Collection essentials #361: Harmful Park (PS1)

Here’s a console-exclusive shoot ‘em up by an obscure developer called Sky Think Systems that only ever made two other video games. 

Harmful Park is a type of shoot ‘em up commonly called a “cute ‘em up” due to its aesthetics and setting. Easily comparable to Parodius, Harmful Park definitely embraces silliness and that’s part of its charm. The setting of the game, as the title implies, is a theme park, and the story involves an evil scientist who has taken over the park and twisted it into something dangerous while the player characters, a pair of sisters with flying combat vehicles, set out to stop him. Story doesn’t matter much in shoot ‘em ups, but Harmful Park actually bothered to have cutscenes with voice acting for a more impressive presentation. The game takes place in the year 2017, which was 20 years into the future at the time of the game’s initial release but of course nowadays is falling further and further into the past.

Harmful Park delivers very nicely in the gameplay department. There are a few different difficulty levels which do a nice job at providing a way to ease new players in while also offering a touch challenge to veterans of the genre. There are four different weapons that players can freely swap between, and all four of these weapons can be leveled up, until they reach the max after levelling up three times. When the player collects a power-up item, whatever weapon is equipped is the one that gets levelled up. When the player dies, only the equipped weapon will be powered down to the minimum level, so the player may strategize and switch to a low-level weapon if they feel they are in danger and don’t want to risk losing the power of their strongest weapon. 

The four weapons include a fairly standard rapid-bullet-fire shot, a laser attack (which isn’t too different from that first weapon honestly), a homing attack, and a strong but slow attack. Now, since this game has a silly fantasy setting, all these weapons are based on food. The bullet shot is a potato gun, the laser attack is an ice cream laser, the homing attack shoots jellybeans (incorrectly spelled “jerry” by Japanese people who didn’t know English well), and the strong attack uses mechanical hands to fling powerful pies of death at the enemies. You also have a desperation “bomb” attack with a limited stock like in many other shoot ‘em ups, and how it functions depends on what weapon you have currently equipped, which is a nice touch. One of them is even defensive rather than offensive, creating a temporary shield.

The game’s silliness is very amusing. My favorite scene is when you see two people getting married, but then another man enters the church and steals the bride, and you have to dodge the tears of the rejected groom and the hearts from the couple while shooting something on the wall. There’s also at least one neat little difference across the difficulty modes; there’s a boss in one stage which is a giant girl, and she’s taller than the screen so you can’t see her whole face. Upon defeat, she kneels down, and on an easier difficulty she has a very ugly face, but on a harder difficulty she’ll have a pretty face.

There are also a few bonus multiplayer minigames outside of the main game which is a cool bonus. These include a racing and a pong-inspired game using the main characters, and a completely different tank-battle game which feels rather random. There’s also a difficult bonus “score attack” level separate from the main game accessible from the main menu.

Harmful Park seems to have been a flop sales-wise upon its initial release, but is known and beloved among fans of retro shoot ‘em ups like me. The game did get a digital re-release on the PlayStation Network store in Japan over a decade ago, so that tells me there’s hope that it could see another reissue on modern platforms and in all regions. It’s one I’m happy to own, another lovely fun quirky old Japanese game for my collection.