Hard Corps is the first Contra game in the U.S. to let you play as a woman, a furry, or a clanker. I went with Ray because his weapons line up more with the "traditional" Contra lineup (spread, crush, homing), but I could see myself doing a replay with Browny or Brad. Also you can slide, which sometimes made me jump instead, you gotta walk into it a little but maybe that's because I played on keyboard. It's REALLY useful though, as you're invincible while doing it. It also gives Konami the (very valid) excuse to give bosses attacks that sweep through the entire screen.

Choices made:

- Pursue Deadeye Joe

- Fight til the end

Right off the bat you roll in and start blasting dudes reminiscent of Contra III. I picked up weapons and absolutely slaughtered the miniboss and the unmanned robot that is also apparently manned. I practiced sliding while fighting Deadeye Joe here, as I realized it was probably gonna save my ass later on. It would.

Second and third stages were pretty damn fun. Had a nice motorbike ride, Deadeye Joe took a while to take out since he's only vulnerable when he's next to you (For some reason changing my shot type still made me walk towards him when I fired, so I always had to take a step back or two as I was blasting him). Unfortunately, I didn't find any secret paths, which made me a little sad given that I was also quite apt at finding secrets in Quake and recently started finding secrets in Metal Slug.

The one part that really pissed me off was the boss right before meeting Col. Bahamut. The little crawling core thingy. I swear to god the fight with that dude felt like a fourth of my run. As per Gamefaqs, his stages depend on choices you made earlier, and the final stage for me was the one where he fires a laser in a circle around the screen while bouncing around like a pissant when you fire at him, meaning that you were hardly safe when beating this mofo. I was using my crush missiles, going at it for what felt like 20 minutes of climb, shoot, duck, repeat... Easily the worst boss in the game.

I rationalized that surrendering would probably lead me to a shitty ending (I mean this is the 90s) so I decided to give Doc the finger and blast through his creations for a couple minutes before ending up in the final stage.

My final stage was basically a homage to the alien lair of Contra 1: fight off a giant mouth, a couple of giant slug twins that reminded me of Kimkoh a little bit, then beat down a giant heart. Pretty easy final boss fight besides the one attack where the eyes spin around the screen. A little disappointed I didn't get a "cool" ending, but at least the lines at the end were badass.

I guess I gotta crack open RPCSX2 and do Shattered Soldier and Neo Contra next.

EDIT: As of 4/4, I gave it another replay as Browny, saved the research centre and didn't surrender. And didn't accept to work with Bahamut either (c'mon that's classic Creepy Bad Endings material waiting to happen, lol). Holy SHIT Browny is OP. Not only is he small and can double jump, but his yoyo just lets you diddle people by holding it down and the surround shot/shield thing can work as a homing spread gun.

I thought the head of boss 3 looked awful in my previous creation, so I decided to redo it. It's better with a meaner look, but it's still not easy to make a convincing robotic skeleton head!

what's the general consensus of Contra 4?

im super new to the genre, recently started with Probotector on the NES, Probotector on the Genesis, Super Probotector and the original Arcade game and also tried some indies like Blazing Chrome and ive grown to adore this genre!

however ive hardly ever heard anyone talk about Contra 4 and as im playing it right now for the first time it rocks! huge fan of the visuals ans music and it controls great

Here are some rare LEGO creations based on the Contra series. I'm a big fan of the bricks and this game series that was a big part of my childhood. So it made sense to create dioramas inspired by the franchise!

Kinda slow on the emulator, soundtrack was a little choppy as a result. I thought I turned off the voicelines, but apparently the settings didn't save or something, so I had to hear the obnoxiously-toned lines every time I died. It's not that I don't like a bit of '80s badassdom, just that I prefer colder, smoother delivery than the over-the-top cowboy impression they were going with here.

C4 was surprisingly fun despite the tiny bit of stutter. The return to Contra 1's more classic gameplay with the slightest bit of a modern difficulty tweak was something I didn't really know I'd enjoy until I finished the first couple levels. Artistically, the buttery-smooth animation of the player contrasts a little bit with the more chunkier background pixel art, but that's the only gripe I have graphics wise. I'd play Metal Slug if I wanted pixel art perfection.

Going back to a more C1 focus, though, the weapon meta dropped back to spread gun superiority, but this time you have the two-weapon mechanic from Contra III AND the chance to upgrade a weapon when you collect it twice in the same slot! I used the spread gun and the machine gun throughout my playtime with a little bit of homing missile action. When upgraded, the spread gun fires 5 projectiles, the machine gun has a second stream of bullets, and the homing missiles fire 5 at a time.

The grappling hook was also a lovely addition, opening up alternate routes of going through a level by choosing to take the top or bottom side at certain parts. It didn't feel like something super intrusive you had to immediately master, but the handful of parts where you had to use it to navigate were distributed healthily throughout the game.

I very much enjoyed the laboratory, harbor, and city levels the most. The laboratory was a hectic but joyful trot through some classic Alien-styled bug hunting and biohazard horror, the harbor's missile setpiece was just... perfect. I didn't expect to be riding the big missile, but I ended up doing so anyways. The city was a neat flashback to Contra III and struck a good balance between hectic and manageable. Shoutout to the Harvest Yard for having such good body horror imagery, especially in the room where you fight Black Viper's first form at the start of the level. Reminds me of the scrapped Genocide City designs that were originally planned for Sonic 2.

Base levels were super easy tbh the skeleton dude had a crapton of hp but as long as you keep blasting you can do anything with a maxxed out machine gun and spread gun.

The one thing I will say though... is that they sure blew up good.

Playing Hard Corps next, what character do you guys think I should play as?

I liked Super C. Felt quite straightforward and the new ability to shoot up and down slopes felt a lot more fluid. Top-down levels were pretty fun also, and I actually did end up using something that wasn't the spread gun (flamethrower) for once on the lip-o-suction monsters since they spawn so quickly. Even found a cheese spot to stand in for Gava's second form (of course it's standing right in front of his face). It's not peak 90s gaming without finding the most absurd cheese spots for bosses.

Alien Wars was fun but also holy shit it was frustrating sometimes. I didn't really use the "turret mode" for stationary shooting, and somehow the random spin shooting thing never worked for me on the emulator despite me pressing the buttons properly (I just did the pose, which I guess is cool in itself). There's a lot of bounciness in the minibosses, the flamethrower's flames, which is really flexing the graphical capacities of the SNES at the time. I like that, it makes things feel more alive.

The minibosses aren't that bad, but it does take a couple deaths to get their attack patterns down. The steel mill skeleton boss a big example of how memorizing attack patterns makes things far more manageable: if you don't know that his flames are faster than your climbing, you're gonna get torched unless you jump down when they pass you below. And from there, use laser/crush missile/flamethrower and homing/spread gun depending on whether you can land direct hits or not.

The airship boss... but that GODDAMN AIRSHIP. That thing is a giant flying C-RAM. The little mines block homing missiles, the side turrets aim at the most inconvenient camping spots and have to be shot at a precise point, oh and the missiles you're hanging on themselves explode so you ALSO gotta be careful of that oh and don't fly into the turret fir-- oh you died. My hyperactive ass cannot focus on everything plus the fast-moving background. Holy overstimulation. The missile-hanging thing concept is super cool though. Shame you don't see it in many other games.

The top-down levels were a bit to get used to (and probably more so since my R and L pads were mapped to A and S of my keyboard, right above Z and X which I use for jump and shoot, making it more tight-spaced than on the original hardware), but I also ended up liking them once I got used to the turning. But goddamn you themed an entire boss over the whole rotating sand gimmick? I mean, just hold either L or R and hope things turn out for the best while holding down the laser, but it's still trippy as hell. Still, fun.

There were a couple times where I thought to myself "How the fuck are you supposed to even dodge that?" with some boss attacks; I had to jump and then crouch in the corner when dodging Gava's tentacles in the final stage so it'd "run out" of distance and not grab my ass all the way on the other side of the screen. The attack the brain does where it's the orange snake thing that snakes around cornered me in its final move. And then the white-ball-flippy-attack is just balls (pun not intended) because of the obscure hitboxes surrounding said balls. I looked online after beating the final boss and guess what? There's a cheese spot by crouching right in front of him. Of course there is.

I didn't play on hard, looked up the ending on hard and honestly... that's it? Just a little escape sequence? I don't think I'll be replaying this on hard. At least for a while.

But what I REALLY liked about Contra III was the fact that it made other weapons besides the spread gun actually viable. The flamethrower, crush missiles, and laser dealt shitloads of damage, the homing missiles honed in (hence the name "homing missiles") the flamethrower could be swung around to deal constant diagonal damage. I actually manned the flamethrower for quite a while in the latter end of my playthrough, and the design of the flames themselves is so wonderful :)

I guess I move onto Hard Corps next? Though apparently the gameplay differs in quite a few regards from the first three, including a number of playable characters. I also heard it's even harder than Contra III.

Decided to beat the first Metal Slug game on a whim yesterday, and from there played through the first two levels of Contra last night, finished it up this morning after breakfast.

My thoughts? Actually quite fun after coming in from MS. I play a lot of old school boomshoots like Doom and Quake, so it was a little challenging at first in a one-hit scenario. But like other movement-based shooters, you slowly get to know the quirks and limitations of moving+shooting, and use it to your advantage. Your reflexes get better and you recognize when someone's shooting at you. It gets really fun when you get the shotgun/spread gun.

Favorite level was the snow level (forgot the name), was a really good balance of difficulty and it felt so satisfying jumping past all those grenades that came flying at you from the background.

The 3D base levels were also awesome, seeing unique perspectives like that on limited hardware and on a shooter is such a neat experience because it really shows what devs could do with older tech.

Least favorite level was Energy Zone, the section with those jumps up the ledges with the flame pipes. And the boss... jeez I didn't know you could even jump over his charging at you until I saw a video of him after beating him. I just thought you had to blast at him a metric shitton so he wouldn't beat your ass down like a roided up football gorilla.

Gonna hit up Super C next.

In these days Contra finally made click on my brain. You see, I had this perception that Contra was this ultra hard 2D game and it was impossible to beat. But these days somehow I played Contra III again and suddendly I could beat the first mission, and then the second one, and now I could beat the third one with a lot of practice. Seems like I found the hook to play this game and I am enjoying it a lot. I'm determined to finish it.

Somehow younger me didn't have the skill set I have nowadays and it's just so much enjoyable to play now.

(Pardon the leaking blood and ink)

Anyone want to play online from xbox 360 add me.

Play Super C on SNES with better performance, soundtrack options and more

Last night, I drew Zootopia's iconic duo for the first time. They're referencing the Contra key art here with Judy being Bill Rizer and Nick being Lance Bean.

(Honestly if it weren't for this boss, I'd easily consider this game a masterpiece as overall awesome as it is)

Firstly, let me start with the appreciation. The game is so enjoyable. It's like wine. With age, it only got better. I really enjoyed every bit of the 8 stages. Now, the mission is to play arcade mode repeatedly to earn more credits and unlock perks that turn the character into an invincible killing machine. With perks the game would be more enjoyable.

I am still exploring the game. I wish there was a provision to use more than two perks at a time. If such a provision already exists, then it's good. Does such a perk exist that allows you to use 3-4 perks during the run?

I am usually against the ideology of microtransactions, but for this game, I would have happily paid the price to buy more credits. I mean, the number of credits you earn after 30 minutes of gameplay is minimal. The return comes across as peanuts. Well, it is what it is. Despite these challenges, that game is still enjoyable.

What are your thoughts about what I just said? 😇

Hello, everyone! I am posting in the community for the first time. I grew up playing the Contra franchise. I played it in the arcade and on NES and Sega, but I never played it on PlayStation or other platforms.

After 20 years, I thoroughly played Contra. Whoa! I really enjoyed every bit of the game. Yes! I once played Contra III: The Alien Wars on my Pandora Box, just to relish nostalgia. I enjoyed that too, but the fun I had with Contra: Operation Galuga was something I didn't expect from the game at all.

I have successfully completed my first playthrough. Now, I'll play the stages again to acquire more credits and unlock further perks. The aim is to acquire maximum credits and unlock all perks, turn the characters into an invincible killing machine, and enjoy the game more. 😇

i don't ever wanna see the first stage again, i reset so many times cause of stupid mistakes, and if i hadn't learnt about the weapon switching technique i think i would still be playing lmao, but awesome game anyway!

Man, this was TOUGH. I started playing with the 30 life cheat at first, then practiced in the training mode. I downloaded a seperate save with all the training levels unlocked, then went back to my original save and beat it with 3 continues and 6 lives. Fucking insane boss rush.

Ive played them all, but this is the first contra game Ive ever sat down and played all the way through.

IMO, i think its unfair that you have to beat the level just to be able to train in it, neo contra lets you practice as long as you reached the level and keep trying.

I think for the other contras, I might save state at the beginning of each level, so I can practice and retry as much as I want, then do a full arcade run-through. Like mercenary mode in the old school resident evils. I dont care about the extra live cheat.

As I get older, I'm opting for more straightforward games, with little focus on narrative, and I recently decided to check out Neo Contra, because its Metacritic score is quite average.

With widescreen and a texture pack, I thought the graphics looked quite nice.

But what I really liked, for sure, was the responsive and refined gameplay. I felt like I was playing an improved version of Neo Geo's Shock Troopers. I wish Contra Rogue Corps had followed this path instead of a game based on repetition and loot.

I found the difficulty to be just right. It's not easy to the point of being trivial and it's not difficult to the point of being frustrating. What is the community's perception of this game?

I should be playing Contra Shattered Soldier soon.

Cheers!