Apidya

One of the lesser known abilities of the garden snail.

Apidya is a horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up video game that was released for the Amiga in 1992, and notable at the time for three things: beautiful graphics, gorgeous music and the fact that the main character is a bee.

Yes, a bee. Specifically, a honey bee, or rather, a human named Ikuro, who transformed himself into a honey bee for the purpose of defeating the evil Hexaae. Compared to most other shooters which involved spaceships, the idea of flying as a bee across meadows and ponds and fighting insects was refreshingly novel.

The game borrows the power-up system from Gradius, allowing the player to select powers depending on how many flowers he collects from destroyed enemies.

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Tropes used in Apidya include:

• Animate Inanimate Object: The sewer level has many of these — apparently Hexaae's magic works on non-living things as well. The second boss of the sewer level is a can of Pepsi-Cola.
• Asteroids Monster: one of the bosses is one, which makes less sense when you remember that it's a FISH.
• Bee-Bee Gun: Hexaae attacks Ikuro's wife Yuri with bees, poisoning her. Also, the final boss's attack is him endlessly releasing insects at you.
• Bonus Level of Heaven: literally (and making absolutely no sense for this game). You fly above heavenly clouds, catching angels and avoiding demons.
• Bonus Stage: Several, including one that you can enter during a boss battle.
• Media Research Failure: Amiga Power kept referring to the main character as a wasp. It's not.
• Dueling Games: Apidya came out in the very same month as Project-X and Agony, two other very popular horizontally scrolling shoot-em-ups.
• Exty Years From Now: The intro shows us events taking place in '19XX'.
• Fireballs: One of the heavy weapons used by insects.
• Flying Seafood Special: the first boss of the final boss rush is a fish, and yet it flies.
• Hammerspace: The bee has a build-up weapon similar to the wave cannon in R-Type: a biological rocket that is bigger than the bee is. Since the bee is magical, this can be forgiven, but it does look rather odd to see Ikuro firing the enormous missile.
• Insect Gender Bender: If Ikuro is supposed to be a worker honeybee, then it implies that he is in fact female for most of the game.
• Interface Spoiler: Quite an odd one. You can listen to most of the game's music on the menu screen, and there's one tune, 'Speed of Light', that could never be heard in game, but the position and style of it suggested that it had to be for a bonus level in the techno world. It was fifteen years later before someone hacked the game to find out where this bonus level was. Apparently a bug in the code may have stopped people getting into it.
• Mook Maker: The final boss is one. In fact, that's his only attack.
• Never Trust a Title: The game's title screen suggests that this game is called 'Apidya II', which has led many people to ask about Apidya I. There isn't one. This is the original Apidya, and the 'II' was supposed to be a joke.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: If you don't have a shield, Ikuro dies if anything hits him. Even if he hits scenery. This is likely due to shoot-em-up legacy of the time - spaceships in horizontally-scrolling shooters were always One Hit Point Wonders.
• Puffer Fish: the first boss of the final boss rush is one - to be specific, a long-horned cowfish. Appropriately, it's an Energy Absorber; it gets larger and more powerful the more you shoot it. Until it explodes. Into more fish.
• Segmented Serpent: The eel boss is the most fitting example, since it moves around like a snake, but there are other segmented enemies: some odd pond animal with an extending jaw, and swinging electrical cables in the sewer level. Don't forgot the Dead Rat boss when maggots rise from the corpse and Doll Face Brat's hand.
• Shout-Out: The whole fourth level is a shout-out to R-Type.
• Shown Their Work: The depictions of European insects and other animals are all accurate, and if you know your biology, you can identify them.
• Spider Tank: The first boss of the techno world, a giant, indestructible mecha-crab.
• Swallowed Whole: The pike boss can do this to you. Bizarrely, it's actually not a bad thing. In fact, entering the pike boss' mouth sends you to a Bonus Stage.
• Womb Level: the giant pike's stomach, and the dead rat's stomach... or intestines?
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Ikuro, duh!
• Your Head Asplode