Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Contra Spirits (Contra III: The Alien Wars / Super Probotector: Alien Rebels) for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

I think I’d have got way more out of this if it had been the only thing I’d had to play as a kid, but that wasn’t the case when I eventually got to it a few years ago and I’m afraid I just didn’t have the patience to properly get to grips with the weird Mode 7 stage two! I’ll still play the first stage every now and then though. Loads of fun!

I remember playing Contra III for the first time when my friend from the first grade rented a Super Nintendo with this game and TNMT: Turtles in Time. Contra III was the first time I experienced that particular sense of wonder that came from seeing the amazing graphical potential of a new gaming console. It’s hard to comprehend the feeling unless you experienced it at the time. The game looked incredible, and it played like something out of a movie, with multiple moments of cinematic action right in the first level. We especially liked it when the plane flew overhead and dropped liquid fire onto the city, momentarily turning the level into an urban inferno hell-scape. I’ll never forget the backdrop of level 3, which had you climbing on what must have been industrial pipes and scaffolds built high up in the sky. At the time, what with the parallax scrolling effect, it looked believable enough to give me a thrilling sense of faux vertigo. It felt three-dimensional. My friend and I had a blast that day.

Of course, we never even made it to the second half of level 3, since it was so stinking difficult. This is definitely the hardest of the classic Contra games in my opinion, even harder than Contra: Hard Corps, which was a game I would later own on the Sega Genesis.

I did finally beat it without save states in 2020 on the Contra Anniversary Collection. Granted, it was only on normal difficulty, so I didn’t get the final challenge or true ending. And ... I was only able to do it by farming for 30 lives on level 3, which takes about 45 minutes of sitting there and holding down the fire button as an enemy drop ship hovers back and forth, endlessly spawning enemies. Not exactly a thrilling way to conquer a game. But it was right during the first weeks after my daughter was born, and I would have to stay up all night while she slept in my arms. So in a way it was actually kind of memorable, beating Contra III at 4 in the morning while holding my infant daughter.

Still kind of stings thinking that I might never get the credits roll of this game. But that hard mode is so much harder. Hats off to anyone who has pulled off that particular feat.

When I first played this I had no idea it was Contra, as it was one of a dozen copy-pasted and renamed games on one of the fabled "multi-game" gameboy cartridges of dubiously legality. Even so, it still made an impression with its foreboding atmosphere, responsive gameplay, and unforgiving difficulty. The only way I could make reliable progress beyond the initial zombie-like turtle boss was to hammer in random passwords and hope for a later level.

Years later as I try out the SNES game proper I wish I could say I had improved at Contra, but sadly this is not the case. I think my mind wants it to be more like a Mega Man game, but it is feels more like a shmup (a genre I'm also terrible at), and I quickly end up getting overwhelmed, and wincing as my brittle avatar once again dies from a single hit.
I really would like to improve however, because sometihing about Contra 3 keeps being alluring. Weaving through projectiles looks and feels great in the few moments I actually manage it, and after years of seeing the game referenced in various outlets the visuals has become as emblematic of the SNES' as anything else to me.

So, with the game set to easy mode and lives cranked to maximum I'm making very incremental progress, and hope to some day make my way to the impossibly cool-looking and iconic giant blue robot skeleton boss.

Contra means "against" in Spanish.

Of course, we never even made it to the second half of level 3, since it was so stinking difficult. This is definitely the hardest of the classic Contra games in my opinion, even harder than Contra: Hard Corps, which was a game I would later own on the Sega Genesis.

This statement legit blows my mind. For me there's zero contest - Hard Corps is insanely punishing whereas Contra III is infinitely gentler and more accessible and is relatively easy to 'finish' on easy mode with lives and continues maxed out.

I suppose it's all about which version you're used to?

Magical_Isopod wrote: ↑January 24th, 2022, 10:53 pm Contra means "against" in Spanish.

That's interesting. It means "ridiculously difficult run n' gun" in English.

Is it just me who thought the slowdown in games like Contra III and Super Ghouls and Ghosts was a deliberate slow motion effect growing up, and not just a result of the hardware struggling?