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Xeogred wrote:35. Contra (NES)





Review: Contra is perfect.

Yes and best review ever.

I was just at a Retro Game Store and the guy working and a customer could not beat Contra without the Konami code. It is hard and not exactly easy, but it is completely doable. Still, it is a nice feat of gaming!

Congratulations.

I can beat it without taking a hit. I also have a huge wang.

So... what the heck were the R power ups anyways?

rapid fire

I mash so fast I guess I didn't even notice. I didn't care for the machine gun much. It's all about that SPREADSHOT.

Rapid in conjunction with the Spreader makes it that much more effective. It's quicker to cluster the shots so that you do even more damage that way.

Also, that no-death Contra run was one of my white whales. And speaking of white whales...

January:
February:
March:
April:
May:
33) Final Fantasy V (SFC) (6.0) (5/1) (~33 hours)
34) Super Adventure Island (SNES) (7.0) (5/2) (~1 hour)
35) Dragon Spirit: The New Legend (NES) (7.5) (5/3?) (~30 minutes)
36) Mighty No. 9 (PS4) (5.0) (5/6?) (~5 hours)
37) Contra III: The Alien Wars (Hard) (SNES) (8.5) (5/11) (~1 hour)

Yes, I beat Contra III on Hard. The time might say an hour, but it's more like 15 hours of practice before I got it all down. I had a splendid early run up until Stage 4, only dying once, then I got all sorts of careless and started hemorrhaging lives. Actually had a somewhat decent missile boss, though. Finally had to burn my first continue in Stage 5, then proceeded to no-death that until I got to the boss. And even that went pretty well. Double-tap L works wonders.

For the last stage, I had most of my continues, but figured I'd give myself a little buffer in case things went poorly at the last boss. Which it did. Turns out you can grab the homing shot, stand in a safe place, and blast aliens to your heart's content, racking up extra lives. I definitely went ahead and got 15, just to be dang sure I finished it. I didn't end up needing them, but the last boss went poorly enough that I was glad to have them.

So I never have figured out how to effectively dodge one of the attacks the last boss throws out at you. I usually will lose at least three lives when he pulls it... and of course, that was one of the attacks. I also ended up with one of the bubble attacks twice, which is also no fun. But still, took him down.

Then the chopper. Well, turns out that he can be a cheating SOB. Most runs, he'll start with his right hand, then his left swiping at you, but nooooo, he starts with the left, while I was pumping him full of lead. So there was one more life gone. And another just from being stupid. I've had much better Stage 6 runs... but who cares? It's beaten! Y'all will forgive me if I don't play the game again for quite some time.

Contra and Super Contra are hard, but they never felt cheap to me. Contra III and Hard Corps can feel cheap at times, which makes me a little sad. I think Contra III has more cheap deaths than Hard Corps, though. Hard Corps is slightly more "legit" hard, if you can call it that...

I played the first Conta for the first time recently, and died on the boss of the 2nd base (so stage 4?). It seemed like it would be pretty reasonable to beat the whole game based on what I'd seen.

Contra 3 I don't enjoy nearly as much because it feels like there is just too much to deal with at once, and I never feel like the controls do exactly what I want. Beating it on hard sounds horrible to me.

alienjesus wrote:I played the first Conta for the first time recently, and died on the boss of the 2nd base (so stage 4?). It seemed like it would be pretty reasonable to beat the whole game based on what I'd seen.

Contra 3 I don't enjoy nearly as much because it feels like there is just too much to deal with at once, and I never feel like the controls do exactly what I want. Beating it on hard sounds horrible to me.

If you think Contra III has too much going on, you'll LOVE Contra 4 then! Not one but TWO screen of crap coming at you at once!

marurun wrote:Contra and Super Contra are hard, but they never felt cheap to me. Contra III and Hard Corps can feel cheap at times, which makes me a little sad. I think Contra III has more cheap deaths than Hard Corps, though. Hard Corps is slightly more "legit" hard, if you can call it that...

I agree with this. From what I've seen of Hard Corps on my last run, it's so boss-centric that once you figure them out, the game is pretty much cake. Contra III feels a bit more random, with most of my BS deaths coming during the stages themselves. Plus bosses that aren't predictable. I'll often lose a life on the charging Super C boss that shows up in Stage 6 (stupid raining crap), and of course just all the alien junk leading up to that, including the heart from the original game. I figured out the best way to deal with that is have a bomb and the Crush weapon, pop one off as soon as you get on screen and take out the bottom two spawn points as fast as possible, then stand where the first one was located and fire straight up into the heart. Very efficient, and safe once you get rid of the two on the floor.

I also figured out how to trigger the proper phases a bit better last night on the last boss, so that should be a good deal easier when/if I revisit the game.

Both games rely less on reaction time (although it's useful) and more on cheap "gotcha" moments, whereas Contra and Super C feel like you have just enough time to react to threats in real-time.

PartridgeSenpai wrote:If you think Contra III has too much going on, you'll LOVE Contra 4 then! Not one but TWO screen of crap coming at you at once!

Yep. You end up dying a lot because of threats coming from a different screen. My advice with that game is similar to that of Contra III: kill lots of aliens in one of the base levels so you have a good stock of lives for getting through the end.