Bulls: Bulls on jetpacks appears as enemies in the forest area. Don't ask.
- Bullet Hell: Despite the game's cutesy-looking aesthetics and silly premise, it can get pretty unforgiving sometimes, with later stages cluttering the screen with bullets. Especially when fighting Dr. Tequila and his huge mecha in the Final Boss fight.
- Covers Always Lie: If you can deduce this game to be a Shoot 'Em Up based on the cover art, congratulations on being psychic. The game's cover art depicts the title... written in chocolate syrup, on a pancake, on a dinner plate. It tells nothing on what the game is about and doesn't exactly scream "Cute 'em Up shooter!" at a glance...
- Creepy Doll: Sentient stuffed dolls are enemies in the Haunted House level. They look like cute, girly toys... until they open their mouths which takes up most of their faces.
- Deflector Shields: One of the available power-ups. Made of jelly.
- Dual Boss: The space stage ends with a boss battle against two jellyfish mecha, one above and one below the players.
- Edible Ammunition: From jellybeans and gumballs to pies to ice cream...
- Face Ship: One of the game's Mini-Boss, a Boeing CH-47 Chinook choppper with a dog's face as design motif. The projectiles, for some baffling reason, are fired from its rear end.
- Giant Woman: One of the bosses is a huge girl in a mini-skirt, tall enough to occupy the entire screen when standing upright where her face remains entirely outside the screen for the duration of the boss battle. Defeating her will have her sitting down, and if you're on Easy mode you find out she's actually quite a butterface despite having a shapely body (on the other hand, defeat her on Hard mode and she's revealed to be an attractive anime girl).
- Homing Projectile: The jellybean projectiles, which can home in on the nearest target.
- Hover Bike: Unlike similar Cute 'em Up games at the time, this one have you riding weaponized sky-cycles to shoot at stuff.
- Instrument of Murder: One of the mook-variety enemies plays trumpets which can fire projectiles.
- Mechanical Animals: You'll be fighting robotic animals as enemies on a regular basis. For example, the theme park's merry-go-rounds have their horses weaponized and will trample you on sight.
- Monster Whale: The boss of the tropical island stage, a whale mecha who regurgitates assorted projectiles at you while rising in and out the water.
- Not Zilla: One of the bosses is an inflatable Godzilla-esque giant monster, with some mooks stomping on a pump to inflate it when you arrive at the arena. Despite being an oversized balloon it can still take quite some damage before going down.
- Pie in the Face: We did mention the game has pies as projectiles, right? Which can explode?
- Spread Shot: A classic power-up in shumps, with this one's allowing your cycles to fire arcs of 7 shots at a time.
- Stingy Jack: You fight a gigantic Jack-O-Lantern as one of the bosses.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Lesca and Lemone appear to fall under this archetype; Lesca has spiky Boyish Short Hair and spends the whole game in shirt and slacks while Lemone has long, flowing hair and wears a blouse with short skirt.
- Tropical Island Adventure: One of the stages is set at the park's tropical island zone, with its introductory cutscene featuring a monkey stealing the players' lunch. Giving chase on their cycles, the players battles assorted enemies in a jungle-themed environment before leading to the seas where they fight a whale mecha boss.
- Twinkle in the Sky: The Not Zilla boss, as mentioned above, where it's a gigantic balloon being controlled by two mook-grade enemies that you can't harm because they're behind the gigantic boss. But if you destroy the boss and makes it blow up, the two mooks gets caught in the blast and launched to the skies in the background (complete with two twnikling stars!).
- Wave-Motion Gun: Collecting an ice-cream bowl power upgrade somehow enlarges your shots until they can cover more than half the screen, and then some more.
- Wedding Smashers: One of the boss battles is set in a church, where a wedding is happening in the background while you fight the boss (a gigantic purple heart). You're not doing the crashing though - the bride and groom exchanging their vows are suddenly interrupted by the bride's boyfriend crashing in and the bride running away, and it quickly turns into a Meaningful Background Event because the groom's Ocular Gushers and the many Heart Symbols from the bride's smooching with her ex turns into projectiles that can hurt you.
