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[Oersted]

In 1996, Konami released the video game “Sexy Parodius” and the soundtrack is everything you’d want from an anthropomorphic world inhabited by scantily dressed women, flying pigs, kissing penguins, dragons and mythical humanlike beings. The soundtrack is fun, bright and delves into 8-bit wonders.

But there’s one song that stands out — a featured sample of “Mayim, Mayim,” an Old World Jewish song composed by Emanuel Amiran in the early 20th century.

“Lovely Otohime” plays during the third mission, with “Mayim, Mayim” layered underneath. Crashing drums and electronic horns burst as a flying pig hurls Pac-Man-like faces at an elderly woman.

Today, “Mayim, Mayim” is most often heard at Hebrew schools and summer camps. How the song ended up in this Japanese video game has everything to do with a 20th-century geopolitical mess — World War II.

Give it a read, its pretty fascinating

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-09-18/jewish-folk-song-preserved-japanese-video-game

Lock if old

 

[The Bankslammer]

I don't know if I'd necessarily say Mayim Mayim stands out in the soundtrack considering music in the series consists of remixes of classic and folk tunes from around the world (the remix of Mayim Mayim even begins with the stinger played at the start of Yie Ar Kung Fu, and the track was replaced altogether with Korobushka in the PSP version). I've always thought that the relative popularity of the tune in Japan was interesting, though, especially when I saw the Sexy Parodius version featured in a bunch of parody videos on NicoNicoDouga, lol.

As a Jewish person who very briefly studied abroad in Japan, I had some brief conversations with host families about Judaism and found that they knew... pretty much nothing about it, making it all the more interesting that the song is so widely known. Had no idea about the folk dance teacher, interesting stuff!

 

[Dyle]

Wow, what a weird series of games. Konami parodying themselves with a weird and grossly perverted Gradius clone. To be honest the use of Mayim, Mayim in the soundtrack might be one of the least strange things about it, especially since the entire soundtrack for the series is remixes and riffs on classical music and songs from other Konami games.

 

[Hayama Akito]

Musically speaking Parodius is the Looney Tunes of videogames.

 

[Jawmuncher]

Ahh so this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtf0zLwq604

 

[Boss Doggie]

By the way you should check out Parodius Portable or their arcade releases. It has audio changes of course, like they replaced Mambo No. 5 with something else. But then they replaced That's The Way (I Like It) with a fucking DDR song (Brilliant2U).