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Contra - What memories come to mind when you hear that name?
- Thread starter SharpX68K
- Start date
Contra: Hard Corps for the Genesis, easily the best game in the series. Also hard as balls, and I was also completely unaware of the multiple endings. My brother and I were ecstatic when we finally beat one of the scenarios, I think it was the one where you time traveled and ended up as the ruler. Plus that soundtrack tho.
The first version of Contra I played was on C64. Even though I'm in NTSC land, it was the PAL version called Gryzor. It was pretty good but I got the NES version soon afterwards and it was notably better. I played the arcade version back then, too. It gets a bad rap but I don't think it's that much below the NES game. The jumping physics are a bit wonky.
it's the corridor stages that really suck in comparison to the NES game.
Like the first three levels of the original game and dying a lot. And the Konami code, obviously.
That 'air raid bombing' moment in the first stage of Contra III: Alien Wars. That shit felt ultra realistic and intense to me as a kid, I had never seen videogame graphics like that.
That I beat the game at age 6 but none of my school friends believed when I told them the day after
NES
The code
Followed by the intro music
Followed by the jungle music
Followed by the crazy guns
In that order
It's probably my most beaten game as a kid
The code
Followed by the intro music
Followed by the jungle music
Followed by the crazy guns
In that order
It's probably my most beaten game as a kid
This:
This is also me. My brother and I were obsessed with the game and our mom was a little bit surprised that they'd called an NES game, a product ostensibly made for children, after a notorious and nefarious multinational political affair from the 1980s. She tried to explain to me what the Contras were, but my 9 year old brain was kind of confused concerning what all that had to do with killing Aliens.
Contra is the most 80s video game of all. You play as Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando and Sylvester Stallone in Rambo, running around the jungle from Predator while killing Aliens from Aliens in a videogame made by Japanese developers that is entitled after a political scandal from the 80s that involved the president that embodies America in the 80s.
I remember going into Blockbuster in '92 and saw the box for Contra 3 and saw the still image of this gif on the back of the box and was like, "I HAVE to play this".
Correction: This image to be exact:
Came here just to post this. Dananananananananananananananana Naaa! Da dada dadaaaaa!
The Alien Wars soundtrack is burned into my brain. Stage 1 in particular.
Same, I think I could finish the game without losing a single life
Not a series I have much nostalgia for tbh. I played the NES version on one of those multi-game selection arcades we had in a bolling alley here at the time, I guess it was actually Probotector I don't remember. I did have Contra on the SNES and that was good.
The run and gun genre is... ok - Gunstar Heroes, Metal Slug that kind of thing, it's fine for a quick blast but it's never been a favourite of mine. Maybe it's the setting of guns and military meatheads in Contra - if it was cutesy animals or something more subversive maybe I'd be more drawn to it.
The run and gun genre is... ok - Gunstar Heroes, Metal Slug that kind of thing, it's fine for a quick blast but it's never been a favourite of mine. Maybe it's the setting of guns and military meatheads in Contra - if it was cutesy animals or something more subversive maybe I'd be more drawn to it.
OP
OP
I honestly did not expect 70+ replies to th
That Mode 7 scaling effect and that scene is legendary.
I never really played more than 40 minutes of Hard Corps Via emulation in the 2000s. I never played it in the 90s, because, I am not some die hard Contra fan (no pun intended. I am more of a casual Konami fan and I love 16-bit arcade games, I mean the actual coin-ops, even though I grew up in the NW Chicago suburbs and was barely even a teenager in 1989 and only saw the arcade games that I happened to see, during 1988-1992/93, in my localized world-sphere, a very tight area on a map in Cook County, Illinois. And from then on.
So as far as coin-op arcade games, I saw what I saw at malls and dedicated arcades, large and small.At restaurants, convince stores, bars, laundary Matts, more malls, vacations in Wisconsin, medium sized town Iowa, Indiana, etc
With all of that said, and I've said it before, I fucking love this game:
Kim Justice sums up this specific arcade game perfectly in the context of that era. Konami's Aliens (1990) is an official, licensed 'Aliens' game based on the 1986 blockbuster movie/film by James Cameron. Yet at the same time it's basically almost like an unofficial Contra arcade game, but with Up/down movement across the screen, meaning like, the same as beat 'em ups I.e. Final Fight, Golden Axe (and Capcom's Aliens vs Predator four or five years later. Konami's 1990 Aliens arcade game, had unique entirely to this game Alien-inspired creatures and generic characters that don't resemble the actors on the human side, and alien creature designs that never existed in the films, or anywhere else except the arcade team at Konami and their artists and makers of 16-Bit arcade SPRITES.
The hardware, arcade board that Konami's 1990 Aliens game ran on was the same as the 1989/1990 TMNT arcade game, the popular one most of you know. The awesome 2-4 player beat'em up. I shoulda' said that in the first place to explain the gameplay mechanics. Duh.
So picture that, but all shooting and climbing and crawling and shooting, in very Contra-esque + official Aliens-based Colonial Marines scenes, weapons,backgrounds, vehicles, etc. with a lot of LIBERTIES taken on Konami's part.Lots of brightly-colored alien creatures, shots, explosions, etc. But that's okay because it's still a pretty good arcade game. Decent amount of animation. It's also clearly a step more graphically advanced than 1988's arcade Super Contra, which really wasn't such an outstanding experience but rather a cash in on the popularity of both the NES/Famicom Contra and the original Contra coin-op.
You get Riply's infamous Climb-in strap-on cargo loaderwith its arms to smash Alien skulls. The best level backgrounds are about half way in, maybe the 4th level, with helpless immobile Colonists encased in thick alien goop with Eggs, face huggers, Xenomorphs, human-zombies, etc
You know what happens to the immobile Colonists right? Of course you do and it's all nicely done 16-bit arcade pixelart gore Lovely fucking stuff with a good deal of scaling.
The SNES would be hard-pressed to do a decent conversion of this game without a 16 megabit cart, some solid Konami programming and perhaps one of the common accelerator chips. And also not likely by early 1991 anyway. More like 1992 when Konami was starting to put out games like Axelay and Contra III instead of slogs like Gradius III which was on of their first if not THE first Konami game for the SuperFami.
There's 3D shooting sequences too. Good/decent bosses. And NO console or computer port or adaption. Never ported ported to more powerful consoles in the decades since it's release. That is why this game seems ever so slightly obscure, despite it's popularity at the time mostly due to its wide distribution in the U.S. and despite it's big name license.
It feels like arcade Aliens remains semi-obscure at least in the minds of the average GenX or older Millennial gamer today. It was a good arcade game for what it was. Nice 16-Bit graphics, easily on par with those early NEO-NEO games like Cyber-Lip and Nam-1975, or Sega's Alien Storm arcade (not a licensed Alien game, unlike their later, 32-bit arcade game, Alien 3 The Gun, an officially licensed SEGA light-gun shooter that still used sprites.
Imagine a 60 frame 3D TPS Doom 2016 style reboot ON THE FOX ENGINE.
I'm pissed just thinking about it.
Hell, I'm pissed just thinking about Rogue Corps.
That Mode 7 scaling effect and that scene is legendary.
I never really played more than 40 minutes of Hard Corps Via emulation in the 2000s. I never played it in the 90s, because, I am not some die hard Contra fan (no pun intended. I am more of a casual Konami fan and I love 16-bit arcade games, I mean the actual coin-ops, even though I grew up in the NW Chicago suburbs and was barely even a teenager in 1989 and only saw the arcade games that I happened to see, during 1988-1992/93, in my localized world-sphere, a very tight area on a map in Cook County, Illinois. And from then on.
So as far as coin-op arcade games, I saw what I saw at malls and dedicated arcades, large and small.At restaurants, convince stores, bars, laundary Matts, more malls, vacations in Wisconsin, medium sized town Iowa, Indiana, etc
With all of that said, and I've said it before, I fucking love this game:
Kim Justice sums up this specific arcade game perfectly in the context of that era. Konami's Aliens (1990) is an official, licensed 'Aliens' game based on the 1986 blockbuster movie/film by James Cameron. Yet at the same time it's basically almost like an unofficial Contra arcade game, but with Up/down movement across the screen, meaning like, the same as beat 'em ups I.e. Final Fight, Golden Axe (and Capcom's Aliens vs Predator four or five years later. Konami's 1990 Aliens arcade game, had unique entirely to this game Alien-inspired creatures and generic characters that don't resemble the actors on the human side, and alien creature designs that never existed in the films, or anywhere else except the arcade team at Konami and their artists and makers of 16-Bit arcade SPRITES.
The hardware, arcade board that Konami's 1990 Aliens game ran on was the same as the 1989/1990 TMNT arcade game, the popular one most of you know. The awesome 2-4 player beat'em up. I shoulda' said that in the first place to explain the gameplay mechanics. Duh.
So picture that, but all shooting and climbing and crawling and shooting, in very Contra-esque + official Aliens-based Colonial Marines scenes, weapons,backgrounds, vehicles, etc. with a lot of LIBERTIES taken on Konami's part.Lots of brightly-colored alien creatures, shots, explosions, etc. But that's okay because it's still a pretty good arcade game. Decent amount of animation. It's also clearly a step more graphically advanced than 1988's arcade Super Contra, which really wasn't such an outstanding experience but rather a cash in on the popularity of both the NES/Famicom Contra and the original Contra coin-op.
You get Riply's infamous Climb-in strap-on cargo loaderwith its arms to smash Alien skulls. The best level backgrounds are about half way in, maybe the 4th level, with helpless immobile Colonists encased in thick alien goop with Eggs, face huggers, Xenomorphs, human-zombies, etc
You know what happens to the immobile Colonists right? Of course you do and it's all nicely done 16-bit arcade pixelart gore Lovely fucking stuff with a good deal of scaling.
The SNES would be hard-pressed to do a decent conversion of this game without a 16 megabit cart, some solid Konami programming and perhaps one of the common accelerator chips. And also not likely by early 1991 anyway. More like 1992 when Konami was starting to put out games like Axelay and Contra III instead of slogs like Gradius III which was on of their first if not THE first Konami game for the SuperFami.
There's 3D shooting sequences too. Good/decent bosses. And NO console or computer port or adaption. Never ported ported to more powerful consoles in the decades since it's release. That is why this game seems ever so slightly obscure, despite it's popularity at the time mostly due to its wide distribution in the U.S. and despite it's big name license.
It feels like arcade Aliens remains semi-obscure at least in the minds of the average GenX or older Millennial gamer today. It was a good arcade game for what it was. Nice 16-Bit graphics, easily on par with those early NEO-NEO games like Cyber-Lip and Nam-1975, or Sega's Alien Storm arcade (not a licensed Alien game, unlike their later, 32-bit arcade game, Alien 3 The Gun, an officially licensed SEGA light-gun shooter that still used sprites.
FD: the responsibility for the above Book of a post of mine about Konami's Aliens arcade game released 3 decades ago and how it athletically naturally fits well with the CONTRA games, and blah blah blah, ENTIRELY falls on the following things. Lockdowns, Isolation, THC consumption, this prolonged arctic cold we're experiencing in the upper central part of North America.
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Konami code, the music, and wondering what the hell is going on when you start fighting weird aliens lol
OP
OP
Cyber-Lip, 1990 game, probably began development in 1989 but that's just a decent guess with nothing to back it.
IREM'S GunForce II/2 aka GeoStorm (or Geo Storm) is a kickass run no shoot by pretty much the same people that would later make METAL SLUG. SNK/Nasca or something. Anyway it's awesome for at least a couple of play-through.
Guns, explosions, hardcore difficulty
Though first thing that flashes is Contra Hardcorps intro where you pick a character and explosions happen.
Though first thing that flashes is Contra Hardcorps intro where you pick a character and explosions happen.
It always makes me think of The Crown Inn, a pub up the road from where I grew up.
My folks would take me and my brother on a Saturday night and we'd play the (only) arcade cabinet all night.
What a weird place to stick an arcade cabinet.
My folks would take me and my brother on a Saturday night and we'd play the (only) arcade cabinet all night.
What a weird place to stick an arcade cabinet.
Of course the code, me and my brother running through the jungle. Fighting who gets the spread. But if I'm being honest we actually preferred Gorilla War from SNK at the time over Contra.
Letting a little kid neighbor, that wouldn't stop begging, play with my brother and I. After hyping up his own skills, he burned through his 30 lives like he was suicidal. My brother and I couldn't stop laughing despite feeling bad for the poor kid. But then he kept mashing the buttons after he ran out of lives, and we realized he thought he was playing the character my brother was controlling. We were on the floor laughing through tears, when suddenly the kid came back to life and continued his lemming march. We didn't know you could steal lives from the surviving player. And with each new stolen life, and the kid being completely oblivious, my brother's laughing fit grew until he pissed himself.
I love the Konami Aliens arcade game. I played it a lot thirty years ago.
And you're right that not having a port to console back in the day has hurt its popularity. I don't know how much of it is an age thing but arcade-only games at this site don't seem to exist for a lot of people.
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The original was one of those formative NES games for me as a kid - getting it for my 7th birthday in 1989 (along with Ninja Gaiden and Golgo 13, the latter because I thought Duke Togo looked badass). Went to a friend's house sometime in early '89 and his friend was over with a copy of Contra... I was absolutely blown away. Big fan of the Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Seagal 80s action movies as a kid so immediately took to the aesthetic. Also it was one of the games I'd play co-op with my dad (along with Jackal and Life Force... Konami was the king of co-op back in the 8-bit era).
My favorite memory is still when I was in college, some 11+ years later, and a friend of mine's girlfriend brought her NES over to his dorm. This was right before the retro gaming scene really took off (maybe 1999 or early 2000), but I was still huge into classic era games. I started playing Contra and 1cc'ed the game without using the code... my friend, his girlfriend, and his roommate all looked at me in shock, so impressed...
Still love Contra, Super C, and Contra III the most. No matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to get into Hard Corps. While I've come to appreciate the tongue-in-cheek cyberpunk style of the game as I've gotten older, back then the tonal change from the gritty, SUPER SRS BIZNESS 80s action movie aliens style of the other games was a turn off. Also thought it was a turning point for the series where it became less focused on reflexes and more on pattern memorization (Shattered Soldier being the epitome of this style).
My favorite memory is still when I was in college, some 11+ years later, and a friend of mine's girlfriend brought her NES over to his dorm. This was right before the retro gaming scene really took off (maybe 1999 or early 2000), but I was still huge into classic era games. I started playing Contra and 1cc'ed the game without using the code... my friend, his girlfriend, and his roommate all looked at me in shock, so impressed...
Still love Contra, Super C, and Contra III the most. No matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to get into Hard Corps. While I've come to appreciate the tongue-in-cheek cyberpunk style of the game as I've gotten older, back then the tonal change from the gritty, SUPER SRS BIZNESS 80s action movie aliens style of the other games was a turn off. Also thought it was a turning point for the series where it became less focused on reflexes and more on pattern memorization (Shattered Soldier being the epitome of this style).
