Retronauts - 593: The Contra Ranking Hootenanny

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Let’s argue aggressively! No, wait, that sounds unpleasant. Let’s have a lovely time nicely. Stuart Gipp, John Linneman, Thomas Nickel, and Audi Sorlie Probotect and serve up the definitive ranking of Konami’s hit run n’ gun series: Contra. Art by Leeann Hamilton. Edits by Greg Leahy. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week in Retronauts, let's align aggressively. Hello, welcome to Retronauts. I'm Stuartronauts. I'm Stuart Jip, and I'm not going to waste any of your plans. We've got an absolute bottom load of games to cover here. Lots of games, in fact. If you're familiar with the format of the ranking Huthanani, which you really should be, because they're very entertaining. What it is is we, retronauts, gather together a bunch of us

and a bunch of games in a series, and we go, this one is what is the best game. No, in fact, this one is what is the best game. And we argue back and forth for hours on end until we come to a definitive and final. conclusion. No, in truth, what we do is we give each game a number and then I add up the numbers using maths and we then determine definitively and without like any possibility of correction by anyone and any source in a remainder of gaming history, which games are the best and in which

order they are the best and at which point they transition from being the best to being the worst. That's probably going to be quite easy this time to figure out because I reckon there's just going to be a point at which everything suddenly just goes down the toilet. but we'll find out um hello again i'm stu and joining me uh this episode this fine ranking hootanee is uh well let's see let's do this in the order we're going to be doing it so hello hello john please introduce yourself even though i just have why hello it's john lineman from digital foundry back again to talk about one of my favorite series it's contra you know i am the world's biggest fan of lance bean i would like to declare i'm always thinking about those

beans so you know let's do it Is Beans from Contraforce, Lance Bean, like, in some way? It's, yes, it must be. In my head canon, it's Lance Bean. Okay, they just call them Beans because it's, yeah, I like that. It's called him Beans. Yeah, yeah, Beans. That's not the only reason they call him Beans.

Let's move on. Who else is here with us today for Limited Run? Well, I'm Audie Serly from also Digital Foundry and Limited Run, and I give this episode already a hundred on the bottom ranking, because we're We're not calling it ProBetector. Ouch. Yeah, that's a better point, really. I mean, that is how I sort of grew up knowing these games, and then as soon as I discovered.

It's a better series. It's a better design. I'm more of a Grysor, man. Grysor, yeah. And last of all, but not least, by any means. Who else is with us today? Well, quite fitting. I am Thomas Nicol from Germany, from the magazine M Games.

And as a German, I am more than willing to take personal blame for ProProtector robots because they are in fact wonderful. I do love the ProProtector robots. Wait a minute. Does that mean I'm the only one that grew up with the series as Contra? That is correct, my friend. Wow. All right.

So you're the only one who's being true to themselves today, I think. How do you feel about ProPetector now, John? Now that you become like an honorary European. I have learned to love ProBetector. I think the designs are awesome. and in some cases it actually can look better than the Contra dudes

So sure it can It sure can I love is that I liked ProBetector Because it was there Because I grew up with it But then I sort of got over it And got onto the whole

Commando kind of Burley Men thing You know Because whatever It's what it is now But then Contra 4 came out And they retconned The Proprotectors To being English robots

Yep And I was just like Yes Yes Yeah That's great It's a very short story What's really sad

about that is that I was supposed to be the voice of that proprotexia and it didn't happen. That's really horrible and that's actually really upset. I know. But the weird thing is about that too, I mean, we don't want to go too much into history anyway, but Germany is to blame for the

whole change, so why give them a British accent? Because I think a nice German accent would be very funny. Yeah, I agree. That would have worked. Nice going, Germany. This is the worst possible outcome of what You did.

For younger listeners, though, the reason for that is just that Germany had some pretty heavy censorship loss about violence in video games, and that's why they were changed. So generally, a muscle man, shooting other man is not a good thing back in the 80s in Germany. Yeah, muscle man, why were they even in the guns? They should be punching. They should be super punching. It's funny, though, and when you play Turok or Half-Life with robots, it's just, it's something. So, you know, this was not an 80s thing. This went, I think the last game that came.

I was something like this was like Wolfenstein the reboot, right? The first reboot. It was the last ones that got really big changes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it mostly ended around the PS1 era. Yeah, there was a couple of ones. Lost Soldier has a robot conversion on PlayStation 1.

That's a game we should talk about sometime. Yeah. Definitely. But not today. Today it's Contra Day. It is. Which is why we're only going to be talking about the PS1 game that's called One because it's a contra game.

No. What we're going to do is we're going to go through all the goddamn Contra games. And I mean, well, okay, all the console or handheld contra games. We're not talking about certain Contra games, which John is desperate to talk about. I argued for this, but you're like, nope, console only. I can't handle it. I can't understand why. I will allow you now, if you wish, to enthuse about it briefly. Well, I mean, we don't want to get too much into it necessarily. But yeah, there are obviously other Contra games. The Contra and Super Contra were both arcade games first. before they were NES games. Yeah. And they're very different. Like, obviously, they share many design elements, but the way the layouts work, the way the game feels, plays, looks, it's so, it's changed dramatically. Yeah.

And also those arcade games were Tate games. Yeah. Or as Joe would like to say, Tate mode games, where it's a vertical screen instead of horizontal. So, which kind of works, actually. And Contra 4 kind of harkens back to in a weird way. Yeah, yeah. But the NES games, they changed a lot, and I think those were largely considered, like, the better games, or at least they were more popular.

I still like the arcade games as well, even though the jump looks weird, but... Yeah, I played them, and they have a nice rhythm to them, especially the first one. The first one does, but I actually really hate the second arcade game. You know, whatever. The one I hate, though, actually came out much later, and it was Contra Evolution, which was on phones, and there was an arcade game. I think it was developed in China, and it's basically like riffing on Contra 1, but with the worst pre-rendered graphics you'll ever see in your entire life. Really bad, yeah.

So, John, John, could we call this game a contraband? Yes. Oh, God. Oh, that's good. Oh, well done. Yeah, we're going. Yep. This is all downhill from that.

You just won the podcast. Yeah, that's it. The rest of it's going to be shite compared to that. Nice going. Evolution, it's contra evolution is real bad. It's, yeah, it's atrocious. Check it out on YouTube and laugh and laugh. Yeah, and if it were on this list, it would probably be either at the bottom or second worst.

It still wouldn't be on my bottom, but it would be... And that's really... Covering above your bottom somewhere. That's really damning of the game that is probably going to be at the bottom for most people. We'll get to that, sadly. But in the meantime, yes, just for the sheer sake of simplistic, I did want to keep it to console and how unheld games as opposed

to phone games. It's not that I don't think phone games are real games, it's just that I kind of sort of do think that a bit, so moving on. let's get into it let's just get right on in there with what is many what is really the first sort of non-arcade contra which is just well it's just contra isn't it uh 1988 for a Nintendo entertainment system um right let's start with you John where where do you stand with Contra I like Contra I think it is a solid game and it was a good kind of jumping off point for the series in terms of popularity it was one of those any games, I think, that everybody kind of had back in the day, and one of the earlier ones I probably remember playing a lot of. And yeah, it was known, obviously great side-strolling action combined with those sort of pseudo-3D

stages, which looked kind of fancy back then, and super catchy music. And for this ranking, this was actually, so I actually went, I considered the US version here, but there is actually a Famicom version, which is actually better with a lot of visual changes and other improvements, but we'll just stick with the original. And for this one, I went with a 10. I gave it a 10. A 10? Yeah. That is surprisingly later. It's, I know that seems possibly a bit low, but in the, and that's the thing about this list that made it really difficult is like most of these games are great, right? And if you, if you consider its place in history, it might go higher, but in terms of what I enjoy playing still today, I don't

of all the Contra games, it's down at a 10 for me. That's interesting. That's genuinely, like, heartening to know that a game that is this good can still be this low on the ranking. That means you've got some love for the series right here.

Well, very high peaks, well, deep valleys in the series. Yeah. Not too many. But anyway, we should move to the next. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so, like John mentioned, the Famic Conversations

out there has, you know, better background elements, has animation. has an intro cutscene for Lord. You can play that version on the Contra Collection. It's one of the bonuses. You sure can. Yeah, just putting it out there.

And you should. And I'll be honest, that was the one I played in revisiting it for this episode. Obviously, I grew up with ProPetector, which has much better designs as we've discussed. Yes. But this game, to me,

kind of is the perfect example of the NES conversion era where you took the base design of an arcade game, but you repurposed this for, DNS, and in some cases made it better. I think there's a much better game than the arcade version.

It repurposes a lot of the mechanics and makes it much more responsive and fun. It has excellent co-op for the system, one of the best co-op games. And seeing it as one of the best co-op games, I gave it

the ranking of two. Whoa. Whoa. It's pretty high up there. I think it's just... It's a highest number. Yeah, it's a highest number because I just think it is an essential for the system. I think it holds up remarkably well, especially when you play with a friend, which for this episode,

I actually managed to get a friend for a couple of days. This is wild. We are like just over 10 minutes since the episode, but it's just like a swerve after swerve. I love it. Mind blown twice already. It's amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but in revisiting it, though, I would say that like, it's skewed maybe a little bit because I play the fam conversion. It's just, it's quite excellent. compared to what I even remembered but still I think

this holds up as one of the it's one of those cornerstones with the NES it showcases what home console gaming really could be like when you convert it to game center games and yeah it's just an excellent game it deserves to be pretty high on that list

I'm yeah I agree Thomas what are you better about you what do you think of the old Contra so what I think is I think of course this is the classic right this is the baseline for Contra games, every other one is measured against in a way, because so many people played it and it just, that's the way it started, right? But the thing is, on the other hand,

I have criticisms. For example, only one weapon is really useful in the game and others are downright terrible. I mean, that laser is just, it's a downrate even, I think. And also, again... You don't know how to use it right. That's what she said. She did say that, to be fair. yeah can confirm but the thing is the other thing is the base levels they look nice and they give me a bit of again of that that visitry vibe you know walking tile by tile but they are not that much fun to me still of course i'm depending on a high level it's a great game and uh again the design of the probatics is wonderful because when this game came out in europe we had no idea

about anime about mecca and anything like that and so we get these two robots now they have the strong Masamunishiro look you know the guy from Apple Seed with the Yeah it's like a Pathlabor design Yeah exactly with these antenna ears That's what they remind me of And that's the first time I saw that stuff And I thought man these look awesome

I used to call them Apple Seed robots Oh yeah yeah yeah That's what I meant Masamunishiro design They look a lot like that And so I went pretty much in the middle I'm saying this for me is a seven Oh my see seven wow

wildly. It really is. Stu is the tiebreaker here. Well, I mean, it's not that well because I also gave it seven. I pretty much square just above the middle, and that's not to deride it for any reason, because

I don't think that this game is really flawed in any way that I personally would sort of consider meaningful. I mean, compared to what came later, arguably, it is simplistic, but that's not a bad thing. It means it's easier to pick up and play, and the level design is what shines here.

And for me, like, while it's not completely perfect, it doesn't slow down too much, doesn't flicker too much, it's very playable. It's very clear. The bullets are very clear on the screen. And while it is challenging, it's not like, you know, fuck you, middle finger challenging. So I like it a lot,

but I couldn't go above seven because there are six other contra games I like more than it, you know? That is the thing, yeah. Yep, yep, yep. But I love it. So that's Contra. That's a fairly wild spread for Contra there.

Which leads us on two years later. And incidentally, just to put this out there, even though it's now become clear, I'm generally going to, I'm going by the sort of Western release dates for these games. that obviously if there are distinct differences to the Famicom versions or Japanese versions, et cetera, by all means factor them into your, you know, responses, that's fine. But the next game, Super C for NAS in 1990. John, what do you think of Super C? Oh, man, Super C.

This was a huge on the anticipation list. And I remember when my friend first picked it up and we played the heck out of it. And I love it. I actually kind of like it better in the original Contra. I prefer the overhead stages compared to the pseudo 3D stuff from the original Contra. I think the music, the soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal. Like that first stage music is the way it kicks in. You know, the original Contra theme is iconic for sure.

But I actually think Super C's melodies are slightly more catchy even. And if you've got that Nes take on the sort of Konami Orchestra hit sound as well, haven't you? It's freaking awesome. Yeah. Yeah, it makes a great first impression. And yeah, I just, I really love the level design in this. And this is the one that feels like a bridge game where it's like kind of between the 16-bit era and the NES style somehow. You know what I mean?

Yeah. You can really see it in the art design and just some of the things that they're doing. It's, it's from a more confident Konami that has a greater command of the NES hardware as well. So for that reason, I give it an eight. Wow, eight whole number. So, for me, I'll have to admit that, like, I never really played this as much as the original. And I think I agreed with John that, like, the first impression is really strong with this game. I don't like the level designs as much in this game once you get off, like, the first and second stages.

And it's just, for me, slightly more forgettable. I guess it's just that transition point between. what's coming after and what came before for me that's kind of even revisiting it i just didn't feel as engaged with this game as i had done with the original uh i think it's more fine-tuned i do think definitely in some ways it is the better game but it's also just not as memorable to me even playing it today it's like super strong first impression but i fates off for me i kind of feel like some of these impressions kind of come from where we were in life when we played these games

as well. Because nostalgia is going to have a lot. There's a lot there, right? Yeah, agree. Of course. And you just can't, you know, you can look at this and just say, like, you know, factually this is a better game. In many ways, it probably is. But, yeah, I think what you're mentioning there, but like that

transition towards 16 bit, there's something there, I think, that's cutting it out for me being, as memorable as it could have been Maybe if it came a year Because I did play when it came out as ProPetector 2 But yeah

So my ranking for this is actually a 6 Okay That's fairly high That's higher than it was on my list Yeah yeah I'm surprised I thought this was going to be A slightly controversial placement

But at the same time like you say There's so many good games on this list Yeah Yeah That like it's still really high and I had a lot of fun with it playing it again the music really needs to be pointed out oh yeah man is banging and it's just real real good um but there was something that's kind of kept me from like pushing on as much as I do with some of these other games so just

there was something that it didn't have the same drive for me um it's a little hard to put my finger on it, having only, like, revisited it for a little bit. Is it because it's not called Contricks? They weren't allowed to say Contra. Yeah. Well, as I said, I mean, I grew up with a pro-protector

too. Yeah. Turn of the evil forces. I hate the evil forces. I hate it when they return. Oh, my God. Yeah, but that's what they do. Yeah. That's what they're evil. You're just like, well, I'm glad we finally seen the back of those evil. Oh, come on.

Back again. Yeah. Every time. And so tell us, what about you? How do you feel about Super C? So it's quite interesting that I already mentioned the nostalgia, because it's a game I have no nostalgia for whatsoever. It didn't play it when it came out. I remember seeing it in magazines and thinking, this looks pretty amazing.

I only played it in the... When was it? On 3DS, when it came to the 3DS Virtual Console. Wow. And on 3DS, I love the hell out of that game. and while I said one is the classic I would say in a way that Super C is a bit of the Platonic Contra ideal in a way

it's not too set piece heavy yet but it has these big moments it has great design, it has stuff I mean I always like slanted level designs in NAS games so it has those because you mention the first impressions I think no other game made such an impression in the first screen you have the clouds

you have the thunderstorm you have the helicopter the big hill and holy holy shit it is something else it's yeah that's first stage man it really just it sets a tone i just don't think it moves on from that in any kind of i don't know the jungle stage is good after that overhead stage i love the alien stage later in there because it's very you could argue the jungle stage is just kind of like here's this again from the first game in a right but to me it felt like oh it's like returning to that theme but then going you know deeper kind of you know you're not wrong and I think

it shows that you probably grew up playing this more and have kind of emotional attachments to some of these things whereas yeah the thing is as I said as I didn't play this game growing up I still think it's really really amazing and as I

said it might be my ideal contra in a way I mean there's other ones that are higher on my list now but so for me this is a five five yeah Yeah. For me, I do like this more than the first one, and I think there is nostalgia involved, although it's not for the NES, because I never played it on the NES. I played this mostly on Contra 4. It was unlockable in the Contra 4,

and I hadn't really put much time into it, I think, because I'd been playing rums in the past, but I think because it's not called Contra 2, I must have somehow missed it. You name is weird. Yeah, so I played it, and I remember just being kind of taken aback. like almost like you know this is on NES this is like really impressive and it almost felt like a little bit like

a lost like gold kind of Konami game like that it's obviously not it's a huge game it's just from my personal experience I'm not surprised in the slightest to hear that but I enjoyed it a lot I liked the fact that it was that halfway house between the kind of set piece design that was coming

up and the more free flowing running gun kind of gameplay I think, honestly, I'm quite open to the idea that Contra is the better game mechanically and in terms of level design, but Super C does have just that spectacle that I like. And I can't deny that I do like spectacles, so that goes a long way for me and the music too. I think that the top-down stages are kind of not quite as interesting personally as the tunnel stages, but I still enjoy playing them. I think the perspective on Super C is kind of weird.

Like, auto top-down stages look odd to me, but they play fine. And, you know, I can't pretend I haven't gone high with it. Like, for me, it's the four. It's my fourth favorite. Wow.

We were all in the same range for this game, huh? They're sort of. Sort of. But for different reasons. Between 40. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but that's leaving, well, actually I was about saying it's leaving the Nez behind

and it's not, so we'll come back to the Ness soon, but next up, sticking with C is Operation C for the Gameboy in 1991. first hand-held contra. John, what do you think of Operation C? I loved Operation C. This was one of the earlier Game Boy games that I played following Mega Man with the in Dr. Wiley's Revenge, I think it was called. But yeah, basically Game Boy Operation C, and it makes sense to just do the C after Super C because it's kind of like a spiritual translation of Super C to the Game Boy.

Like, the actual level designs are fairly different, but it follows a similar path, right? Yeah. Like the first stage to the second stage, and then you get the jungle stuff, and it's like, there's a lot of similarities there. But, again, the actual layout, the placement of everything, it is specific to Operation C, which means it is a game that was designed for Game Boy. Yeah, and John, slanted floss again. Yes, absolutely. That's something you did not often see. quality of the visuals, really impressive for the system.

There's a lot of detail in the background, like more than you would expect. Yeah, there's also really, really great. I think the overhead stages also look really good. Like, everything about it is really special. And it's a fairly lengthy game as well, I would say, for Game Boy. And it's a really fun one to pick up and play. So, and the music, of course, fantastic. You know, Konami did a lot of games early on the Game Boy,

and I think this is a lot better than many of their other ones. It's better than Castlevania, which was too slow and full of tech problems. Turtles ran at 20 frames per second, and the characters are too big, and it's fun, but... Oh, I got love for this era of Kamami and Game Boy, but... I agree. The skater die as well on there, the side-scrolling one, but... Yep, but I actually think Operation C is my favorite of those early ones. Yeah, I think this is where they really got the Game Boy, right.

So I'm going to give this one a seven. Odie, what about you? Even above the other ones. Yeah, I mean, I kind of have to mirror a lot of what John said, so I'm not going to add too much here. I really like this game. I really think it signals, you know, Konami learning to master the Game Boy's hardware.

because some of the earlier games were, like John mentioned, kind of uneven. They're fun. They're great games, but, you know, performance-wise, they're kind of all over the map. So I played a Japanese version, though, of this. I don't know why. And it was kind of interesting because John mentioned progression, right?

But you could select stages in a Japanese version of this. Oh, that was a common... That was, like, a ton of those Konami games, actually. Yeah, so it was just kind of like, when you mentioned, I was like, wait, okay, and then I just double-checked here now, and it does say that the Japanese version does let you kind of begin at any of the first stages, whereas the American, you can do it if you do the Konami code. Right, right, right. So, because, yeah, that's something I'll mention in one of the next upcoming games, just kind of like how Contra dealt with progression between stages, which is kind of cool. but here it's a little bit more open-ended which I think for a portable game makes sense

right pick up and play so yeah I'm just going to copy paste John's opinion he pretty succinct pretty good I agree with everything and my ranking for this is a seven oh wow seven also seven also seven

so it is it's a fantastic early handheld game and it runs at 60 frames per second which... It was a free ProBetector game to run at 60. Wow. Wait, what? Because all the other...

They had 50 in Europe. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to say, though, there's only two games in this entire list that don't run at 60. Oh, yeah. And we'll be sure to talk about that. Yeah, that's true.

You'll be surprised what one of them is. Yep. Okay. So, my opinion is, as I said, I didn't have any nostalgia for Super C, but I have lots of... the Saldra for Operation C. I played this on the Game Boy back in the day

as ProBetectors, all that makes it already difficult because same name as the NES game, same name as a Megadrive game later on as well, but never mind. And I love that game from the first, second. The music is the first big thing, of course, because Konami can really make the Game Boy sing. I think you can all agree on that, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, composition on the first stage is the same as an NAS, but I prefer how it sounds on Game Boy, actually. So music is great, And one thing is in Super Operation C, sorry, I think every weapon is cool. As I said, I don't really get along with every weapon in Contra, but in this one, usually, do I want to pick up that? It's cool, but I have the other cool weapon. What do I do now?

So the spread is cool, of course. But that homing shot is also a very nice and a lot of fun. So that is a big step up, I think. And they're all little spheres, right? Like, because of the low resolution, it's just you're always shooting spheres. Yeah, but it's just fun just to see these whole. homing spheres move around. I agree.

It's awesome. And it does say with a sort of minimal amount of like slowdown as well, which is nice. There's a lot of objects on the screen. Yeah. In general, it's just wonderfully made for Game Boy, because it's really visible, it's clear. It has nice backgrounds. As I said, there's parallax with the clouds. You have this ocean effect in the background of the first stage.

A big first boss. So everything is cool about this game, I think. I like the overhead levels. So for me, it's a six. Six, I, wow. So it's right between Contra and Super C. Yeah, I'm a big fan of this game, and a lot of that comes down to my preference

for kind of simpler experiences. It's not that this game isn't demanding, but what it is demanding is just your skill. It doesn't require you to mess around with, like, hit rates or anything that's coming up later. It's just you, two buttons, and that's it. And I think it's brilliant. And we've all talked about it,

but the music in this game goes hard as steel. Yeah, it does. The stage two theme is just, like, music to my goddamn ears. Like, I love it so much. And when it came back in Contra Rebirth, I was, like, bowing at the screen. Oh, my God, it's so brilliant. If you haven't heard it, stage, second stage, the top down, the first top down stage in Operation C, the music just is unreal. One of the best game boy compositions to me.

Absolutely love it. And, you know, I had a lot of fun playing it for the same reasons that you all did. So for me, it was a five. The only thing that puts it under Super C for me is the fact you can't play it with a friend and that's, you know, that's just a thing. Contra, for me, very much something you play with a friend,

but that's not to say that the games where you can't do that don't have any value, as we will soon discover. Man, I am surprised right now because I thought that my 6th for Operation C was so the big outlawyer, but we have people of taste in here, excellent. You know, I'm going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. We're going to be able to be able to be. I'm going to do. I'm going to do. We've got, I mean, I'm sure we've got some surprises coming up, but speaking of surprises somehow. Sorry, what was that, Aughty? I was going to ask, like, we didn't really outline this.

But growing up, did we all play this mostly in co-op? Because I usually play Contra always with people. Yeah. I mean... For me, it was both, I think. Yeah. Yeah. For our next one, I'll talk about that.

Yeah, same. And our next one is a very iconic game. Yes, that's right. It's Super Robotector, the Alien Rebels. Yes. Known as Contra 3, the Alien Wars. And worst teretors. Or Contra Spirates in Japan.

Yeah. 1992 for Super Nintendo Yeah So this is This is a big one John Don't you think Yeah I'm just going to come out and say It's my favorite game in the series

I'm going to talk about that But I'm just going to It gets a one on my list Because obviously there's nostalgia here And you mentioned the co-op stuff This is the one I played the most in co-op My friend and I spent like a year Like mastering this game

And still today I have the muscle memory for it. I know exactly what to do where and how to react to the different situations. And it's just, it feels great. It's so satisfying for me to still go through this. Even though I know the game back to front, I still love playing. It just feels great. I think every, that's the mark of a truly great game. Every weapon I love. And over time, I've learned to adapt and play with the different weapons, depending on the experience I'm looking for. And it's fun to sort of mix things up. And it does change the way the game feels and plays. But I think this is a game that just obviously

Commando, films like that, the muscle films of the 80s inspired Contra, and this is the game that I think actually gets close to feeling like a film in game form. You can tell right from the musical score, which takes advantage of the Super NES sound hardware

to create something that sounds, it's driving, it's intense, but it's more orchestral, and it's got this dark tone to it. Like, when you hear there's like the droning sound and the third level, it's more about more about the a moot in the theme. I mean, thinking about, like, just sorry to get, not to interrupt you a bit,

thinking about the first stage even, I'm not going to start singing it because that's not my... But the fact it starts with that brooding, like, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. And then you go from that to like more kind of a soaring sound. Then you go into almost slasher movie like, do, do, do that's just like, oh, it runs the gamut. Oh my God, every stage just has such an incredible thing. Like the whole soundtrack from back to front is just so perfect for this game. and sets the mood in a way that I had never heard in a video game before. And that's kind of what really separated Super Nias sound for me is it just had this dark

ominence, but then sometimes the driving speed of like the fourth stage. And really, it's just the variety. This is a set piece-driven game, but there's still enough, like, level between the set pieces. There is still meat between the set pieces. There's meat in there. But, man, there's set pieces. And just every level feels unique. I know some people complain about the overhead stages, but I feel like,

Like, if you just think about it as like a first person game viewed from the top down, like R&L is just like turning left and right with your character. And then the D-Pads used to strafe. You could circle strafe in there. I never had issues. It feels, I actually think it feels great. It plays very well over it.

I think not to not to step in front of anyone who does want to complain about them, but I think a lot of the complaints about the top down stages are from people who didn't learn that holding LLR makes you stop rotating in the sand lover. Yeah. Yeah, there's all right, right, in that other, yes, that could be frustrating. Yeah. But, you know, it was just following what prior Contra games had done, where they vary things up per level. But this one goes even further with like the, well, actually, oh man, even before that, that chemical plant like area, the third, the third mission. The first stage, yeah.

Like the epicness of it. So much going on. So much going across that whole, like, thing. And then eventually you're fighting these bosses hanging over this chasm before climbing that wall and you're fighting that. And just like you reach the top and then it's like you keep going up further until you get to that crazy skeleton boss. And you're like, well, first you fight there's two dudes in there. There's two robots. Yeah. And you're like, this is the boss, right?

And then like the music gets all ominous and you hear like the thumping, the sound and he rips open the background and you're like face it off. Yeah, that's the ticket, right? He just rips the stage apart. That's got to be like one of the iconic Super Nintendo moments, period. Yeah, absolutely. And that's not even the only one of those in this game, like the bomber destroying the city in the first stage, come on. It's like, they do it all over the place. And then there's the freaking jet bike sequence where you're like, you start in that tunnel and you're just like, the music's all soaring and like very Konami arcade sounding at that point.

And that huge airship comes in. You're slowly taking it out. And then you get picked up by a helicopter where you fight a boss. And then you're riding missiles. You're riding missiles that are blasting into the back of that ship and jumping from. missile to missile, and it's all on one stage. And like, just a whole one stage. Going underneath. A whole game you're explaining

there. When you're going underneath the battleship and the game's just kind of like, this thing's got seven different weapons. Here are all of those weapons. Like, screw repeating anything ever. We're going to throw new stuff at you. It's like a hard type ship. This is the kind of thing that Konami was so good at. It's something they did in like Rocket Night Adventures as well

on the Genesis, where it's like the situation rush where it's like, here's this level. We're just constantly throwing new ideas, new concepts, new encounters at the player. all the time, and you're like, I can't believe all this stuff was in one level. Yeah, you know, it's the same guy. It's both Nakasato, and we're Nakasato, who did the direction for both games. It's interesting, because I was going to bring up that comparison, too, that's like,

a lot of the things we see here kind of comes back in Rocket Night, which is the game I've been working out of recently. But, Ardy, what would you know about Rocket Night? Yeah, that's right. I'm flabbergasted. Yeah. I did not know that they shared that. That explains everything.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's what, I mean, I look at this in Rocket Night kind of is like, shared games like I put them together like they feel like they belong to one another they have the shared DNA so yeah like I said was fortunate to get that game my god this is my number one pick for my favorite contra game it's the number one it's number one so this is the cutoff point for most of the audience so they won't hear the rest of the episode oh yeah he's flooded anyway so yeah what are your thoughts on this one I mean yeah this like john mentioned like

you know, I talked about how Contra on NES was like the quintessential arcade conversion for an NES game. Just like taking those mechanics, making them better for home console. And I think this to me illustrates like one of the strongest

jumps to 16 bit as a new generation of hardware. Stage progression in the old games. It's interesting because you look at something like Gos and Goblins and those games. It was very kind of I shouldn't say important, but it was a detail taking you from stage to stage and have it make sense it wasn't just like in

Mario you just go to stage from stage but there's no like real sense of progression through a kingdom or anything it's just stages yeah uh whereas contra tries to kind of have a logic to where you were going you were kind of climbing towards that final alien base and here it's all set up at like movie set pieces it feels like scenes from a movie and you were mentioning the music, it illustrates it so perfectly there's an escalation to the compositions. Yeah. It starts with this brooding,

like, metallic percussion. Kind of Terminator style on that first stage. But as the game goes on, there is like more heroic elements that come into the compositions because you're making your way for the game. There's just all these details that make this game like an absolutely incredible

feat. It's not just the action. You can talk about the gameplay. The fact that you now can hold two weapons and switch between them is a godsend. Which is cool? Yeah, it's just the bombs, the new bombs, like fill the screen with all these colors.

I love the fact. You can hold L&R and jump and do weird somersault jumps with both weapons firing, which is not that functionally useful, but it is badass thing to do. Beyond that, though, you can lock your aim. That's something I'd mention. That's so important. Yeah, all the weapons have

been improved upon. You know, Thomas mentioned earlier that, like, he felt some weapons were kind of lesser in the older games. I think in this game, almost every weapon is equal, if you know how to use them. Yeah, the harder, I mean, the laser, which is still hard to use, just does so much damage.

Yeah, exactly. I like that at grenade launcher with a nice arc and everything and that nice popping sound. Wonderful. Right. And it's just like, man, like John mentioned also, like, the bosses, there's so many of them that you're so used to at this point the 8-bit layout and mythologies of a stage

and from the first stage it breaks apart the level it breaks through a wall it rips it open you start that factory stage by going horizontally and then you suddenly have to start climbing and you go into like the night sky and it's just like it's these incredible moments that like wouldn't really be possible on the prior hardware at home.

The step-up intensity is just like It's wild. It's not... It is a movie. I mean, in a sense, I would argue it's maybe slightly easier than the old games while maintaining the illusion that it's much more intense. Well, I think what it is is that you have more control and more features at your disposition. So like you just have more of ways to save yourself.

You talk about the stages, like the overhead stages. And I always felt it just kind of. brought the variety that Contra needs and it did something very different with it. Mode 7 is put to perfect use. Yep.

Also, the throwbacks like that right before the skeleton boss there's that vertical shaft which is reminiscent of the same similar scene in Super C. They also have some of the at least one of the Super C enemies

near the end and that whole last stage is just like extremely foreboding. Yeah, it's just It's not the perfect game Because I don't think anyone can pick up and play this game There is definitely a learning curve And there's a difficulty curve here that isn't for everyone But I think

Even today I think if you have a friend that's like really into Because it's a game that you just You can't let up You have to keep going Both Both gameplay mechanically But also like narratively in the game

Which is the perfect way of doing an action game It's just everything is illustrated so perfectly for gameplay and for visuals. So, like, I feel like this is, again, like Contra was one of the, you know, cornerstones of the NES. I think it's hard to have a conversation about the Super Nintendo and its top tens, it's must-haves without mentioning this game. I mean, I think it's hard to talk about 16-bit Konami and not put this almost, if not the top of the heap. I mean, to say that it's just wild. like is this one of the best

is this the best Konami game prior to like I mean it's in the conversation oh absolutely sure so I give this 15

oh no no it's my number one much like John there is just no for me there's no contest and that's tried I've tried to exclude nostalgia in that ranking because I can sit here and talk for hours

probably about how yeah yeah I used to sit and cut movies by recording gameplay from different games. And, like, Contra 3 or ProPetector was always, like, the main part of these shitty-ass movies I made. But it was so much fun and it was just so much I could do with these set pieces and then using my Commodore 64 to have, like, these text interludes between. So, yeah, just so many memories of this game. Yeah, and Thomas, just to... You don't like this one, do you? You're not a fan.

Oh, I hate it. It's a bit by 15. No, just kidding. So, I think we mentioned a lot of stuff already about the dual wielding, which I think is a big game changer, because finally you can be a bit more tactful with your weapons, think about what you want to say for a tough situation, maybe. We talked about the set piece, of course. But I think there is three things I want to mention. First of all, back then when it came out, this was the game that showed us. okay, yep, that thing can do

action games. Super Nintendo can do fast action stuff without going to a crawl. I mean, we all like Castlevania 4 back then that came before, but I mean, it really slowed down terribly in some places. Gradius 3 and this game

still has some pretty big slowdown, though. It does, but I think what mitigates is the size of everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it feels much bigger, hence we accept the slowdown is earned in this game. Yeah, right, right. I know what you mean.

The intensity makes it, like, necessary in some respects as well. So this is what also really told us, okay, the Super Nintendo can actually hold a candle to the Mega Drive. You're right. So this is one big thing it did. And another thing I think about is, I mean, it sounds nasty, but it's a wonderful tech demo, the mode seven levels. Back then, every time something zoomed in the game,

this was just like science fiction. Oh, my God, it's zooming. When I was a kid, I saw this game on a Games Master, the TV show. I saw it too. I saw the sequence where you crouch on that concrete block and the enormous snake of flame bursts out over you. And when you see that on a CRT, the way you're meant to see it, even without that, it's impressive.

But my God, I'd never seen anything like that when I was a scared. That was like, what am I looking at? And some of the levels like the jet bike stage, the amount of parallax scrolling going on is more like a megadrive game than a super NES game. Because SNS games are usually pretty flat with the parallax scrolling But here they did that per line scrolling

Like crazy None of us even mentioned Like the opening cutscene Just the first impression Of like you see that city And the whole thing gets destroyed It's just like In the Penn State did that later

But it's basically the same imagery Yep So And just stuff like the bomb that we mentioned already Just the most seventh bomber coming in It's amazing stuff And the same side Like the zooming jumping bos in

The second stage is amazing. So we just love that stuff. And I also think, yeah. I was going to say, Thomas, you mentioned the dual weapon system. Yeah. And it just occurred to me that this is basically like the Halo system, two weapons plus bombs, which the grenades before Halo. So the final thing I mention is the small stuff in the game.

So if you remember that stuff in the first stage, there is the stock enemy, right? You pass it by. then it lifts the head and runs towards you from the back. And I mean, it's just this one simple enemy that doesn't do much but the world building. What is this creature? What is wrong with that guy? With the dog's face, it just is interesting

and that just gets you really into it. And it's funny, you mention that Thomas, because that dog doesn't do that on easy difficulty. Yeah, I used to play it on easy and then when I played it on the dog came off me, I was like, what? Yeah, it's just a fun little thing where it's like, oh, okay. It's just stuff like that made us

why do we? This is so weird this whole is just changed the first stage entirely halfway through and turns into like a hellscape

just man what a game all right man we could go on and on that first boss with the brain legs and everything

the heart sticking out this is so wonderfully can I say is it so wonderfully fucked up it's great we did not see stuff like that

before this game all right so what do you give it oh yeah I'm giving it two all right two yeah I'm afraid

I'm gonna keep it super brief for me too as well. I used to play this with my friend as a kid and it was the game that made me kind of go, well, you know what, the Super Nintendo maybe it ain't so bad after all. Because, I mean, the other games he had were just awful.

Like, shit, like, oh, I don't even want to get into it, but this was the I want to know. Okay, maybe I'm being unreasonable. Well, okay, Mortal Kombat for one. Yep, terrible. Awful. Battle Maniacs, which I did like, but it isn't

good. Okay. Yeah. But this was the one. This was the game. we never finished it, got to stage six once, never good get past it, but I was able to, I'm able to do it now, because I can take that knowledge from when I was again, apply it to modern, more contemporary, like, I get the rules of these games now, but everything we've already said is stands, but it stands true. I mean, it's cinematic as hell. I mean, think about the way that in the overhead stage, you choose the zone, and then the music kicks in, and there's this big zoom down to where you are. It's awesome. It's like one of those Google Earth zooms you get in movies. everything about it just enormous fun so much variety in the stages the connectivity it doesn't really matter

because as you said audio is like individual movie scenes just crazy action and set pieces slung together and I think the thing that's really telling about how great this game is is more or less every game after this is trying to be this and not managing it to some extent

I mentioned that later on it's not my number one game for a reason we'll get to but it is mighty number two there's no way this isn't winning so that's the end of the episode everyone thanks for your pop thanks for listening but no that's

contra 3D Alien Wars it's a game you cannot really fuck with it's basically one of the best SNES games so one of the best 16 bit games I think that's fair to say yeah one final thought quickly about that but we also got in Europe at least nice

full screen illustrations of the awesome robots Oh, yeah, yeah. These looked great. I would take those over the images we got in the original or the NTSC any day. Cool robots, man. Wow. Speaking of robots, there are no robots in the game that we're about to discuss, which makes it a huge outlier.

It's contraforce for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992. Now, this was not originally a contra game. It was arc something, wasn't. It was arc-hound. Arc-Hound. Not a Contra game at all, but it got released as one. I think it was delayed. So they had, according to what I read on Wiki, which might be made up bullshit,

it was delayed. They had to rename Contra 3, although if this was never going to be Contra anyway, I don't really see how that makes sense. But whatever, it's Wikipedia, it's probably a tissue of lies. So Contra Force, or shall I say Contra Fars? John, what do you think of Contra Force? Well, I'll start by saying. it's got a really good soundtrack.

Yeah. He's got some driving NES tunes at first stage. When you fire it up, you're like, heck yeah, I can do this. You got beans equipped, which also highlights one of the differences. And this is actually kind of something that Konami played with a lot in this era,

and that's swappable characters, right? Kind of like the Turtles game. You can pause the game and basically bring up a menu mid-play and swap between characters. Even the Tiny Teen Adventures did that. Yeah, yeah. It's a little weird, I think. Like, it doesn't feel like it belongs in a game like this.

Yeah, I agree. It's like when you get to that first jump that you can't clear and it's like, what the fuck? And then you have to just choose one of the other guys who can jump it. It's like, that's it. So I'll say, I don't think this is a great contra game, but I think it is a perfectly acceptable side-scrolling shooter. Yeah, I'd agree with that. That's let down by bad technical performance. Oh, my God.

The slowdown is. It's just constant flickering, so much slowdown. It feels like the game can barely run. And I actually think that's what hurts it more than anything else. It just feels not good to play. Yeah, I completely agree with that, John. So that really kills it. And, you know, the stage design is very not contra, like, especially as you get further.

It feels a little bit more aimless. Like, you're just kind of going up and around. Yeah. It's a very different sort of game. But, yeah, it's not bad, per se. But on my list, I gave it a 13. Oh, that's really low. It's only 13.

It could have been low. but it has beans in it. So that kind of helps make it. In the backwards ball cap where, you know, I kind of feel like, I just imagine now that I'm playing as Fred Durst. I think it's Smith with that. He's running around like, oh, yeah. Yeah, you like to imagine that he's doing it all for the lucky.

I like that. Exactly. So you just keep rolling when you, you know. So, yeah, this game, though, I didn't play it back in the day. It was completely off my radar because it just came out, I think, the same year is. or three, and by then I was all in on Super NES. Yeah.

It's like, why would I? I mean, I think that was a mistake a lot of us made with good NES games, but this one, uh, I don't feel like I missed out that much. Yeah, I don't think I hit my region at all. I don't think it came out in Europe. I don't think it came out in Europe because I, I do not remember this at all. I, yeah. I mean, I remember showing up in magazines and I remember seeing at the store, but it didn't

play it till later. And by then, I knew that people, I knew that people didn't like it. Yeah. So I went in with an open mind. And I had some fun. but yeah it's I don't think it's a great contra game so you said your ranking was 13 right 13 yeah 13 yeah so this didn't come out in Europe as any sort of pro protector game uh I had seen it in I think I saw it in like EGM at some point

for sure I was aware of its existence uh growing up but I obviously never played it I actually picked this up at Funkoland um during my first trip to the US in like 2001 that's cool yeah because it was just one of those games that I'd heard of you know

internet is in it's sort of infancy so like Funkoland where you buy all those funco pops yeah

it's not quite no one's ever made that joke you said a bad word now you have to bleep that so I picked it up and

the first thing that hit me I remember playing it that day was that you're not fighting like aliens or anything you're just fighting

terrorists yeah it's just dudes Some of them are huge, big dudes, big, massive moon. Yeah, it's, like, kind of weird. So, this game, to me, is a case of, like, neat ideas, terrible execution. Yeah. I think the idea of swapping characters is, like, you mentioned Ninja Turtles. I think this game also reminds me a lot of, like, mentioned Impossible on NES.

And, yeah, it was just something they liked to do at this time with kind of swappable characters with different abilities, which I think is neat introduction to Contra. it can lead to some interesting designs down the line but here it's just executed terribly the first stage with the jumps and it's just no and slowdown galore it's one of the worst performing games on the NES

just not fun to play the music is the only kind of highlight and it's not that much of a highlight I think it's neat but it's not anywhere near my top 10 on the NES so yeah it's kind of scathing for me

I really hate this game I just remember the hatred I felt when I picked it up and after all those years of knowing of it and playing it and just like this is terrible like this is not fun at all so not to waste any more time

this is my number 16 it's just for me it is the game I hated playing the most on this list and yes I know it includes some other games I'm incredulous at this and yet I understand your reasoning and accept it.

Yeah, it's just, I think there's a lot of neat things in here. It's just like all the execution of those neat things for its time even. It's just badly implemented. It feels like a game that a team was tasked to do, and they didn't really even finish it. It just got released because of something that was there and could be patched up. Just not fun at all. It kind of occupies the space in my mind.

is something like Tournament Fighters for the Mega Drive, which has some cool things going for it, but then it's unplayable. Yeah, it's not fun. That also has great music. Yeah, it does. But to take over from audio now, what I wonder about with this game,

I think the name is a big problem for this game. If, imagine for a second, this game had only come out in Japan, only as R Count. I am sure a lot of people would say today, Oh, yeah, it's a hidden gem and... Yeah, I agree with that. I don't know with those performance issues,

like, it's... I think it has a terrible two-player, too. I would say these people are right. I'm thinking they would exist. I agree that they would. Yeah, yeah, which would mean... Certainly. But, of course, with the name Contra,

and the way it is, it's just a terrible game, I'm afraid. I mean, everything's been set so far. It's Contra. The weapons system, dude. Oh, yeah, the gradient system and weapons. Yeah, it's so bad. It makes no sense.

Agreed. The one thing again, it's... I think, okay, Aldi will hate me for that. It's good it exists because better than it would have been scrapped entirely when it didn't come to do. Oh, I don't sit here and hate it exist. I just think it's the lowest rate game on this list. I hate it. But it can exist all once.

That is well. But yeah, so from all the bad contra games, this is for me the most A one. So I'm giving it a 14. Wow. Wow. I gave it the highest ranking, but I only gave it 10. there are six games I dislike more than this

I think that the as mentioned I think the slowdown is death in this game it makes me it's awful how bad the slowdown is there are things I like about it I like the destructible sort of environment thing they've got going on where you can destroy so many

platforms and boxes and all sorts of things yeah lots of boxes and I like the fact that it's kind of easy because I'm kind of crappy a game so that appeals to me in a sense but it's just odd isn't it like the top down stages that go on forever

yeah god didn't even mention those suck and how all the bosses seem like they've been weirdly ported back from being something else because they're just big lads

like you're a lad you're a guy but it's like you're going up against the Lilliputian army going up against the Gulliver squad or something is like they stepped out a China warrior ended up in this game

and yeah 10 for me I don't hate hate it. I think there are things that suck about it. We haven't even mentioned. Like any time you're platforming or moving platforms, it's excruciating because they move so goddamn slowly and they're so small. What about when you get in the boat

and it's so flickery that it doesn't look like it exists? The graphics just go just toilet. There are games that like when you go back, you can forgive a lot of performance issues on 8-bit and 16-bit systems. I don't, you know.

Yeah. But this one is one those that we're not exaggerating. It impacts the playability to an extent that like it's not fun to play. I mean I think the best way to describe it personally if you're firing a gun the game is chugging and you're

always firing a gun because it's freaking contra well it's not. It says it's contra but it's not. It's a guy and nearly worse. And yeah, for me it's a tan it's a very low down game in the series for me. And not the lowest. Not the lowest. There

are several worst games, in my opinion to come. I went into this episode thinking the entire time, I was like, fucking Stu's going to put this as number one. You just know it.

You mean you want to say the worst contrarian? Yeah, I don't think I, this is what always gets to me. I don't think I am contrarian. I think I should genuinely have horrible taste. Like, I really do

earnestly believe my bad opinions. Aren't we in this episode are contrarians in a way? Oh. Absolutely. Oh. Oh, another banger from Thomas. Man, that's almost as good as the first one, you did.

No, not quite, not quite. Yeah, compared to that, it was shit, to be honest. You should be ashamed of yourself, Tom. Oh, I am. But no, speaking of being ashamed of ourselves, we should move on to the next game, which is Contra the Alien Wars for Game Boy in 1994, which is... I think this is one way John and I can say a few words about... I guess eminently, it's supposed to be a conversion of Contra 3, but John, what do you make of this one? Because, I mean, it was you who told me this game existed.

Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, this was essentially... This was a game created by Factor 5 of Turrican fame. Yeah, so full circle, right? Not long before they would go on to do their Star Wars games, really. So this was done still here in Germany, I believe. And Andreas Escher, you introduced me to Audie, did the sprite art for this game, or at least the pro-protector stuff.

I can't remember if he did the conversion of two. He did. Okay, because this technically being developed in Europe, this would have been kind of a pro-protector game first, interestingly enough. It was. But so this is weird because I don't think it's actually very good, but I also think it's amazing. And what I mean by that is compared to other games in this list, I think it's obviously flawed. And part of that stems from the fact that they're trying to simulate one of the most complex 16-bit games of its era on the Game Boy.

And that they get as close as they do is a testament to their skill, I would say. Because it does, not every level's there, but it generally captures the essence of the Super NES game. Most of the hits are there. So you're like, okay, this is cool. But obviously, it's a bit slower. It's crammed. It's missing content. You know, it's horrible.

The music conversion is not good. I think they should have just done a new soundtrack, because trying to do that symphonic sounding SNS music. It's not possible, I think. of the Game Boy. Even for me, it's not even that it's just a bad competition. It's cacophonously loud. Yeah, the whole game sounds tuned like ridiculously. But that's just my opinion.

You know, like I said, so I respect it for what it's did. And I think it does an impressively good job of capturing the game, but it's just not that fun to play, which is why I put it at number 12. Ooh. So, yeah, it's, I think it's much, much, much worse than Operation C. I have to agree with that. And again, it just comes down to the fact that it's, again, it's not an original Game Boy game. It's really trying to be

something that it has no business being on that hardware. It's weird though that it's marketed with like, oh, it's got this Super Game Boy support. I'm just thinking, who's buying this to play this on this Super Game Boy? That is, especially by this time, you could probably get Contra 3 quite cheap, right? Yeah, exactly. You don't want Diet Contra.

I don't want Contra Max. But I will say this, though, is I actually think this is, I love the Bill and Lance Sprites mostly in the previous games, but I actually think in this one, like, they don't look great in the Western version, and the Pro-Botecta version is the way to go. Right. They look quite hideous in the close-ups between levels. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I took a screenshot of it today, because it was just terrifying. It was horrible. so yeah that's where i'm at with it uh i don't know what about you get audy yeah um so i i actually had this like as pro protector obviously but i had this with my game boy i played it a lot um and i you know i echo most of what you're saying uh i have a little bit more nostalgia for it probably yeah um i do think graphically it's pretty impressive i love the way it looks um obviously i don't Yes, this is an excellent pixel artist. I think the music was done by Rudy, who's a friend of John and I.

We love you, Rudy, but sorry about Edith. You were given an impossible task. Yeah, I think the reasoning from what I kind of recall, because I've been very close with the Factor 5 team throughout my career. And, you know, Rudy was someone that was more accustomed to, like, orchestral hits and these kinds of music styles. rather than Chris Holspec. And it doesn't translate as well.

I know Rudy can do better. I feel bad being mean about the music now. I didn't know that. I think he would absolutely. Rudy himself could do better, but it would have been interesting if they had like Chris Holspec do an original soundtrack for this.

Yeah, they should have. They should have. I think they should have. At this time, I think Chris was doing, he was still doing Kaiko stuff, I think. So I don't know if he was kind of... Not available. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't remember everything about this But anyways I think what brings it down Like you mentioned is just that like It feels cut down I wish they had replaced Stuff or made new content Yeah yeah yeah

To fill in those gaps whereas It feels You know It was a Thomas that mentioned earlier like tech demo To me this feels like a concept Like we can do this To show a part but as a consumer product,

it feels a little bit lacking. And maybe that's kind of what it is because this was the era where they were moving to the U.S. shortly thereafter. And they were looking for licensing and kind of contract work. So it does feel like something. They also did a soccer game with Konami, I believe,

for the Mega Drive. Super So Stocker Deluxe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for Mega Drive. And they did Animiacs as well. Right. For Konami on Game Boy? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was a pretty good conversion of Animaniacs, I believe. Fantastic. I think it's a better conversion of AnimaniX than this is, you know. Yeah. It's almost more playable on that than it is on the Megadrype because you can switch characters quicker. That's true. But yeah, there's something here where I have really fond memories of playing this. Sure. I fall was really impressive back then.

I did too. I actually have good memories of it as a kid as well just because I was like, wow, 16-bit on Game Boy. you know people always say that like or they said especially back then that it was Game Boy was just for ports I think games like this kind of was the reason for that yeah and it is kind of like you know poster child for like a cutback port but what they're doing is super impressive uh yeah so my ranking for it uh it landed at nine okay wow you know it's uh kind of in the middle uh but i had fun with it But I do realize, obviously, that it is the lesser version of the game. It's highly impressive technically.

It's not as impressive mechanically and just graphically, I love it playing it now. Not so much. It's missing the bike stage. Good Lord. Yeah, it's missing a lot. I mean, you don't have, what else is this like kind of missing race? The two robots guys are missing, I think, right? Before the big terminate from the background.

Yeah. And there's like, man, like, you can't swathe. up weapons, which is a big thing. Right, right, right. I think the spin attack is gone, obviously, as a result. I don't know if they do some replacement of that. I don't remember right now. I don't think so.

So it plays very similar to, like, the NES games, but it retains enough of the Superintendo game that it feels lacking, which is kind of the problem. Yeah, I agreed with that. Yeah. Thomas, what did you think of this game? So my opinion is about this game. I think they're put in a lot of time to see how it can be done

and how it can be converted but they never thought really about if they should actually do it. Oh, I see. Jurassic Park. Yeah, exactly. It's impressive. I really, I like how they adapted all the stuff from the big game to the small screen and everything,

but it's just not really fun. And, I mean, I think we all can agree if you make a Game Boy game, that game needs to be really made for Game Boy with the hardware in mind. and it's limited any possibilities and if you just

shove this on there by force and just jammed in there it just doesn't work so if I would have the choice I mean imagine we could have gotten a real second

Operation C-style game made for the Game Boy in mind well we didn't we got this so I'm giving it an 11 11 for effort

yeah I mean I gave it 12 personally same as John I think I strongly agree with you, Thomas. For me, the Gameboy really sings when the games go small. The more big a game goes, the less I think it works.

And I apply that even to big franchises. Like Mario Land 2, I think, doesn't work for me. It's too big. But with Contra, I recognize that what they did was very impressive. But I would still rather play Operation C or cut any time over this. And I wish we'd gotten another Operation C over this. So, yeah, I mean, I guess the nicest thing I will say about it, and I'm not sure if I'm alone on this,

is it's still not my least favorite version of Alien Wars. So we'll come to that a little bit later. Um, but next up is a very interesting game, uh, for Genesis stroke Mega Drive. Now, this was 1994. Now, I'm going to, I've always called this contra hardcore. I think that's the pun they're going for. Uh, but a corpse, you could say. Hard co-coops, they are corpse.

They are a corpse, a core, a marine corps. that kind of thing. Yeah. Contra Hardcore, a. A.k.a. Probotector. Yeah, and it was never

mega probotector, was it? It was just proletter. We all called it that, but it wasn't called that, actually. Because magazines, I think, called it that and previews and things. Yeah, and the Japanese one is The Hardcore.

Oh, wow. The Hardcore. Contra Hardcore. John, what do you make of this one? Oh, gosh. This is a good game. Yeah, this was a, I first played this on a rental with some friends.

We were like, dang, this is nuts. And if you actually look at some of the development history there, you see that this was directed by Nakazato as well, following the Alien Wars and Super Nes and then Rocky Night Adventures. So this is directly following those games, and I kind of all lump them together for that reason. And this kind of builds again on taking that situation rush idea and maybe pushing it to even new heights. And it almost feels to me, like, in some ways, it's a response to what ex-Kanami people had done with when they formed treasure to do like Gunstar here. Is there like, all right, we're going to push like all the sprites. And we're just going to do. There's going to be so much going on.

And there's going to be like no slowdown. It's just, and there's not. It's just, it's extremely fast. This is actually, this is a game that in some ways feels like it embodies like arcade games more than console games just due to the sheer. speed, fluidity, and just intensity of everything happening all the time, which is cool. But there's some interesting wrinkles here. First of all, each state, there's many, many, many stages in this game more than usual. And it's because each stage is somewhat smaller.

So there's usually like some running gun sections. And then there's sequences of bosses. But you actually have a choice at certain junctions of where you go. And that actually changes the course of the game. And depending on which character you're playing, and there's four characters. that all play different with their own weapons and you have multiple paths to the end. All of the stuff influences what happens in the game. It's weirdly very replayable as a result because there's just a ton to see.

Yeah. And it's just, it kind of follows each stage section. There's a lot of like obviously continuation from what they were trying to do with Contra 3. You know, you're riding on vehicles, you know, moving quickly across the terrain. There's crazy 3D effects. There's giant sprites moving all over the place. There's like that transforming robot thing in cyber world that's like formed out of like spinning squares, which is difficult. Yeah, it's a, it's a technical showpiece for the Mega Drive.

Also great soundtrack, great controls. It's a, it's my second favorite game in the series, which is why I give it a number two, just because it's, yeah, it's just one of the best 16 bit action games you can play. and really shows that Konami, you know, they started off a little bit weak on the Mega Drive with like Sunset Riders being kind of cut back. But then by the time they got to Rocket Night and then this, they were pushing that system hard and doing new things. And that's what I like about this and Castlevania Bloodlines is that both of them are like built on ideas you might be familiar with from the respective series. But it felt like the designers were given the freedom to just do what they wanted. and I think that's cool It really shows

Yeah, I mean I came into this game A little bit later I did not play it Even as ProPetector When it came out I think I think it had a fairly limited

Release as Propetector Yeah, it's fairly rare Yeah I know like Probably like some place In Scandinavia and Germany It was released But I haven't seen much

Of the game Anywhere else Like secondhand at least I'm sure it came out the UK as well. It did. I was for, bizarrely enough,

one of my friends had it, which is really weird when I think back on it. But I always got the sense that this game was not distributed very heavily. Weird. It's very expensive nowadays.

Yeah, it sure is. The US version was really common. I mean, everybody I knew about it. It was around, you know, it was a big game in the US. Yeah.

I mean, the Japanese version is extremely, which I didn't talk about that, but Thomas, you'll have to get into that as well. to do that. That's important. But no, I mean, this is kind of like the direct-to-video

sequel that I like more than the original movie sort of thing for me. I really love everything this game is doing. I love the branching stages like, you know, element of Castlevania coming in to Contra.

This era of Mega Drive games with like bloodlines, this Rocket Knights, just gosh. some of the best Konami stuff of all time. Yeah, they were...

Also, tiny tunes. Yeah, Buster's Hidden Treasure, Baby. Tiny tunes. It was awesome. Not Buster Bustleu. Screw that game. Busters Hidden Treasure every day. Yeah.

I like... Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of treasure games in general. And I like this more than general treasure games of the similar genre. Great. I think this is mechanically

much tighter. But that's a different discussion. Sure. Yeah. And yeah, I just really, I like the world building that's in this game a lot. I think that's kind of one of the elements I feel like, well, now they're pushing the series in a different direction, but it's a direction I like. And it just feels like it's expanding on all the right elements rather than trying to introduce a lot of new things that is kind of hit and miss, which we'll see in the kind of subsequent games. So it's just a wonderful celebration of the side-scrolling contros until several years down the line where it has started doing that again.

I kind of want to say, though, that this one doesn't work as well as ProBetector for me because the whole thing about the Japanese and U.S. version is that one of the characters is a robot. It is a brownie, right? And then there's the Wolfman and then there's two humans. And I feel like that mix works. And if you make them all robots, it's like kind of loses something. Yeah, that's Julia. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of...

I didn't play this as a pro-protecta readers. I don't have that same nostalgia for this. I currently have my copy in my hand because I checked something. And because you mentioned the distribution, so at least the manual has eight languages in it. So I think at least they planned quite a bit. Yeah. I think I feel like the conversation around this game

would be skewed in a different audience than us. Maybe he's due when Thomas will get into it. But as I came into it, this game later, mostly with John, actually, I've mostly played the Japanese version of this game. Yeah. And the Japanese version of this game has a very interesting

addition to it, right? Yeah, it's a life bar. Yeah. That's the big thing. You get three hits and, yeah. Yeah. And again, I think that's this, you know, Contra, yes, is built a lot on that kind of intensity of the one hit kill, but this is a much larger

game. So it doesn't make sense to me to not allow for a little bit more leeway in order to enjoy the scale of the game but when you play the U.S. version I do think that like if that was the only version I play I don't know if it would rank as high as it does for me. Yeah, I understand.

Yeah, but as I've only played the Japanese version and feel like this you know, it is a game that builds upon the core of Contra and makes it better it ranks pretty high for me so it's my number four okay wow

well okay then I guess it's my turn so I think this game is incredibly intense it's really this is a game where you grab your control until your hands hurt because it's so intense it has this grimy look this gritty grimy color scheme often

the soundtrack is just rocking and it just feels like they just want to out treasure treasure in a way we mentioned that already so yeah it's impressive it's it's wonderfully weird as well with all these the hidden endings and stuff like that it's just what about like the guys on the fire poles that it come down to like form into different things yep that one mutation boss that always combines two enemies into a new one and and the professor is thrown in stuff like that

what gets me about what that makes me think sorry to interrupt you but what that gets to me is the distinction between this game and contra three by contra three for me is like I don't know a slick maybe 90s action blockbuster directed by Stephen Spielberg

and this game is like friggin God I don't even know who would direct this It's just like a kid describing that game to you who's just a loads of sugar like oh and then these monsters

came out and they combine into an even bigger monster and then I ate the professor and then they turned into a big thing with a big face and then it's like that's what it's like and the wolf has sunglasses and what's not to like about that. And also the little touches, right?

So, for example, if you choose character, you have this morphing animation between the different faces, that is awesome. Yeah, yeah. When you start the level, you have this introduction by your whatever Sargent Superior guy, and then speech is done, and then he does this pose with his finger with a sound.

Yeah. Right. Awesome. This is just so on point. Yeah. And of course, the big thing is we mentioned that already with the hit point system in Japan, because the game is built around that. And I think the pro-protector one, or the American one, they are too hard to be fun at this point. They are

just too punishing. So I don't like these versions very much, but for this case, I'm rating the Japanese one, because that's the intended version of the game. Before Konami USA could get them to butcher it for, again, their weird fears of rentals and stuff. Yeah, so

many games had this problem. Yeah. But I think it's the biggest here. Yeah. Castlevania is doable. But contra Popaector. No, that's just, it kills the game almost. But again, for the Japanese one, this is my number one. And the Japanese version also says artwork by Metsuzan. So, like, I really like Japanese artwork for this.

Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. I'm lucky to have this in my collection. I'm very happy with that. Yeah, you're sure. The price of that Japanese version right now, for people who are like, well, I guess I'll pick. No, you won't. But there are, you know, there are ROM hacks out there that takes, like, the,

life bar system from the Japanese version inserts it back into the US version so there are ways of enjoying this game whichever way you want and of course also I mean there's a collection out now on every system and it's on there as well you can play the Japanese version after a bit of I remember that when it came out

everybody was what is wrong with the guys where it's the Japanese world it's better and then it came by a patch bit later on so okay here it is thank you yeah they patched it into all of them didn't they the Glosylvania one and the arcade one as well for me I mean this is my number one as well.

But I don't, I mean, I agree with you about the Japanese version and how much simpler it is to complete. But at the same time, that's not how I played it when I was a kid. So to me, that just feels like baby mode, you know? I don't mean that as dismissive as it sounds. That is just my, what I'm used to. And the fact that Contra Hardcore gives you a slide move that makes you completely invincible while you're doing it.

And it's quite a long slide as well. To me, makes it. it much more trivial than it otherwise would be. I don't, I'm not saying you don't do this, but I think a lot of people maybe don't know that that's a thing you can do. But at the same time, I agree that it's not a reasonable level of difficulty with one-hit kills. It's not designed around that.

The bosses will just throw things out at you that are not only completely insane and unpredictable, but also very difficult to dodge. I feel like back in the day, I managed to get through it before with Brownie in the US version. Yeah, with a double jump, right? Yeah. That's a bit easier, I think. That makes it easier.

There is cheat code to give you 30 lives, I believe, which sort of makes it more like the Japanese version in a sense, but... But still, you lose your weapon when you get hit, that's a big deal, I think. Yeah, that's true. And there are lots of different weapons in this game, a lot different weapon layouts for each different character, I believe. That's a good touch as well, yeah. I used to, like, uh, Brownie's got the sort of yo-yo on a chain that he throws out

that does tons of damage but the reason this isn't number one for me, despite the fact that I do kind of think speaking I don't like using this word but to be more objective about it, I think Contra 3 is better I think this is my favorite because I just like games that

go this hard. The first thing that happens in this game is the ridiculous thumping music as your van just plows through reams and reams of enemies boot you out. You make your way across this city that's basically collapsing. The enormous cyclops robot in the background leaps into the foreground and starts doing a weird jig. God knows what that's up with that. But then the whole screen is flashing with ridiculous epilepsy-inducing colors while you're killing him. And it's just, it goes hard constantly. You get to that. I remember when I was a kid seeing that stage where you fight, I think his name's like Dead Eye Joe or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's in this big robot running down the freeway while you're running away from it. Yeah. And you're so, and it's, and it's, and it's, and it

just throws you into that with no way, it's just suddenly like now this is happening. Then you're on, it's like the motorbike stage except the motorbikes are these kind of bipedal robotic ostriches that can turn into bikes and ships. Then you're cleaning into a helicopter while the guy with

a morning star is swinging around it at a million miles an hour shooting glazers at you. The criticism I would give this game, despite the fact, like I said, it is my number one because it is appealing very much to my sense of aesthetics to my type of games that I like.

There is a point where this game sort of becomes just a boss rush, no matter what route you take, and that's kind of lame. However, on the other hand, it also has Last Springsteen, which is my favorite contra track in any game. The music is insane how hard it goes. The music is like this astonishing combination of like hardcore gabber rave music and like guitar solos. And we haven't mentioned it, but there's also a secret ending

where you fight a twisted monster version of Simon from, Castlevania, which then gives you an ending where you become like a king of the eight people or something. Yeah, there's actually a lot of composers that worked on it too. With Kobayashi Sambi and number one, but also Michu Yamane, Akira Yamaoka, and others as well. Like, there's some serious Konami talent involved. A lot of them involved with Rocket Night as well.

Yep, yeah. There's actually, there's a lot of cross-credits between this and Rocket Night. It really, really does feel like they look, looked at Gunstar Heroes and went, hey, that's our, that's our genre. I agree. I actually think that's why this game has a life bar system of the Japanese version and why it's designed that way, because I think they were looking at what Gunstar did. And they're like, well, we'll take a, we'll do a spin on that.

Yeah. I think it's, for me, it's the definition of a rough diamond because, like, the bits, like, there's a boss that you fight where you're just going through a corridor while this thing is dragging itself through the corridor with one arm. And I feel like that goes on too long. like too many forms too much but at the same time still my favourite because everything

else about it is exactly my vibe just like now this happens now this weird shit happens now everything goes apes shit now you're on the back of a missile idea idea idea constantly the boss that stops the train how cool is that? Like come on the giant robot running alongside the train

at full pell amazing so yeah number one for me amazing game that still put salient wars I believe out front because of that Rogue 4, but it's peak contra, as far as I'm concerned.

So following Contra Hardcore, it was actually a bit of a break, a two-year break, which is probably not worth pointing out because there have been several two-year breaks. I'm not sure why I highlighted that. But we didn't get another Contra until 1996 on the PlayStation and 1997 on the Saturn, which is Contra Legacy of War. Yeah, this game. Not sure. God, Jesus.

Okay, so, John, maybe you should just give us the lowdown on this one because... I think this game would have the biggest range of scars, I think. Maybe. You guys got your 3D glasses on? Yeah. Always. It makes you look cool. That's well, okay.

So that's the thing then. You liked, if you liked the adventures of Batman and Robin on Game Gear, this is the game for you. I didn't like that. Oh, well, I have bad news for you because Konami, for some reason, I would love to understand how, why, or whatever. but they gave Contra to what was previously known as Novo Trade International. Oh, my goodness. That became known as Appaloosa Interactive. More like No-Go Trade.

The creators of Echo the Dolphin. More like Crappaloosa. Which Echo the Dolphin is a very interesting game. And I think it's pretty cool for what it is. They also did Calibri on 32X and a ton of other games, right? Yeah, those are the games that really screamed to me, Contra. That's the problem, right? You don't play those games and think, yeah, Contra.

Because that's what Konami did. They gave it to this company to create an original Contra game. And they did it on PlayStation and the Saturn. And you know what? I don't like it, but there are worse Contra games. And there's a couple good things going forward, I will say. Basically, they decided to make a completely overhead run-and-gun style shooter. And impressively, despite using 3D graphics,

It runs at 60 frames per second, which on both consoles, which honestly, I think people, that is a gigantic feat, considering what's actually going on here. So I give them credit for that. Yeah, they use a lot of sprites, but not all the enemies are sprites. They are actually probably on enemies. Yeah.

It makes me think of, sorry, just about in, but also 60, I think, on PlayStation, also from Konami was that Project Overkill game. Oh, yeah. Which this isn't entirely unlike, I would say. I mean, yeah, I like project. this game I think is part of the same style of game that we saw with like loaded and reloaded and there was a bunch of shooter one as well that you mentioned earlier too yeah yeah there was a ton of

these games where it's shooters but it's in a 3d space kind of a top down angled camera the best one is still apocalypse just throwing that out there oh yeah Bruce willis one uh so but there's a there's a problem with this one in that I think probably to get to 60 frames per second they had to zoom the camera way in, and the view of the action is extremely restricted, making it kind of difficult to see what the heck is going on a lot of the time. But if you can get over that and get used to the controls, there is a mid-tier shooting game here. There are some actual enemy patterns, especially as you get further.

There are recognizable contra things like the contra wall right in the first stage. The music's not bad. I actually don't hate playing it. and I think it's an okay game but compared to like the Contra series as a whole I think it's pretty lousy so despite that

and the 3D glasses which is a weird thing it's like that red red and blue anagliff 3D glasses that came with the game I believe yeah which I think with the first print at least

yeah with the first print which again super weird idea but interesting I suppose yeah not the only not the only game to have them right I'm sure there's something else there. Oh, hang on. There's even books doing that nowadays.

Wasn't a heart of darkness this as well? I don't be hard of darkness to that. Maybe I might just randomly had some 3D glasses in it then. So knowing all that, I don't actually rate this at the bottom, though. I gave it a 14, which is pretty low. It's one of the bad games, but I think it's not the worst game. Can I ask, just real quick, any meaningful difference between PlayStation and Saturn for this one? version has slightly

better visuals, I'd say. The Saturn version uses that dithered transparency effect for all the shadows, which is kind of ugly looking. But it's actually okay on both. And they also, if you guys recall, they actually integrated arcade machines into the levels.

Do you remember that? Where you walk up and you actually find arcades. And you'll walk up to the machine and it's like, it's like Pac-Man with tanks where you're driving around a maze, collecting dots with a tank that can shoot and there's an other enemy tank

doing the same thing. And the only way to get out of the game I believe is once you actually get out of the arcade, you're like locked into the area with the arcade machines until you destroy the arcade machines which I thought was pretty funny. It's a nice comment on addiction.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, what do you think, Audie? So I did play this when I came out. he said 996 but this must have been much later in Europe then because I seem to recall that I got this

so I moved in 97 that's why I remember it because I had it in my new house Oh okay So but maybe I just got it late I don't know I haven't looked up I don't remember this getting a Pell release at all but it probably did I don't read it absolutely got a Pall release

I don't know about Saturn I played it on PlayStation but Saturn probably U.S. only. So by this point, I think John mentioned the game, but, you know, I had grown a little bit older and there was a game called Loaded that had come out.

And the friend that I was playing Contra with, we were playing a lot of loaded, not reloaded. Reloed sucks. I went back to Loaded recently and I thought it was boring. Yeah. So, see, I'm not a big fan of Loaded today.

But when it came out, it was aesthetically and audiovisual was like perfect for the era you had this industrial kind of electronic music you know it was the violent wipeout so to speak it was just and also the thing about loaded was edgy you even had Garth Ennis doing like the story and stuff

it was edgy yeah so like we were really into loaded and it kind of became our co-op game for a long time I think I played loaded much longer than most people should have and you know we were talking about progression and like the setting of loaded breaking out of the prison and kind of there was a lot atmosphere to that game yeah for sure and when this came out I was excited and I think the reason why like first of all it was Western developed like John mentioned and I think Konami of America was kind of more involved at this point creating new projects whereas Japan was working on other things things, you know, like the Metal Gear's and whatnot. The other experiences they were trying to do rather than retro-based experiences. So I kind of understand why that happened, but the results is that you have a game that looks like Contra, smells like Contra, but doesn't really feel like Contra.

No. You know, it feels like the vegetarian dish that's supposed to be like a steak, but it just doesn't taste like it. So there are neat things. We didn't really mention the fact that, like, in Contra Force, I mentioned, like, the idea of swapping between characters and having different abilities is fun on paper, but in that game, it didn't work out. It did in hardcore. Yeah. They kind of implemented that fine there.

And in this game, there's also, like, character-specific weaponry and stuff that's kind of neat. Yeah. But it doesn't make a huge difference to the game. I think the enemy AI, the level layouts, the jumping. Oh, the jumping's weird. It's weird and just never feels good. They don't flip either. He just kind of puts his legs up and it just feels strange, yeah.

It doesn't feel like a contra jump at all. For a game, you know, we say contra jump because, like, jumping in contra has been pretty iconic up to now, right? Like the summer solting. It's like Mortal Kombat jumps or rather, Mortal Kombat has contra jumps. So there's a lot of iconography in this game that, yeah. It seems familiar, but it just doesn't hold up and doesn't feel as good. It feels really clunky. I think that's the key word for this.

And, yeah, the 3D effects. I can't even remember it. Maybe I got a second print without 3D effects. Did you make it to almost the end when he runs around on the giant sphere? Yeah, I mean, I've played through this game several times. That's the bomb in 3D. Well. Plus not that 90s window.

Maybe I just didn't play it the right way. Maybe in 3D it would make all the difference. Yeah. But, you know, talking about how these games transition to 16 bits so perfectly, I mean, again, Contra becomes like this poster child of, like, conversions to 32 bit that doesn't work out as well. Going into 3D, different ways of 3D, this is like isometric. It's not fully 3D in that sense. But, you know, a lot of these franchises struggled to figure out how to, you know, capitalize on all this

new hardware and technology. So it's kind of interesting to see that it falls into these, you know, categories so strongly in terms of like either being, you know, examples of perfection or being kind of like in this. What's interesting you say, though, is like I always, because it feels like the rebirth series we'll talk about later, there's Castlevania, this Gradius, and there's Contra. And Castlevania and Gradius made an amazing transition to this generation. right like really really really good

everybody talks about symphony the night but gratius guidance is also just insanely good but they're both Japanese developed this one though Contra got the short shrift but I've always wondered like what if they did a Contra game like Gratius Guiden at that level man yeah I mean something

you have a rapid reload or no no it's like Gunners heaven like that's more like yeah that's Gunn Star pressure kind of like rapid reload for me is one of those examples of one of those games where everyone says it's a hidden gem and then you play it and you're like oh god what is this i love i love gunner seven dude oh okay well that's i'm very sorry to hear that

well yeah why don't you go back and play dizzy i will here we go here we go again right so but yeah uh we're we're supposed to rank these games yes we should uh and this lands on the dizzy scale. This is a 14 for me. Okay. Right. So my turn. I keep it short. So the thing is, when I think about contra games, the good ones always feel really elegant.

You're doing cool stuff. You're a cool guy with cool poses and stuff like that. And Legacy of War doesn't have that. The thing is, when I think about the game, I think about the first contra war that turns up, right? You know the contra wall? Yeah. So usually you find a nice spot, take

A, and then you just destroy it. In this case you have to weirdly jump back and forth to hit the things because they are at a weird angle and it just feels so clumsy and so un-elegant and so stupid so basically at this point the game was dead to me. I remember that

it came as an import to my local store and oh that's a contra game also let's get this and that was a mistake. So you got the import of it? Yep. The American version? Don't have it anymore. Sold it because I it because I mean it was pal. Yeah.

Was it not released in Germany? Six months later. It was, but it was, why I wait for six months? Oh, yeah, this didn't get released as a pro-protector, did it? Yep, it was the first contra in Germany, true. Oh, man. It was the first contra and powerations in general. Yeah, wow.

But things I didn't really, I didn't buy any PAL games because we all know the reason. Yeah. Let's not go there. It's another talk. The thing is, as I said, it just feels, I don't hate it nowadays. I paid it again now for this podcast. And, yeah, John has a few good points about the 60 FPS, and it's zoomed in too much. But still, it's not really fun to me.

So I'm giving it a generous 13. Okay. That is generous as well. Yeah, I'm not going to say hardly anything about this, because I just don't care to, but I give 15. It's 15 for me. Wow. I can't enjoy this. The perspective is shite.

It's barely controllable to me. I hate it when it's 2D Sprites on 3D. like Polygon Worlds or whatever, it doesn't work. It feels horrible. It's like Agent Armstrong, but not as good, and Agent Armstrong isn't even that good, so... That was a pal-only game, right? I think so, yeah, yeah.

But that was a similar to 2D 3D, 2D slash 3D. Agent Armstrong is a better contra game than this is to me. I really like... Yeah, yeah, I agree. And that shouldn't be. I'm surprised Stu that you're not saying that Johnny Bazooka tone is a better contra.

Oh, we had a podcast about that. Johnny Bazooka Tone is a game I have genuinely tried to play many, many times and thought to myself. I should like this. It's a platform game with loads of secrets and hidden shit, but it's uncontrollable. Yeah, it's awful. It's a dreadful game, you know? I'm going to go back to Gunners Heaven and try it out again, I think. And unfortunately, the PlayStation wasn't quite done with Contra yet,

and we got another game in 1998 called C. Did we ever? C, the Contra Adventure. What does this C stand for? Let's find out. I have suggestions, but they are all not quite... I have one suggestion, and it's the only word that you're not supposed to say on the podcast. Gosh.

This game, my God, I hate this game. I really hate this game. I think this is just total trash. They tried to go back and say, okay, you guys didn't like that last one, although it must have sold well enough for Konami to let's take a second crack at the license. Let's try to make it. Same people. Let's try to make, yeah, it's still Appaloose Interactive.

And I guess they had a chance to make it more like side scrolling contra because that's what they did. They went back to the side scrolling perspective some of the time, not all the time. But no matter which, but not, no matter which camera angle you're using, this game can only be described with one word. And that is boring. This is the most tedious boring. slow, stupid contra game you could ever imagine.

Like, barely anything happens. You're just kind of moving slowly through the world with this, like, sort of this jaunty jog that your character does. It's the first of the 30 frames per second games, which I guess, you know, considering what's going on, not too bad for PlayStation, but the whole thing just has no energy at all. It doesn't really have, it's the kind of thing where, like, in the last one even, like, it's not great, but like the challenge came at you pretty fast. and hard and you'd end up dying

pretty quick and you retry pretty quick. This is a game that just sort of plods along. Your life bar slowly goes down and then eventually you die, maybe because you're so bored and then you have to do the whole thing over again, the whole level and you hate it because it's just

boring. I just, I hate playing this game. I cannot stress enough. And it's not just like the first level opens with what seems like it's trying to do. It's like they're trying to take what they know from Contra 3

right? Like the city environment but then you also have stuff like you're riding on the train. It is absolutely just a do-over of past glories.

Yeah. A terrible remix of that first level song. It just sounds like some dude noodling on a keyboard but like doing a bad remix of that track. But then most of the rest

of the game, it does go back to side-strolling throughout, but this time there's these move into the screen and this like suitor well it is a 3D perspective and it's just a bad feeling action game at that point that doesn't feel anything like contra it's not fun I think it's there's there's nothing good about this game I think it's just a it's a piece of garbage well and I give it this is my 16 yikes that's your 16 that's my 16 I think this is the worst contra game I've got to be

honest I'm pretty taken aback by that considering that this game to me is like like so patently less shit than Legacy of War. No, no, I think Legacy of War is... It's interesting. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. Obviously, I'm not saying, like, you are wrong. It's just, it's very fascinating to me, how the...

Well, yeah, sure, it's completely differently. Legacy of War, the levels are fairly short, and they have predictable patterns, and you either win or lose pretty quickly, so retrying it isn't that frustrating, and you just do it again, and you kind of learn it, and you get through it. And it has that element of figuring out the patterns and then beating the level. level, and it's short enough where you feel like you can do that, where this game just kind of goes on and on and on, it feels like, where every stage is long, slow, plotting, and not much happens, you know, and I feel like that's more of a crime just because it's not,

there's no, and because the controls aren't very good, the action's not satisfying, like, it just never feels good to control or play in any way at all. Wow. What did you think of this game? So, I'll preface by saying that everything I'm about to say, it's still, it is a terrible game. Like, John is right, it is a terrible game. However, I will say that in terms of just experimenting with the formula of Contra, there's

more going on here than Legacy of War. Sure. And it kept me more revisiting it, because I did, I played it. it like many, many years ago just out of curiosity like in the very early 2000s when you kind of went through

the back catalog of PlayStation and I just never really you know it looked like a grainy this reminds me in the ways of the spawn video game and just like I hear the look of it is just like

I feel like I have to take a shower after I play just as like grit of PlayStation but even so like replaying it now I had, like, a fascination of just exploring the kind of environments, like, if you can call them that. You know, the play fields that they give you.

And I felt like the latter half of the game, while still fairly bad, they introduced, like, things like, it's almost like a forgotten world. It's kind of like, you fly around and shoot. And I think the last few stages was kind of interesting with ZERG stuff. like the 3D stage from the NES where you shoot the core kind of thing which didn't play that bad I will say I didn't feel like it played that bad you sound like uncontrollable I just thought it was boring yeah it is boring it like I say experimentation it's I'm not saying it's a good experimentation I just saying like yeah they went from legacy of war which I just like I couldn't even hold my interest but in this one I was kind of like fascinated with what they

tried to do it's like a bad movie sure you know it's just kind of like there's an endearment to a good bad movie is someone's dream dying on screen and this is kind of saying this is the shot in Floyd of it. So I gave it a 13 one hired

and legacy of war just because it's doing something different. I can recognize that. Yeah, but I do think there are some neat elements that with some better development behind it could be introduced into Contra in the better way.

but yeah I kind of there's some of the set pieces some of the bosses I felt was kind of fun honestly which legacy of war I don't like any of them

all right so then I guess I am up so when I played the game again to prepare for this podcast because I do my homework first I thought I remember this game worse then after a few minutes

oh no it is terrible so I have my notes here and I wrote down first of all he's only single player which is a bad idea already yeah that should be mentioned that's kind of like the first and worst part of it is just like but that next point is i wrote down long with uh with seven no with six o's and below i wrote as john ovidy might have mentioned a bit boring also with six o's so like the homo simpson boring

incredibly boring and the pacing is so bad that it makes you wait all the time to do something again and in the first level alone. The level is too long. The one interesting idea, I think, correct me if I'm wrong here, I think they make no a difference between getting hit by a bullet and by an enemy directly. So bullet, cost of energy, direct hit, cost you a whole life already. So, I mean, that is a thing that is a nice idea. But everything else, this game is just, so this is my number 16.

So it's just... Whoa. Like, no. come on yes it is yes it's so bad that's the hate from you I couldn't I was pretty sure there's an endearment to this game I thought there was a worse here that's kind of there was another game I thought would be worse than this and then I went back and play these two back and I was like you know what this is worse I think this game suffers a lot from like what happened after Tomb Raider was introduced into the gaming world where like you're talking about that being long

and kind of boring and I feel like once Tomb Raider came into the picture You had a lot of these games that just It was all about like pseudo exploration On the stages Yeah, but there's not really exploration here It's just like No, that's the problem So I was thinking a bit about

My rankings, especially about the lower places And the thing that really gave it The shot for the 16 is Yeah, there's no multiplayer I think the other contender at least Has that in a way Yeah, that's what I think, yeah I respect these, I respect these opinions

I just there are other I have such a bad time. I do understand your point of view on this as well, Audie. I think there are some neat ideas in here. I just think the execution's bad. Yeah. I'm not going to say much about it myself, but like, for me, it was 13. I don't hate this, mostly because for me, the instant correction of legacy of war

in which you launch this game and you are playing what is to fall into. tense and purposes, actual Contra in a side-scrolling shooter, kind of familiar you. I'm like, yes, okay, this sucks. This is like little Contra, but it's still kind of contra. It's not just like it's not like 2D Sprite

bullshit, floaty, loaded, boring nonsense. Funny thing is that is exactly why I would even rate it lower because it's a bigger letdown. Yeah, no, that's the thing. I actually get that. I do. It's a new 2D contra with 2D perspective. Oh, it's shit. Yeah. In this case, me,

do our eggs of the same basket, man. I'm sorry, but I'd still rather play a bad side-scrolling and a bad top-down shooter. But the thing is, see, the contraadventure is mostly not side-scrolling. Like, you know. That first level goes a long way, but believe me, I ain't finishing this crap. Most of the game is that weird third person, like, behind the back stuff, which we're just like running down lots of hallways and occasionally jumping,

and there's just not much happening. It's true, but I still rate it above the other ones that I dislike more. for various reasons. That's quite all right. So you guys have, you've covered it perfectly adequately well, I think.

So that, that gives me. I like how they had the same score and we have the same score for them. It's nice after all it all. It's nice because we always clash over, have it over dizzy,

don't we? So it's nice to be agree on things. For good reason. Mm. So, little gap now, four years gap now, with no Contra, until we hit the PlayStation 2. In 2002, we get Contra shattered soldier, slamming into whatever number gen this is with a heavy fucking metal vibe, John. Oh, my gosh.

I freaking love this game. So this was a return to form for Contra, basically. Nakazado and Kru came back. At least he directed it. And to me, this felt like a spiritual successor to Contra the Hardcore, where it's basically taking those concepts, but building it out with 3D polyons while retaining 2D gameplay, it goes for. for a much grittier look

right from the beginning. You could see they got Akira Yamaoka on the soundtrack of Silent Hill fame, but he's really good at, like, rocking out hard. And the soundtrack's pretty nuts, actually. I mean, it's just chugging thrash metal, almost the entire time. A lot of it is, yeah. It's pretty rad. But

it is primarily a side-scrolling game, though there's some non-sides scrolling sections, I'd say. But... Although the non-side-scrolling sections do retain the same kind of gameplay. It's just the perspective has changed, right? Perspective shifts, but you're still limited on a 2D axis. The sliding down the mountain.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? On the first level, yeah. So, like Contra Hardcore, each level has multiple segments where it's constantly switching up what you're doing. You're facing lots of bosses, but the level segments are pretty long and memorable. And there are some fun throwbacks to even, I guess, Contra 3. Like the end of the first level, right? It's just like, you're climbing on those things with those bugs coming down.

the third level of country three but then the huge turtle falls down well first they show a robot and then the turtle thing falls down and crushes them from that first stage but then he ends up turning around and you fight his nasty face in the back oh my god it's so disgusting this game is so gross compared to the previous ones like they've really leaned into it yeah they did manga style like also like the japanese game boy version of operation c or contra as it's called uh you can choose your first four levels yeah you choose the order which is interesting. But there's some big changes to the mechanics, though, and I think they're pretty cool.

Basically, what they've done is they give you three weapons, and you have those weapons all the time, and you cycle them with the L&R button, right? And it's a very strategic thing, where it's like your flamethrower, the grenades thing, and then like the normal blaster. And also each weapon has a charge, where if you basically, like, double tap and hold, you charge the weapon. I think there's also a shortcut key for it as well. Yeah, you can use Circle button as well.

Right, right. So it's all about mastering the use of your arsenal since you have three weapons, each with their own, like, sort of special attack, and you've got to use this to get through all these insane challenges. And all the while, there is this hit rate at the top. And if you get 100%, you get an S rank. And the S rank is what you need to see every level in the game, as far as I know. 100% without dying, right? Yeah. And the hit rate means, like, you get all the enemies, basically.

So it's really tough. But even if you're not going to, for me, big thumbs down for the hit rate. I hate it. I don't know why they did that. I think it's a little bit weird. I also found that kind of tedious, but whatever. The rest of it, though, the level designs, I think, are really cool. There's a lot of neat themes.

There's the train level. There's, you know, actually the train reminded me directly of hardcore, right? Because you've got the big robot that runs up alongside the train, and you're kind of fighting them. There's so many cool scenarios in this. And, you know, that's really what it's all about, right? And to me, it really does feel and play like a sequel to the hardcore, just more extreme. And you really see it from that opening FMV with all the crazy stuff going on. Yeah.

And by the time you get to the end, though, some of the later stuff is like really grotesque. Yeah. But then eventually you go into space and everything, and it's just like, it's wild. It's such a wild game. I like it a lot. So that's if you get like the full S-rank stuff. You can, the full ending is nuts. So for all of that, and, you know, there's also the nostalgia factor.

I bought it actually right around when it came out, but it was, I think it was Toys R Us. Did their buy two get one free sale, which was like annual for some years? So I got this with Suikod in three. and Red Faction 2, weirdly enough, on the same day for the cost of just two and I ended up playing just so much of Contra Shattered Soldier I give it a 5

Oh, that's funny Because I liked it a lot It was the spiritual successor I was looking for Yeah, I mean, I'm not actually going to add too much because I think you kind of touched on most of my notes here But yeah, I also bought this when it came out And at this point, I was importing games. So I got the North American version.

So this was a favorite of mine when I was, it came out, maybe my first year of college, or maybe last year, high school, I forget. But I just remember that, like, it was one of the last kind of co-op games I played with my best buddy at the time, who I now have reconnected with. And we still play games together. But, like, yeah, just. great memories of it feels like

the successor that should have been maybe a couple years ago if not for those PlayStation 1 games yeah it also looks like a PlayStation 2 game

just like aesthetically it feels and looks like a PlayStation 2 game I mean that in a very endearing way I think there's some really impressive effects in this game I think

yeah yeah I want to highlight the the boss that what used to impress the hell out of was the big sort of chrome face

that materializes from like a vortex that you take to pieces like as you destroy it more and more pieces that come off I always thought that looked incredible

for PS2 yeah yeah stuff like that yeah I'll get to that am I figuring of neocontra

or this one isn't this is this the one wordy kind of double dragon Bill and Lance where like Lance's spoilers

but like isn't he like the bad guy I think that's Neo Contra that one I thought that was I thought that was Shattered Soldier, but I don't remember.

Yeah, I think it's Shattered Soldiers. Because whenever I play this game, I press start and skip the cutscenes. Yeah, I just remember that they, like, yeah, they put them against each other. Yeah, I think that he is one of the burns in this game. There's a lot of mad shit going on in the stories. Yeah, it is. It's very of its era in terms of, like, gross out.

You know, it's like the Renan Stimpy of Contra. Like, you get a lot of nasty close-ups and weird stuff happening. And, yeah, it's very off the time. Even the music, you know, like mentioned, Yamaoka, goes for, like, a very different direction with the music. But nonetheless, a very fitting one. So, yeah, I don't have much to add. I'm spinning wheels on this one because John already outlined everything.

But for me, Shadow Soldiers, Lance, out of five. That's five. Wow. Another five. Okay. And Thomas, what about you? Okay, so basically, same for me. was set already. It's very grim this time. It has grotesque bosses

that look really nasty in the best way. I think again it has a great rhythm of playing and I really like the effects. The flamethrower looks just beautiful and nice and crispy. However, I think for me it's a bit too unforgiving

and a bit too tough, especially the whole hit rate stuff is just that is for me a bit what do you say, anxiety inducing even because I know I have to do this all perfectly and especially when you start playing you just try to survive for a level

well there is so much there is a lot of stuff locked behind that as S ranks you know there's a lot of game yeah I think you have to be a certain rank to play all the levels but then then the ending I think you mentioned John the ending changes on S obviously

and that's a full clear without missing anything without dying right because I know that there's like an easy mode that just has the first four levels right Oh, I forgot Because I think you can play all of them on normal or hard But the final ending And the extras are on a lot behind hit rate success basically

Yeah, like I think you're I think that might be right If you play an easy, you might only be able to play the first four stages Yeah, that's what I remember it That's how I remember it being Since I played on easy, yeah Locking away a lot of stuff Well, the only reason, the only way I was ever able to beat this game

Was using the cheat code, so It is really hard Like, uh, I never got by myself to the 100, percent hit rate, but a friend of mine mastered it back in the day and actually pulled it off. I think if you have the time, it's amazing. If you really want to get into it, it's a brilliant thing. I just didn't have the time. So I liked it very much. I enjoy playing it. It's really, it's a wonderful PS2 game. It's fast and it's full of effects. It looks great, has a great frame rate. I'm giving it a nine, but only because there's games are like more than that.

Yeah. Fair play. I mean, I gave it an eight, and that, again, that to me, means, I really enjoyed this because I did. I think it's too hard as a baseline, and I think it's too hard while also asking you to be very fastidious in a way that doesn't feel very contrary to me. For example, like getting the full hit rate on the first stage means you have to intentionally delay destroying a boss near the beginning, where it feels like it would be more fun and more contra to just kill it as fast as possible.

So basically, the way I see it, in order to get the most out of the game, you have to have the least fun playing it. which is weird, I don't like it. And then the rewards you get, well, there is a really cool, fun movie which has friggin sparkster in it, which is worth seeing. I saw that, yeah.

Yeah, but the amount of effort the game expects from you is very high compared to any of the other games. I mean, I think this is harder than Contra Hardcore, I would say, personally. And that's hard. And I'm talking about the Western version of Contra Hardcore. Really? You think it's harder than that? I do think that. But then again, I think there's also

a degree to which the fact that it is polygons versus sprites might, and the fact you have no defense move, like a slide, may have factor into that. I mean, I found this game hard as shit, like really difficult. It's pretty hard, I agree. But it has lots of stuff I like, like the boss that you fight flying over the ocean, which is

this enormous mecca, vast mecca with this huge anchor attached to it. Music is going absolutely apeshit, chugging away, like metal. God, it's awesome. If you like metal, this is a game for you. it's extremely metal

on every respect but for me it's at eight and there are several games I prefer and lots of games that I think are not as good so yeah here we are what do you all think of Lucia I have no opinion she's fine I guess I mean

yeah I mean it was the first I mean it was the first kind of like defined female character for Contra I mean she just I mean not being I mean this this is going to sound bad coming but like She seemed to be there because there was always a sexy lady character who got their ass out and cut scenes in this era. She's like the Prince of Persia warrior within sort of, because I remember all the cutscenes was just butt cheeks, if memory serves.

Oh, God. Low polygon butt cheeks. Oh, yeah. And yes, I was incredibly sexually motivated by that. But other than, no, it's a good one. It's a good one. I like the introduction of female characters in action games in general. And, you know, this is of the era.

Yes, it is. It's not the greatest female character or anything, but I did enjoy the fact that, like, there's a variation again here being introduced that Contra needs. Yeah, following, was it Sheena from Contra Harcourt? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gave it an 8, you said? I do give it my 8, yeah.

It's a high-scoring one, in a good way. It's a low-scoring one, I should say. It's a popular game, which reflects to me. where it belongs in the chronology but unfortunately there is another one we have to cover from 2002 and that is the Game Boy Advance game which has the most outrageous title of Contra Advanced the Alien Wars

EX extremely shit I would say um sorry I've given away my score there a bit but um John what do you think of this horrible game that sucks and if you like it you're wrong well first of all I'm going to say that first of all I'm going to say that I I actually have a box Japanese copy of this, and it's called Contra Hard Spirits, which I think is a great name.

It makes sense, given what the content is, yeah. Yeah, Contra Spirits, Contra Hard Spirits. I think that's a phenomenal name. But yes, the Western name is not great. This is weird because- It's somehow an E-X version of the Alien Wars. So I like, I don't dislike this one, but I do think it's. It's a fairly bad conversion that could have potentially done something interesting, but it falls short in a few key areas.

So basically the idea is it's Contra 3, but the overhead stages are replaced with stages from Contra the Hardcore, the train stage and one of the other ones in there, which on paper, that sounds awesome. But there's a few things wrong with it. First of all, the screen real estate is shrunken down. the music is now terrible. It's so bad. It bonds me out because at the beginning you have the song pulled SNS sound from when you start the game. You get the big crash sounding like, oh, this is going to be awesome. And then the music comes.

It sounds like someone with a kazoo. They got rid of the multi-weapon system. You now, when you get a weapon power up, it sort of bounces up. The power up bounces up in the air and you can kind of only choose one, which I guess with the lack of buttons I kind of get. But they could totally have made it work. It changes the flow. the gameplay bit. Oh yeah, they could have made that.

Like, press both buttons at the same time or select. I think there could have been a way. Also, the color palette shifted a bunch, obviously, for the non-backlit screens. Some of the effects. They got over to bums as well, didn't they? Bums are just gone. Yeah, those are gone. The fire effects are run at like 20 frames per second in the first stage, which looks

kind of bad. So it just, it's like a cramped, slower, uglier, worse sounding version of Contra 3. And you know what? I like the stages from the hardcore, especially that train stage. It's a good stage, but it highlights one of the things that Contra had always done well, which is variety per stage. And by mixing up the perspective, it kind of keeps you guessing as to what's next. And when it's just a bunch of side-scrolling stages in a row without that all feel maybe too similar at times,

it kind of kills that flow. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so what's here is perfectly fine. It's just held back by some of those decisions and then issue. with the Game Boy conversion itself that makes it feel not so special and I guess

for the Game Boy I'd say the first Alien Wars port was probably more impressive but I actually do still ultimately prefer playing this but only just which is why I gave it number 11 yeah I mean I

I don't enjoy this port much at all I think the aesthetic mismatch between the these new stages quote unquote it just doesn't work I think

gameplay cutbacks you know not having the switchable weapons and don't think it doesn't have bombs either I think unless I just missed it

the stages designed around the around Contra Harker also obviously don't have the slide so you can't actually evade the way you could and that game it just doesn't work

I mean it's a neat idea yes but it just feels like a cobble together ROM hack more so than like something that should have been in a finished consumer game

and yeah it just I don't enjoy playing this version at all I have no reason like the music is fucking dog shit and I does it like I couldn't try to test this but does this actually support

the link cable I don't actually I recall it I think it might I think it might. As I vaguely recall, there being a one or two player option at the start screen, but I wouldn't inflict this on a friend, to be honest.

No. I would simply say, let's play the original Contra 3. Oh, yep, yep, it's actually two players by Gambling cable. Yep, so here we go. Well, I'm not giving it any points for that. No, I wouldn't want to play with anyone anyway. No.

But yeah, so I mean, fundamentally, they're still good things here because the core game is still there in a sense and you can have fun playing it's Contra 3 in many ways just not fully so it's not like the worst

game or anything but I would have never chosen to play it this way even back then if I had it it really suffers from the washed out colors and the cramped screen to GBA games yeah it's just it does not

look nice so it ranks as number 12 for me and this is kind of like the cutoff where like I've you know around 12 is where I start

feeling like well these games don't really have much to them yeah and this one just lands there because like it's a mangled version fundamentally fine game but when you know

the source material yeah it could probably even be much lower than that. But I'll be feared to the fact that like, you know, it's a contra three. Yeah. Yeah. Thomas, what do you think of this?

So, I mean, as already said, there are good bits in there from good games. But so when Frankenstein made his monster, he also took parts of good-looking people, probably. Still the monster was idiots in the end. And I think this is what contra-advance is.

It's just this weird Frankenstein together monstrosity that doesn't come together and as already said already so the graphics don't match so you have this

you have this shiny glossy style of contrast of alien wars and you have this gritty mega drive style

doesn't go together at all but also the architecture doesn't go together because these games feel entirely different

these are completely different beasts and just combining them does not work it's just like you mix some

what you say some oil with water or anything So they don't come together at all. Because sprites are too lean for to chunk your Genesis graphics, I feel. Like, there's a mismatch throughout the whole thing. It's a feeling you get when you play

like a Mugan version of a fighting game. Yeah? Right? Yep, yep. Like a ROM hack. So the things I, as you might have guessed, I have the box in my collection. I bought the game back in the day.

Just because it was on sale, I bought this for five and I bought Ninja Cop for five heroes in the shop at the same time. Oh, my God. Can I borrow your copy of Ninja Cop for, like, not give it back I don't tell them I don't regret buying it that you can say for that

because it is still somewhere contrastry in there but it's very unfun and so that's why I gave it a 12 12 well 12 12 for you too I do want to note real quick

that the Capcom had more success with this concept with their ghouls and ghosts version on there because that combines supergoals and ghosts with the Mega Drive Arcade ghouls and ghosts and it actually

has like a whole map system that kind of has you going between the two. Isn't there a ghost and gubern's level in there as well? Yeah, I think you might be right. So it's like, it's like a greatest hits version of that game, but with like a cool progression through it that has it, I thought that was really well done. It feels consistent. If it's just a butcher.

Capcom's GBA ports probably deserve an episode at some point actually. Not bad at all. I mean, even their port of their friggin Snazz Aladdin had new levels. It's crazy how much I thought they went for that. Oh yeah. They actually went all out. They really did. My God, GBA sound

I love video music and there are very few GBA soundtracks I ever go back through. Just like a Rydian 2. I mean, like one of my favorite soundtrack series, I'll get back to Contra in two seconds, but I love the Mega Man Zero music and I'd like to hear that music

without being bit crushed to absolute oblivion or whatever it's called. It sounds like, oh, horrible. Anyway, Contra and Vance, my brief opinions on this game. I hate it. It makes me angry. I don't see why I should give it any credit for being a shitty version of Contra 3.

It's like, okay, you only get one weapon. The only thing I'm going to say that I like about this that I unambiguously think is a good addition is the fact they added in the fact that you could move in one direction while shooting in another by holding the Lowe button from Shattered Soldier. And that will show up in pretty much all the subsequent games, I believe. But unfortunately, no, I don't see any reason

why I would play this or why I should give it any respect for being a bastardized hodgepodge of two games that I do like. I mean, yeah, speaking, to be completely reasonable about it, if someone had handed me this and it was the only game I could play, I would

probably be able to ring out some enjoyment from it because, as you say, it is kind of contra three a bit. But nowadays, I could just play contra three on almost any given handheld at any point, including legitimately. So, no, it's 14. For me, it does not deserve to live.

So if I can add one more thought, but it's also the frustrating about this game. Just imagine again, we would have gotten a real bespoke GBA contra game. Yeah. I mean, even Metal Slok Advance, which wasn't great, was still better than this for me. Miles better.

Yeah, and that was about collecting cards, for Christ's sake. I'm surprised they didn't attempt to contravenia. Contravenia. Thankfully, though, two years later, to the PS2 with something that's much, in my opinion, much better, which is Neo-Contra, a top-down, three-quarter angle sort of thing. John, any thoughts on Neo-Contra? Oh, my God, yeah.

So I remember when this game was first kind of shown off and revealed, and I remember early reviews, and people weren't that hot on it. And so I didn't buy it on day one, but, like, I don't know, a couple months later, I saw it at a reasonable price, and I decided, I'll give it a shot. It's Contra. I like Contra. And I was genuinely shocked by how much I loved playing this game. Yeah, it's fun. not so first of all like right away the intro sort of sets a new tone for the series where it's like this is just like almost like like a riff kind of a joke on contra in the sense like we're taking all those extreme contra moments and just making them like silly like just absolutely insane i mean that this is moving contra into a area that it's going to stay in for a good while now which is almost self parody level yeah yeah we'll come to that so there is a bit of that and you could love it or hate it i think it's pretty fun and this, especially like there's the level where you're running on the helicopter blades.

You're just like, what the heck, or the dog enemy, the general who's like actually like a wiener dog or something. Yeah. It's, it's bizarre. But when you, when you kick into that very first stage and you can't choose the stage as the first four stages, but that first stage with that music pumping and then the action kicks in, like jumping's gone and said you have a dodge move. It retains the three weapon system from a contra shattered soldier, but it basically has like, the two normal ground weapons, I guess. And then you have, like, on triangle, like an aerial attack. Yeah, Ray Crisis style.

Right, right. Exactly. So it's like the Ray's series where you're like locking on to targets that are on a different layer than you. And combining that with dodging and that movement. And I think you even have some like up close sort of offensive abilities you can use. And it just feels freaking cool as heck to play it. The levels are really well designed, really creative.

of the control's so responsive. The music is just awesome. It's so freaking good. It just looks fantastic. Yeah. Also, again, 60 frames per second again, is perfect 60 frames per second. There's so much happening, but it's genuinely a beautiful game.

And I think it's a better looking game than Shattered Soldier. Like Shattered Soldier is for a very gritty look, and it works. But I think Neocontra, to me, it felt like more born from the aesthetic that Metal Gear Solid 2 went for. But like, with a, yeah, yeah, with a. different team, of course, but it's that very sleek kind of, like, a lot of robotic metallic stuff. I mean, there is some organic things in here, but...

There's a lot more color. Yeah, it's a lot more colorful, of course. And it also is like moving water. Oh, yeah, go ahead. And I was going to shout out that set piece in the first stage where you're plummeting down the shaft while fighting this, like, a giant mecca thing that's coming out from beneath you. It's so cool. So, so cool.

That's just how ridiculous it gets. Yeah. And that's that's it. Like, it just I think it's a great freaking game. It does feel different from other contras because of its perspective and controls. But unlike other attempts at doing Contra exclusively from above, like it's clear they made a control system that is designed for this. And it's not even dual stick.

It doesn't need to be. It's really, really good the way it works. It would be, I mean, this may be sound crazy, but I think if it was dual stick, it would be appreciably less interesting. I think the way you control it makes you think more about positioning and dodging, which I think is much better. I agree. So, excellent, excellent game.

I actually did rate it one slot below Shattered Soldier, though, because... I thought you're about to say you rated it one, and I was like, you can't do that. No, I gave it a six. And I went back and forth between this and Shattered Soldier. And in the end, I think I played more Shattered Soldier because it was so difficult, and I wanted to master it. And my buddy and I, we had a lot of fun, like, actually trying to master that game, where This one, I loved playing it, but I got through to the end pretty easily.

And, you know, but it was, it was a great multiplayer game as well. So, you know, number six for me, great game. Yeah. Incidentally, just before we continue, want to know that if you still have your PS3 hooked up, you can buy this and Shadowed Soldiers still on the e-shop, and it's probably the easiest way to play than now. So, yeah, get that in mind. That's actually probably more difficult for me.

I have the real games with the PS2 and a CRT, but like getting the PS3 online and going to the PS3 stores. My PS3 is always connected, though, because of this. It's got to be connected. But, you know, you could always just get the ISO and play it on a PlayStation to emulate it, but don't forget to delete it. 24 hours. In 24 hours, I've not done that joke for about two years.

So there it is. Eat up. Sorry, I'm, Audie. Yeah, again, you know, a lot of my sentiments, It's, you know, echoed by John. So it's a game that I didn't even know it was coming out until I saw it on the store shelves. And what grabbed me towards it was obviously it's a concert game, but I also had the, if I think it has a Jim Lee, I think he was the artist on it. Yeah, that's what that rings the bell.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, so it was like this really, like, X-Many kind of comic book look. And it perfectly fits the vibe of the game. Yeah, the new characters, like, a story. samurai jaguar or something right yeah also audie real quick just to chime in on that this is one of those rare moments where the u.s version has a better cover than the japanese one yes because the japanese one just has like the cg rendered characters in the front right yeah but the u.s one gets that comic book style which i think looks better we had that too over here i think and pal

yeah oh yeah i have the i have both the north american and pal versions got i picked up in the US a couple years ago. Maybe last year it was when John and I were in North Carolina together. Is it expensive at the moment? No. No, it's cheap, cheap.

I only have a German press version that's where I'm asking. Shadow Soldier and Neocontra are fairly affordable. I think Shadow Soldier is the more expensive one of them. Yeah, I think so. But yeah, no, I really enjoy the pace of this game. The stage is

are a little bit different from Shadow Soldier there's some mini boss and stuff but I feel like you have a lot more just kind of like

classic run gun rather than like Yeah there's a lot more yeah yeah rather than like a very boss heavy kind of hardcore experience

so I enjoy that but at this point I don't for some reason it just didn't grab me the same way Shattered Soldier really did but by the time

we got to like you know 2005. I think I was too busy. Like, this is, I lived in Brazil at the time. Oh, right. So, I just didn't have the time anymore to play the way

I had and didn't have the friends to play it anymore. So, I just don't have the same memories of it. But I did pick it up last year, like I mentioned, that John and I sat down to look at it a little bit at some point. Yeah.

You know, reconnected with I think it is, I think both the PlayStation 2 Contras are excellent and I think both of them underappreciated. Big time. Yeah, I think people think of that era is just kind of not the contra era, but man, you've got two

of the better games than the series right there on the same console. Yeah. So, yeah, it lands at a 10 for me. As I said earlier in the episode, though, like 12 is where my cutoff point is from like the games just generally

being fairly good Do you think it's just like a sort of inherent preference for side scrolling to top down or does that not

factor in? I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, it just lasts out of 10 because I didn't play it as much and revisiting it

it was just I had a better time with Shattered Soldier still. Yeah. I will say. This one is goddamn ridiculous. Yeah.

But who wasn't mentioned like the self-parity part of it? So I think there's a way of doing that And I think in this game You teeter that line, okay There is a line that's going to be

Way overstepped with that In terms of contra and self-powering There's a self-awareness here I think It's kind of important to that kind of approach But at the same time I find halfway through stuff like that in general

Anything that is self-aware To a certain extent like this halfway through, I kind of get tired of it. It's just kind of like, okay, I get it. And this game kind of gets to that point eventually, where it's just like,

all right, it's ridiculous, I get it. And that's a me thing. I'm not saying that as a criticism that people shouldn't necessarily agree with, but it's just... No, I get it, but you know, you want to like a solid kind of foundation to just sort of strive towards in a sense.

And if nothing matters, then why does it matter? that you're part of it Exactly There is It stops me from engaging With the game And feeling like I should push on

Because it's just Nothing is necessarily that's serious And there is a lie That needs to be to eat or two You need to care And I stop caring Yeah About halfway through

So Thomas What did you think of Neo-Contra So this is for this podcast But a big surprise Because it's a game I never really got into Because back then I was in the press

had to review other games. A colleague of mine did this, they said, yeah, it's nice, it's okay. I like Shattered Soldier better, so I never really gave it a chance. So when this came up, I took out my PS2 copy, put it into this console,

played it, and, oh my God, this is really awesome. I like this much more than a Shattered Soldier. Because it just, it's a bit more relaxed, it's a bit more fun, it's not as intense. It's just, I mean, it's still really intense, but not as daunting as Shattered Soldier is.

Looks great, it sounds good, it plays great, I thought at first, yeah, do I want to play this top-down contra game? Of course, I absolutely do. It's really good. Heck, yeah. It has lots of, again, it has meat on the bones. There is really lots of stuff between the bus encounters.

You can really, again, have your levels, you have your co-op stuff and everything. It's great. I wish they took the hit ratio system out of this one. That's true, but it wasn't as annoying as Internet Soldier. Yeah, well, I agree that I would rather it wasn't there, but it's a lot less bollocks in there. because everything is very clear cut. The only thing you need to be careful of is not missing the overhead stuff that slowly flies over you, basically.

I just don't think it adds much. I agree, but in this case, I genuinely think it's quite, it's quite a bit more fun, and it's very, very, very doable. So, Thomas, what number do you give this one? For me, it's Nate. Ooh. I gave it nine, which is, again, one lower than Shadth Soldier for me, I believe. Yes, it was.

Because same real reason. I think this is a fantastic game. I think Shattered Soldier is slightly more fantastic. But I love this game. I love the visuals of it. I love how dynamic it is. I like the fact that it continues with the grotesque kind of horror manga look in places. Like the horrible pulsating brain face you fight on the first level.

My God, it's disgusting. Yeah, it is. Really upsetting. Like the eyes are the goddamn thing. But, no, I loved it. I like the era we're going into now is quite a high peak for Contra for me. We're going to get a bunch of good games on the bounce now before everything crashes down again.

So, yeah, I dug Neo-Contra, and I'd recommend it to anyone. If you think you won't like it, you're probably wrong. You probably will enjoy it, even if you're not a big fan of the other top-down ones. Speaking of, I don't know why, it's not speaking of anything. Speaking of Contra, like we've always been, continuing to speak of Contra. Another three-year gap now before we got another Western developed Contra. wait, this one's not total shite.

It's quite the opposite. Yeah, Contra 4 from Way Forward slamming onto the DS in 2007. All those other Contra games after Contra 3, they didn't happen. They didn't count anymore. Even hardcore. Doesn't matter. It's gone.

But this one brought the games to the dual screen by way of Way forward, I believe. Tom Tim. Tom He was in this one. If he was director or if he was just on it Apologies Tom

I talked to him recently about the upcoming one Which we'll get to eventually So, John, your experience with Contra 4 please Yeah, I actually think this is one of the best games in the DS Period Wow, high praise for such a system Because it's one of the few Like, the DS was a great system

But it's very RPG heavy Which is not bad and it's very touch-centric heavy Yeah I find it hard to just pick up and play And go back to those games but Contra 4 is so good. You can just pop this thing at any time and have a blast. And I actually think it's mind-blowing how much better this is

than the prior Western developed attempts. And this is like way forward at their best, I would argue. Like I think some of the stuff they've done more lately, like I still like their games. But once they switch to unity, there's this feeling that something was lost and the games don't perform or feel quite as good as they used to. but this is just like pure gorgeous Pixar like absolutely stunning like seriously i can't believe how good the pixel art is in this game and it's Hank it's Hank yeah Hank kneeboard

did it yeah so of course you you know max guy yeah you expect the best because hang is extremely talented when it comes to pixel art and he did a great job here and way forward did a great job bringing it all to life in a game that actually i would say is probably one of the hardest in the series. I think this game is super brutal and it took me a lot of time before I could get through it. Yeah, it's like 10 or 12 stages as well. It's long and it's long and hard, baby.

Just like I like it. But so they went back to the original arcade game formula basically with a vertical screen. It is a Tate game. Right? Yeah. And yeah, there is the bezel, but the game is well enough designed and challenges don't like spawn within the bezel space. So that's not an issue.

And instead, you know, so one of the things they did, though, is because it's extra tall, it's more Tate than before one could say they added this grappling hook mechanic, which I think is really fun, where you basically tap the button, he fires out a grappling hook vertically and you can latch on to certain types of platforms above, which is cool. But there's, there's great mix of vertical stages, horizontal stages, everything in here. And it just, it also sounds great. I think Jake Kaufman did the music. Yeah. And, you know. But, right. Yeah, he was, you know, we haven't heard much from Jake in the last several years, sadly.

But his, he dropped double dragon Neil and it must have exhausted and making the best soundtrack ever taken. I know. Like, when Jake was at his peak, and this was right when he was starting to hit into that peak, he was one of the best in the business, I would say. Like, just absolutely phenomenal. And yeah, this game sounds amazing. It really does everything you want from Contra. And you can tell it was made by guys that love. that series, or at least they really understood that series.

Well, I mean, sorry, I don't want to talk, the love, I mean, it's not just the main game. It's the package that you get along with it, really. You know, like, it oozes out of everything that's surrounding the main game. That's right, because they actually include other Contra games in their unlockables, which was unexpected. Yeah, tons of unlockables in this game. Yeah. Really nice bonus.

Like, the whole package is just really, really well done. And I think, uh, I also love keeping in line with the previous Japanese games. I think it's called Contra dual space. for DS, which I especially love. But I think it also deserves the Contra 4 moniker, unlike Sonic to Hedgehog 4, which should be thrown in the bin, quite frankly. There was a time when I would have like gently disagreed with that. I actually replayed Sonic 4 recently. It's a piece of shit.

I liked it okay at first, too. And now I think it's horrible. It's aged. It's not a good game. It's really, really bad. It's such a bad game. This one, though, excellent. And I put it at number three.

nice hard to dispute honestly I won't dispute much about that because yeah I have a fairly special relationship to this game because several of my friends

worked on it you mentioned Tom Hewlett worked on it Simon Lai was the other producer on it Pearl Lai they were all at Konami at the time and I was hanging out with Konami at the time so I got to kind of see

the end results of this coming together and then I was also very, very close with Jay Kaufman. I used to hang up with him a lot during this time. So it was fun to see this game coming together. And like you mentioned, Stu, it's like the people who worked on this just really loved Contra and wanted to make the best Contra game they possibly could. It shows in every aspect of the packaging.

Every single aspect of it shows that. Yeah, and this is an era where, like, you're starting to see the retro kind of indie revivals come. It's not fully there yet. We're like 2007. I'd say like 2010 is when they start exploding. When did Mega Man 9 come out? That was the bottom of it.

That would have been... 08 or 09. Right, right. Yeah, 09 is. So this is before that. What do you hell? I think a little bit earlier, yeah. But you're starting to see the seeds

of what would become like the indie retro revivals in this game. Yes. And, yeah, John touched on everything, right? It's just the grappling hook, you know, the idea of vertical gameplay is nothing new to Contra, but it just elevates it, no pun intended, so well in this. And, you know, grabbing onto these grappling hooks and climbing. There's stuff we had seen in Contra before, but contextualized it very differently.

There's a probotector in here. Oh, yeah. Probatecton. So I said I was hanging. I was Jake at the time, and we were at a convention together, and he was like, do you want to voice this character? I was like, yeah. And then he went to Taco Bell, and I never saw him again.

Oh, wow. I never got to voice the Protector. So now I just spend my days begging Tom, Hewlett, on Twitter to let me do it one day. Hasn't happened yet, as of this report. I would love to see this game re-release, but it's a tough one to re-release. Yeah. It is, yeah. I mean, it's

not impossible. It is not. The problem is that there is a gap between the two screens. the thing is, though, is the art is there because the screen can often scroll, right? So I feel like they could actually fill in that gap and then just release it as like a tall game and then

you could play it on Switch and just switch to Tate mode and use the foot grip. So there is a story to all this. Oh, sorry, go on. Sure. Yeah, I was going to say, there is a story here, but it's not for me to tell. Oh, okay. But like, you know, hopefully one day you'll see a single screen

version of this. It did come out on mobile. Wait, what? This is the time. This is not iPhone time, by the way. This is like Java. Future phones kind of thing, yeah. But, man, just like the music. Let me talk about the music more than the gameplay because John touched on all that.

But like, you know, Jay Kaufman, Kurt, at the time he was, you know, you'd look at someone like T-lopes today, but he was the originator of that kind of like someone had mastered the sound of game music, not retro game music, but just the, the kind of the energy that a video game needs musically he was the best there's just just no contest at the time he was doing it this way he was the best in the industry um still probably could be

uh you know if he was working on these types of projects still yeah um and I just remember the glee that he had at the time because the first stage music he had released as a chip tune because it was a famic

Cammy Tracker tune. They had released on FX, which was this like digital albums they released at the time. So I'd heard that several times as a fan track just as his tribute to Contra. And then when he was actually hired

to do it, it's there. So it's kind of fun to see that transition from like, you know, this love letter to actually introducing this new Contra. And it's the perfect track, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's just, man, it pumps you up.

It never lets up. That's soundtrack. Something I wanted to note real quick as well. There's no reason for this besides pure love for the source material. If you play on hard, you get a remix of Super C's first stage instead. There's no reason, because they thought it would be cool, basically. I love that. There's nothing wrong with that.

You know, it's great. It's an incentive. And if you actually, which I did, I have every, well, there's two regions of this game, the Japanese version if you pre-ordered it for Konami's Japanese store it came with

soundtrack CD which I still have Jake signed it so I think it's worth quite a lot money at this point yeah

is the game itself expensive now or yeah the Japanese version is I don't know about the US version right right because I don't think

I mean I might be wrong but I don't recall it coming out over here I thought I got to report it it did not load of old bullshit oh I get to that

don't worry Yeah, Contra 4 is still relatively cheap. I know things. Because I know I imported it, because I worked in an import store at the time I can easily do that. But imagine if I hadn't, what a life I would have lived. Yeah. So what's your number? Yeah.

So it is a three just because. And I think it's a three because I grew up with the other games. So I have that nostalgia. I would argue, though, that if this was your introduction to Contra, it is the best introduction you probably could have. It's still fairly difficult to have, you know, it's still vertically aligned which some people might have issue with,

just with D.S. I mean, there is all, it doesn't, you don't have saving, right? You still have to do it in one shot. The difficulty is really steep in this game, I think. Yeah, it is, but just the whole package and have fun it is, and it's steep, but the game does a very, very good job

of introducing you to its gameplay mechanics and its controls. and ease you into that. So, like, you get pretty good at this game by sitting down just playing it. So, but it's a three for me, just because I have a little bit more nostalgia for some of these other games we talked about. Yeah. But it's in the parentheses, it's one. Wow. Okay.

If I did the voice for Protector, it would have been the number. Well, then you would have been biased. I still am. So, um, tell us what about your? To add my opinion quickly. I think it's a fantastic game, absolutely. And back then, when it came out in the US, I had a bit of contact to people who were into Konami and had close bonds into the European Konami office.

And what I heard, they declined to bring it to Europe because I thought it was too hard. So this is the story I was told, which might be true. I have no way of verifying that. but what I was told is they couldn't finish the fast level so they said no we skip that ridiculous and of course I mean keep in mind as we already said we didn't have this

classic game wave at this point because I think this was Mega Man 8 kicked a 9 really kicked that off and this came I think a little bit earlier and remember also the DS the audience that that kind of brought with it was very different

from a traditional handheld or a game console. So I can definitely see where they were coming from just saying this is very retrooriented, it's very difficult because at this point people were playing like that brain training and things like that. That was huge of course.

Contra didn't really have name recognition in Europe either, right, based on the name Contra. I guess, there's been a couple of them now, but... I guess shattered soldier and... Could just call the Propetector because it's already in there. That's true. And then they made the men unlockable not the pro-protectors.

It's a pity, but I mean, imparting is easy for the DS, so I don't mind that. So, yeah, I mean, it is pretty tough, but I think it's quite doable and fair in the end, if you really keep to it, and I think it's more doable than this perfect run of Shedd Soldier, for example. Yeah, actually, yeah, it's true.

So, and of course, everything else was said, it looks great, it sounds, great, it plays, great. I wish there was some sort of part to modern systems. And, yeah, yeah, it's a contra-four, so it's a four for me. wow yeah i mean i feel like a dick now because mine is six i give it a six uh which is still high you know yeah i mean what it is for me is it really is just this kind of like greatest hits of contra here's all these things that you've pretty much seen before but they're with much higher like uh visual sort of uh fidelity and uh yeah i think this game is on the side of

being maybe slightly too hard. I think it could also have done with making the basic weapon a full auto, but because this was the 20th anniversary Contra game, they were throwing back to Contra, the original, and I get that. The thing for me with this game is I didn't finish this without using the glitch that gives you 256 lives, where you have to kill the first boss at the exact same time it game over as you, and that resets the life counter to its maximum.

And that was the only way I could finish it. And I think it's 99 lives, actually. And even then I had trouble, because it's hard, like really, really hard. Now, if I had put the practice and I could have done it, but I think they're asking the player to do at least 10, I think it's 12 stages run on the bounce with no saving in the modern. I mean, yes, you can close the DS, you know. But then contemporary era, even today,

I think that's a bit of a tall order on a handheld. But the challenge is there. Of course, what I put my time into was, the challenges. There are 40 different challenge missions you can play in this game, and they were hard as shit, but they were also kind of training you to play the full game in a really clever way. And, you know, one of my genuine proudest accomplishments on the DS is the fact that I did every single one of them. I beat them all. And some of them were really difficult, really shocking difficult. But every time you beat four of them, you'd unlock a new thing. And they were

always cool as well. They weren't just like bullshit. They were like concept art scans or like unlockable new characters like characters from hardcores or characters from or pro-protectors, for example you can unlock Contry, you can unlock Super C to play the full goddamn games right there on your hand towel. Like, you... I want some pocket nesto, which is not...

It's not great. It's not great, but it'll do. By the time. It'll do. I mean, the scaling wasn't very good, but it will do. And, you know, the unlockable history was called as like an interview, I think, as well that you can unlock that was an interesting read. What of odd. addition. It's stuff that

now, you know, we're seeing compilations and kind of the celebration of these franchises off coming back, but, I mean, this came out in 2007, and it was doing that well. Kind of unprecedented, I'd say. And, you know, we're now in 2004. So it's like, it's very much

ahead of its time in terms of contextualizing a classic. I'd really like for this, as we've all said, I'd love for this to be playable again in some form on something, the single screen or whatever. For me, the difficulty of the game,

which is very high even on normal, because on easy you can't progress that far. On normal, the game is very hard. You've got to pay attention to both screens for fire coming towards you, for bullets coming towards you. I think that's a bit of a tool order, no pun intended.

The grappling hook is very cool, which is why they brought it back in Spidersource. And, yeah, it's a great game. and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with Operation Gallagher I think that's going to be a bangor I think the issue, the only real issue I have is like just the DS itself

I don't find that comfortable for long sessions Shooting diagonals is shit like it's very unenjoyable The physical console is so thin In your hands and you're holding it and the buttons are kind of low And it just I don't like holding a DS for long periods of time So I didn't so I did play through it

I practiced it I played it a lot but long sessions weren't great because of the DS itself. I just think it's very cool and very creative, but ultimately it's a pastiche still. It's a pasting together of elements from the previous

games and a very enjoy... Not entirely, but there is a lot of homage in there. And it's good homage and it's very enjoyable and it looks incredible and I'm not going to knock it down for that. But for me it's a six because there are just five more

that I liked better. I guess we didn't talk about how they brought, they did the 3D stages from the original Contra, but like, those were very cool. Actual polygons.

And it actually looked good and still ran at 60 FPS. And it was, it was really well done. But there's nothing about this game that I don't like. It's just personal preference for the things,

you know. Absolutely. And from here, pastiche goes into overdrive, because we get the height, what is now hyper-obscure, and you simply cannot play it without emulation unless you've already bought it. Contra Rebirth on Weware Oh man In 2009 John

What are your thoughts on this Smallest and Most Obtuce of Contras I like this one a lot I think it's really cool This is these rebirth games The three rebirth games That M2 developed With Konami

I think I forgot there was M2 Yeah They're like these like lost hidden gems Where it feels like they're just Like they wanted to make a retro style game But they took off the kind of like The Limiters

right so it's like well now they can throw around as many sprites as they want they can use as many music channels as they need to so it feels retro but like extreme retro like with hardware that couldn't have existed back in the day and it's got kind of a comic booky look to it a little bit and like tons of colors and i think it plays great i think it's a nice homage to contra with some you know it explores some previous ideas but it has a lot of its are new stuff as well uh the music is excellent. Nami Kisan did it. And Chibi Tech as well. That's right. And Chibi Tech as well, yes.

So, like, they, they freaking nailed it. I think the soundtrack, it's, uh... It has some remixes from prior games and I think some new track. Operation C, there's Operation C music in there as the main sort of... Yeah, and like the... It's all done in that, it feels like sharp X-68,000 chip music, but even better. Kind of like that really high-end FM synth that's, like, really, really driving. And there's some pretty insane.

scenarios in here. And really, the only problems I have with the game at all are just down to the Wii U sucking. Like, the image quality is like, it's this beautiful pixel art, but the Wii doesn't allow it to output in the Wii, sorry, the Wii doesn't allow it to output in like 240P. It's just like either 4DI or 40p, but it's like super blurry. Basically, the only way to make the game look good is by doing a bunch of home brew stuff to your Wii. I'm not sure. I I think I got a good picture image out of it somehow. It's acceptable, but it's not... I never liked interlacing this kind of art anyway.

I think I could get rid of the interlacing somehow, but it's in ages, so... Okay, well, you can also explore it with, like, emulation, which helps you can kind of work around it as well, so... But either way, I think it's a great contra game. I don't, you know, it's not as good as the Alien Wars hardcore Contra 4. but it does come in at number four for me. Wow. Number four? Yeah.

Wow. I think I would rather play this than the NES games even. Honestly, I think it's, I think it feels like, to me it's like, okay, you look at Super C and you look at Contra the arcade games. They're Tate screens and long screens. And you come to this, it's a four by three game. To me, this is like the, the Dottiest guideon of the Contra series, where it's a four by three kind of feels more like, an arcade game in terms of what it's pushing around from that era

but like a continuation of that huh um John Addy it sounds like you may disagree yeah because like I was a fan of you know uh Grady's Rebirth uh I played this next and I think Castlevania rebirth

uh third um you were talking about pastiche earlier right and just kind of like it's the greatest hits and to me this this kind of lands in that category where it feels it feels like it teeters

a very safe line so it's not a bad game or anything like that it is a fun one to play but I certainly don't feel like it does anything new or interesting and it came out like all the actual bosses

and the scenarios you fight in like there's none of them that are really repeated from prior games it's a lot of new stuff no but I don't think they mechanically are that interesting anyway I mean I feel like it's still teeters

very safe line like at this point 2009 and also two years after Contra 4 which I think I think Contra 4 is better did a lot of the same stuff better this has more stuff

Contra 4 felt more like an update of the earlier Contra like the original Contra's and this feels more like following from like the 16 mid era like when you get to that stage with the trucks and like all those weird

purple walkers and everything's like Oh God I love it so much that's super fun and cool and you've got that incredible remix of the stage 2 music from Operation C, one of my favorite concert songs. The music is the best part of the game. Anything

by Namiki is awesome and Chibi Tech too as well. She's great. But like, yeah, I just, I guess there's just a, for me at this point 2009 came and I just felt very underwhelmed by

the overall experience. I didn't love it that much either when I first played it, but I played it again last year when I got my Wii hooked up and I was surprised at how much, I thought it was way better than I remembered. Yeah.

You know, it's in stiff competition because like I said, 2009, so yeah, we do have Contra 4 which, yes, it updates the arcade Contra and like the original, much more so than like, you know, Contra 3. But

this is also a time where like we're starting to see like Mega Man 9 come out. So you have those retro experiences. That was really retro. Yeah. So this just felt underwhelming and I don't feel

different playing it now. Okay, that's fair. And I'm talking now in context of having played everything over again where it's just kind of like where these things land and I was by the point where I was picking this up, I was a bit

out contraud, maybe. I just felt like it was there was nothing grabbing me into experience it's cool uh it's good if if you want to just have a pick up and play if you play contra three and you're just like i want more of this specifically this isn't a bad follow-up or anything it's much smaller and scale i feel even though there's bigger like there's big set pieces but like the overall experience feels smaller just probably from a budgetary standpoint because these were like we wear games um yeah but you get to you get to run on the moon while the

More of the moon hurdles through space. I understand that. I understand that. Yeah, that's what Contra has become now, right? It's just, you know. Graphically, I also have some issues of this game. I can agree with that.

Yeah, it's just the actual tile work. And, like, the sprite work is fine, but it feels very underbaked for me. The whole image composition of this game. feels retouched, but not very reimagined. Do you have a number to assign to it? No. Okay.

It gets nothing. That means it's going to get zero. That's very high. It's not at the 11 for me. Ooh. I knew this one would be divisive. Hey, remember why I said, 12 is the cutoff point. Yeah, but I'm just, I thought this one would be a divisive one, but I'm surprised so far

by the outcome that we've had. Thomas, did you, do you like contrary rebirth? Yeah. I guess I'm quite the opposite. of rebirths, so I like all the three rebirth games. I think my favorite, I think Contra is a very clear second.

And, yeah, I think it just, I love the way it sounds, as we said, there's Namiki, there's Chibi Tech doing the music, which is really, really good. And I just love the really over-the-top set piece with the stuff. You're falling through the, through space with that's warm attacking from upstairs.

Yeah, on burning debris as it re-enters atmosphere. Incredible. Yeah, of course, yeah. It reads into parody, but it's just there has so much energy and that is really intoxicating all those at second level beginning with the giant robot and

you're just knocking the head off. It's just so much fun and I really love the game. I love that lava stage as well, right? That's a unique one because it's a very focused on climbing and navigating through like a dangerous zone. I thought it was really cool. Yeah, I really wish they would make

a new release of these games. I am surprised that none of these rebirth games have been... Canami Rebirth collection? Three games in one, they use. $20.20. They did it for the soundtracks. Money's lying right here.

They put out the CD soundtrack collecting rebirth. Yeah, they did. You know, you'd think it makes sense. I'm pretty sure they want to do it. I think it's just waiting for the right time, for the right whatever.

I don't know what. I think... But I think it is not because of them not wanting to do it. The one thing that hits me with all the rebirth games is just the length of them If you compile them together, yeah

I mean, you have a good package here But I wonder if some people Will come back to this thing Because a lot of people are just like Yeah, these, you know, harkings back to the originals And this and that But they're It's a contra reber

It's about the same length as like Some of the other ones though Yeah, yeah, yeah People's expectations from a 2009 game I think it's comfortably the shortest Contra game. Personally. You can beat this game about 15 minutes, I think.

No, I mean, 20. Complete, well, maybe if he did it like perfectly, but like complete plays that are pretty close to perfect or about almost 30 minutes, which is around the time. That's not that much more of them 20. Which is similar to Contra 3. And then like Contra NES can be done in less than that. And, you know, it's, they're all, they're all like similar. They're all in that kind of range.

And I think that's actually good. because when you get to be like two hours in one of these games. Yeah, that's too much. Like, I'm just talking about people's expectations, not my own. See the Contra adventures, like two or three hours. Yeah, that was my favorite. It would just make for a very nice, something like 5,000 dead collection. Would be perfect, but...

Yeah. What's your score? Oh, my score is three. All right. Wow. Three? Wow. I like the game.

I like it a lot. Jesus, I never expected this to score that high. I think this is for me. I'm really sorry. but it's my number three as well I love this Contra rebirth Oh my God, sorry Artie's like God damn it

No I mean I respect that I mean This is basically the perfect follow-up to Contrast 3 for me I'm genuinely staggered I thought I was going to be the one who was the douche giving it the highest score Like as in I thought everyone else would be kind of like Yeah it's fine I think this is a great game

And when I want to play Contra This is one of the ones I go to Because it's just such a short, sharp injection of adrenaline Like I love that the jokes in it that come up. I love the fact and I'm really sorry about this. I love the fact that you can play as Sugumeen, which is

like a little cute girl version of Brownie. That's cute. I like her. I like the fact that when you beat it on each difficulty level, you'll unlock a new character. One of them is General Salamander, who's just like a salamander, which is hilarious. I like the fact there's a debug mode so you can mess around with it if you

want to. And I like the fact that it's quite short and easy, to be honest. I can beat this game quite comfortably. All the ones are horribly hard. On hard mode even, this isn't too bad, I don't think, and it's one of my go-toes. I have a lot of fun with it.

I've already mentioned that I absolutely love the music. I like the music in all of the rebirth games, but that sharp style sound, just like, hmm, at Castlevania Chronicles' ass music, I love it. Yeah, you could just feel that M2 had a lot of fun making this game. Yeah, and it comes through. I even like the fact that there's a

reference to the Teenish Mutiny Ninja Turtles arcade game in there. It's nice. There's no reason to put that in there, but they did. Escape Girl. Yeah. There's even, like, it's like a shout-out to some of my favorite moments of the series. Like, even Lars Springsteen is in there. There's a remix of music from Contra Hardcore, you know.

There's love in there. It's a different kind of love to the kind that's in Contra 4. Contra 4 is a very sincere, we want to make a great Contra. And Contra Rebirth is, look, we want to make a tribute to Contra. And, you know what? Maybe I am overrating it, but it works. It just hits me right, and I really like it a lot. And, of course, as we all know, overrating doesn't exist.

Yes. That's right. I mean, for me, it's just, as I said, like, my list is based on, like, 12 being the cutoff where things go. So this just ends at the bottom of great, like, the great ones. Yeah, which is valid, of course. My opinion is not that this is a bad game or anything. No, no. I just, yeah, at this point, it doesn't hold my interest anymore.

shocked that it's scored as well as it did, but I'm glad that it did. And that leaves only two games to go. Well, let's say two games. A game and a thing that we'll get to. But next up, God, 2011 on Xbox 360 and PS3 online digital stores, I believe, only, for 10 pounds, Hardcore Uprising, which is a prequel, I want to say, to Contra Hardcore, that resembles it in fundamentally absolutely no way. But you are playing, I believe, as Bahamut, the Colonel from Hardcore.

This was, I want to say, Arksis made this, the guilty-go-lads. John, what do you think of hardcore operator? Wow, this is such a weird game. I actually like it a lot. I think it's pretty good. But it does feel, I mean, they don't call it contra for a reason. And while it does have plenty of Contra-esque elements, it does still feel kind of like its own thing. It's still a side-scrolling shooter, but the mechanics that you have,

like your control is more complex and nuanced than Contra, which can have, which isn't always desired, but it does, it works well enough. I think it's absolutely one of the best-looking games from that generation, though, because they actually embraced HD in a way that I think is very striking. Like, it's high-risk Pixar with really lots of great frames set against Polygon backgrounds, The Polygon backgrounds are done in a very painterly style. Basically, it feels like they're building on some of the graphics work that they had done for, like, the guilty gear games. But in an actual side-scrolling game, and that's a cool aesthetic, and it works well.

It's sort of guilty-gear judgment vibes on PSP kind of thing. So it's really cool in that regard. And it's also, like, really long and really challenging. And it has some very unusual stages. Like, there's actually, like, stealth segments in here where you're like, there's, like, enemies that sort of scan and, you. you kind of have to like hide and get take them out quietly uh there's of course vehicle sections that are you know more reminiscent of that there's even like an escort mission in there at one point just very very briefly uh lots of stuff but i think for when this came out it was

the right type of game to make because it is a much larger complex kind of beast and also quite a bit longer i would say it's probably the longest game in the whole series really yeah like At least I remember it took me quite some time to get through this. I mean, yes, it was challenging. It's 12 stages again, isn't it? Something like that. And it actually feels pretty continuous, too, which I will say to his credit. And you can save between the levels in the rising mode here as well.

Right, right. And it has, you know. So the thing is, though, is like, with the way this list has been going, there's so many good games in the list, I gave it a nine. And I feel like that's almost like, it's like, that can't be right. That seems way too low, given how well made it is. I think given how strange it is for the Contra series and the quality of all the other games, that's probably a fair enough point to come in.

I just wish that this got a physical release at some point or like a re-release on a modern platform because this game is still buy it on Xbox at least. This game has not aged today, I would say. Like visually speaking, it just, it looks so good even now. You put this through a Retortank 4K. I just want to say it's your Retro Tink game, right? It is the best. It's one of the best because you get that super raw.

all pixel art for the characters and like super sharp scenery. And the fact that it always runs 60 fbs in top of that while looking this good. Like this shows like an example of what most developers weren't doing during that era. Like PS3 360 games are largely very brown, focused on a lot of techniques that the systems can't handle. So the frame rates are often way under 30. There's tons of tearing. Like everything feels bad and aged horribly. But games like this along with stuff obviously like RidgeRacer 7 and many others that went for

high-res graphics, 60 FPS, and like really sharp, clean art style. I think those ones hold up great, and this is one of those. Any thoughts? Audio on this one? Again, I think John touched on most of the things that I feel bought the game.

I really like the new entry. I like the upgrade system and a customization you can do. I think that's a kind of neat new element. Like you use the sort of points you gain in rising mode to get so for example you can start with more lives or you can

take more hits or you start with an upgraded weapon or you can just unlock all new moves to use basically. Yeah. So and like there's some gameplay elements that's almost like Mega Man X-E. With like the dashing and the double jumping. I mean there's elements of this

have been in the contra before but like it feels very Capcomy almost in this game. Yeah. So yeah there's neat elements of this there's also like a little bit of metal slug in here so it brings it brings a lot of neat inspirations into a series that needs a little bit of injection of new elements so it's neat um i don't know why they didn't call a contra opprising but that's fine

i was honest i mean i'm sure that it is explicitly supposed to be a prequel to a hardcore contra hardcore but it's weird that they distanced the way they did i feel like it might almost have done better if they had contrary or not. I mean, the story refers to

like, it is a contra game. There is a contra world right in the first level. Maybe they just felt like they had too many retro games.

Like, I think at the time they were doing like that Xbox 360 Castlevania to like the large screen like. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. And there was a Russian attack. Oh, yeah, yeah. These were all, I was at E3 in 2010. And I remember this one. as well as the Russian attack and the Castlevania one was on the show floor in kind of the back.

And when I went up to play this, Ego was playing it. So I got to play this a little bit with him. So that was kind of cool. But, yeah, not much to add from what John was saying. And I don't want to waste people's time this far end. So my ranking. Well, did you mention the music, John? No, actually, you should.

Yeah, because the music is. is my, yeah. So it's done by Daiske Ishabatari, who you might know from like Guilty Gear and whatnot. Oh yeah. And it shows.

Yeah, it does. So, uh, very, very good soundtrack. Very energetic. Very pumping. Uh, very aesthetically, you know, musically speaking, fitting to the game.

And like you mentioned, man, why is this not more widely available? Right. Like, I don't understand. Especially now. Because I would probably argue that

2011 this game we're at the cusp right 9 has come out probably 10 at this point

but you're not like you know we're a couple years away from like these games just like going off the charts

yeah shovel night so I think a reintroduction of this game in full HD and you know cleaned up

and packaged physically I don't understand why it never hit Steam frankly. Yeah, exactly. What the hell?

Much you, that is weird about the whole release. Although, I will, I will say this, this game emulates extremely well

on the Steam deck. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I've got it on PCPS3. I played it on recently and it works perfectly.

However, if you have an Xbox, you can still just buy it with the DLC. It's like it's backwards compatible. Oh, wow. Okay, that's cool. That's good.

It's still out there accessible. It's still out there for one system, but I agree that it would go well. I mean, if they were to release this and package it with the rebirth games, it couldn't hurt, could it? Like, just put it out there. Right. So, yeah. What's your number? What's your number?

Oh, yeah. So my number for it is eight. It's still fairly high. Yeah. I will say, though, I don't play this, when I played, I don't play arcade mode much. I mostly play rising mode. Right. So. Yeah. Well, it feels

balanced around rising mode to me. Arcade mode is basically just like you don't get any of the bonuses that you've unlocked, and it's a grueling 12 hard-ass levels. It's very, yeah, arcade mode. Even level one of this game is hard, I think. Tom, do, have any thoughts on this one? Yeah, I do, of course. So, this is a game I was looking forward to when it was announced for the first time.

So, yep, it's a new contrast style game. It's from Axisdom Works. It's 2D Sprites. Are all of that amazing. It did not live up to the hype I built up into my head. So I still liked it a lot I played it, I enjoyed it But it always felt a bit off to me

I mean it looks nice It plays nice But yeah It's just a bit too long for my taste The pacing is just a bit too Not intense enough And stuff like Some bosses or some enemies

Have long HP bars You take forever shooting at them So this is what brought it down a bit for me Still it's a great game But it's not among my favorites What number did you give it I have a 10 one thing I want to toss in there

and I forgot that I don't love about it is the running system I don't like the double tap to run I don't think that fits well on Contra I think that's what leads into sort of my problem with the game overall because I gave it it was my number 11

and that doesn't mean I hate it by any means I just find it it's too fussy for a contra game for me it's also I think it's too difficult and I think it's too fond of killing you with really tiny, really hard to see bullets or animations. I think it's imprecise.

And once you unlock, like, Bullet Reflect and the invincible dog dash kind of things, the game gets a lot easier. And in that respect, I think it's like wonderful 101 where the game is basically stupid until you unlock the deflections, which the game in the modern re-releases tells you to unlock. Yeah.

Because they know. But I do like it. I would not really choose to, play it over one of the others really that often because of the complexity of the damn thing. But when I am playing it and I get into the headspace for it

and I get into the flow, I think it's well designed. And I think it's fun. I think that the things it throws at you feel satisfying to overcome. In a way, I compare it to Gradius 5 because it's very over... It's maximalist, I think.

But it will throw things at you that seem very daunting. But when you when you see the paths through them, when you see the patterns, it's like, oh, I'm good at this, it feels nice. Then you get to a boss and get absolutely annihilated, but that's neither hill or there. Plenty of unlockable stuff, you know, there's also the DLC characters, which are quite fun.

Ceri with the sword, for example, good fun. But it's not, for me, it's not a top tier one, as with the rest of you, I wish it was available more, broadly speaking. I would buy it on Steam in one second, because even though I'm criticising it, I think it's great. Again, I really enjoy it. And considering what came after it, it seems even better.

Because there was an eight-year gap now. Oh, my God. Should have been 80. Yeah. Well, it should have been just forever. It should have been the end of the series. Okay. Maybe I'm about to be surprised by that,

but the next game in the series, and to date, I want to say the final game. It is. Oh, until Operation Gallagher, of course. Calgary, which is going to be a return to form, I hope. a contra rogue core a game that I remember very I'm going to say it

when they announced it I was hype it was the guy from from Contra 3 coming back to direct It's like a carzano oh my god it looked like cheap trash and fun trash from the trailers and things and then it dropped and what did we get John what did we get? Okay so a little story here

to begin with this is a game that when it was revealed, I think it was E3 2019, right? Yeah, sure I was. Okay, so I went to the show, you know, if you've done those kind of shows, you often get those emails from publishers, like, hey, we're showing a game that is not announced. Do you want to come see this game? And you're like, okay, cool, why not? I had heard rumors that Contra was happening.

And I was like, okay, maybe this is the Contra game. That's what I was hoping. So I signed up for the meeting. So I'm at E3. Audie's hanging out with me. For the best E3 that we ever had, or at least for me, it was amazing. But this part didn't quite go as planned. So we show up at the Konami thing.

They're like, oh, what, go ahead. Can I just add two things to this before we go in the door to see this game? So for one, we were standing right next to the toilet that Dr. Disrespect or whatever he went in the film. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's happened while we were standing there. That's right. The doctor disrespecting where you, yeah.

Yeah. Where you disrespect to people's personal space. the other thing was you mentioned the rumor of maybe a new because we both had like a hunch right because we had both independently heard when you queue for a long time you tend to get a hunch i find yeah sorry we also had heard a hunt like something about the turbographics mini at that time oh so we were remember we were standing there like which one is it going to that's right unsure what we wanted to be right we weren't sure that's true and To clarify hearing rumors about Contra, I can just spoil it. If people were curious, I saw a bit of artwork for the game. Somebody showed me some artwork early. Like, oh, yeah, this is happening.

I was like, whoa. But little did I know. So we went into the appointment. You weren't even initially on the docket to join, but you knew people there, including like the producer, I guess, on this. And so they're like, yeah, yeah, whatever, go on in. So we walk into this room. It's boiling hot.

Like, I'm starting to feel woozy because. because it was so hot in there. There's no air movement. It's just, I'm dying and sweat. So we go over and it's like, oh, it's a room full of arcade machines with Contra badges on it, except for they're not actually arcade machines. It's kiosks with PS4s in them, but they're designed to look like arcade machines. And they just say, yeah, go stand at one of these machines and wait.

So we go over there and we're like, well, it's Contra, but we didn't see what it was yet. And then they come in, introduce themselves, and they start by showing us a flavor video. and they show that trailer revealing characters such as gut bucket embedded in the stomach of the one lady character and just the designs

you're like okay this is this video does not look very good maybe it's just a video all the profanity all the profanity like whatever like well I mean I just for me I'm sorry to talk of your story for me when I saw that

I was just like oh cool trash I know that that was also my thing I think this is trashy but whatever maybe this is fun that's cool whatever so we turn around we start to play and instantly it's like oh this is this is bad so this is like 30 frames per second with slow down uh the control of the character feels bad it's dark it's ugly uh it's to me this felt like one of those generic dual stick mobile game things where you dislike that you would see on like a commercial on twitter or facebook like you know this game

is real. And it's just, it's just slow, tedious most of the time. So my first impression there was rotten. I was like, this is, this is bad. Like, Nakazato is involved in this. And it turned out to be, I think it's like a badly performing Unity game. Even on PC, it's locked to 30 frames per second with no way to uncap it. Yikes. It's super unresponsive. The level design, like, everything about it feels pretty bad. But I eventually, did play it at home when I found it for five bucks, which by the way, here's a digital versus physical

thing. I found it for five bucks, like a physical disc version years ago, no problem. You can get it for nothing. Even if you just want to sample it, I looked on Steam out of curiosity, and it's being sold for $40. Can I interject real briefly? Because this is, I don't say this about many

games. I try and be very positive. I really do. I have said to people, like on Twitter and such, this game has been on sale on for example, the switch for $1.99. It's been deep, deep sale. And I have been online and I've said to people, don't buy it even out of curiosity. It's not worth $199.

It's not even to go, oh, this is bad. You will regret it. It is a waste of money. But we haven't even begun to get into why. Well, okay, so the basic core mechanics and such, I will say that the only reason this isn't the absolute dead last in the list, and it's close. don't get me wrong, is that there are some parts of the level design and some bosses where you're like, okay, this, this looks contra-ish.

Like, you could see that occasionally there's some fun ideas in there. And technically speaking, as boring as it is, it still plays better than see the contra adventure, which is like just abhorrent to play. This is more competent. It's just, it's more competent, but also. equally boring, I would say. So I mean, you guys have more to say

to us, I'm sure, and get into details about what's, I mean, it's just, it's not an interesting game. It feels, it's like if you took those, it's like a boring version of, what are those, what are those, there's like that, that zombie co-op shooter on PlayStation.

Which one? Oh, no, all God, or so many. It's the overhead one. Dead something. Dead nation. Dead nation. Dead nation. Yeah. The dead nation. It doesn't work on PS 5. It's perfectly okay, but this is like a bad version of Dead Nation is what it feels like. With uglier graphics, worse performance. I mean, I cannot overstate how ugly this game is.

For this generation to run that badly with visuals that look like this, it's awful. It's not even ugly. It's like this is when people dunk on like unity and such, which is it's because of games like this. this makes people think worse about engines when it's not really the engine's fault it's the developer messed this up but do you have a do you have a digit for us it's my 15

oh yeah um so yeah where do we go from here I mean the gameplay I mean the gameplay loop between levels we need to shit on that as well like yes the actual loop in this game it's like for me it's it's not my bottom that was contra force which I think maybe that was a surprise surprise surprise from the people I really dislike contra force more than this uh because here there's if you just sit down and play it it it's just unremarkable but you still play it without like too much offense either than like what it's doing to it's you know source material yeah but like you know it's like a twin stick

shooter. I don't like how they funnel enemies at you in this game. And the action isn't as non-stop as like prior entries in the series. It just doesn't feel anywhere near as driving. I forgot to mention it. You should probably talk about it as the

freaking base camp stuff. Well, that's what I hate the most about this game. The not so tedious crafting element. That's what makes me, that's what made me think of this as like one of those mobile games where it's like where they always say, oh, this is the real game, you just shoot guys, and then you get into it.

And it's like, nope, it's actually like a base building game. Well, I mean, I... I'm going to be completely honest, and I hate to say this, and I hate that I did this. It makes me sad. I'm pretty sure I bought this on day one on PS4 because it was Contra, and I thought, well, hang on, no, this is going to be a stewardship game, because it's a trashy contra game. I'm going to love this.

I don't care. And I bought it, and I think I did, like, a couple of stages. And then the game is like, to get the weapon levels that you would need. to proceed to the next stage, you will need to repeat stages you've already done to grind out metals and parts. And I was like, no, no, I'm not going to do that because these levels suck. I don't want to replay them to get pointless random arbitrary. I mean, you even have to unlock the multiplayer mode. Yeah. So what's up with that? But then imagine unlocking that. It's like the most absolute fundamental misunderstanding. Sorry,

it's not my turn. I'm so sorry. I think we can go freestyle from here on. Isn't it just the most fundamental misunderstanding of what makes contra contra to make you do that, you know? Well, Nakasato was involved and like, I remember you know, we were at the E3

meeting about this game and everything they said sounded right. We were just like, you know, original director back and like hearkening back to this and that but then as we looked at the product It's like, we can't see any of these elements in there.

It's just like, yeah, this is fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Contra fun. It's cynical. That is exactly what I had. I had a games common appointment with Takazato a little bit later again for Contra. First, we talked about the game. First was the interview and afterwards, what she hands on. The interview was lovely. He was a nice guy.

He knows a lot about gay. He talked about classics, about hardcore, about Contra 3, everything. About his new game, of course, as well. And then I played the game, and what is this? So I just, who did I just talk to? Really shame. The thing is, is, like, beyond his involvement, it was developed by a studio called Toy Logic that assist.

They assist developers primarily. And they worked on stuff like Kid Icarus Uprising, Smash Bros. Brawl. They worked on The Evil Within. They worked on Near Replicant, a lot of decent stuff, like, in their back catalog of games they worked on. And this one, I don't, I don't know. We were also earlier, right, talking about, like, self-awareness and self-parody and whatnot. The story for this game in dialogue is written by, like, um, I forget their names, but I think they were, like, primarily, like, from comic books. Yeah. Right. It's not a Warren

Ellis joint, is it? No, no. Okay. It's not that bad. Uh, I was joking. But, like, you know, the dialogue is frustrating to me because I don't, like, You know, I curse like a sailor in my daily life and like, you know, I'm not approved to language or situations at all. Sorry, I mean, I hate to and drop it. I looked up the writer and it's fucking Evan Dawkins from, um, from fucking Eltingville Club and Sarah Dyer from the Beasts of Burden. Yeah, wow. Yeah. That's crazy. I would never have attributed it to them ever.

Right. But it's so grating and annoying and I hate listening to this game. Yeah. I hate the setting of this game. I hate the portrayals in this game. It is so... That's bad. And you know, that's this thing, right?

It's a contra game. Why would you think about hiring a writer for a contra game? Nothing against writing the game, but it's not what it's about. Everything about this game looks like they were like, what are the kids playing these days? Oh, they're playing on their smartphones. They like to grind this stuff. They like to grind. It's a game of just...

It's a game that has damage numbers that pop up. over the gosh darn health points. See, the thing is, though, the thing is, I am not inherently opposed to that, not like, as a rule. Yeah, but I know, but like, it doesn't just, like, scream at me, this game will necessarily be bad. It is not contrary, but that doesn't mean it would be bad. I would say, I could have fun playing it like something like hell divers, you know? Damage numbers usually indicate enemies that have lots and lots of health, which means, Yes.

What's all, all that really means in actuality is pointing your weapon at them for a long period of time. So it's just, you're doing the same action. It's just, it takes longer. That's it. There's no other benefit. That kind of game, like, say, Gatling Gears, Helldivers, you know, assault Android Cactus, that one by Housemark, the name of which escapes me, begins with an N, a really good one. Nexus Machina or whatever, next, next Machina or whatever, next. It can absolutely work in those instances.

They could have made a good twin-stick shooter that would have been a bad contra game, but they didn't even do that. No, it's just a bad game. It's a crummy game. I'm sorry, I talked over your turn there, Odie. I'm very sorry. We're not arranged by this game.

The hate flowed through me. I think we quit the turn-based system now. Yeah. We broke the rules just like they did. Do you have a number for it, Brian Schulte? Yeah, it's 15 for me. It was second-last. I think I would rather play this again than Contra Force.

That's fair? Actually, that is not fair at all. I completely disagree, but do go on. Yeah. It's just, you know, there's at least more to look at here and get annoyed over. Contra Force just like, this makes me more than I. At least Contra Force has music that's okay. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, the music here is unremarkable, to say the least. Extremely. Part of me is now wondering if maybe on PC someone's done like a mod for it that makes it tolerable. I guess I'll find out In the realm of a good control game, maybe. Yeah, it boots up into just like Super Contra bone instead. Yeah, the thing is...

What do you think of this one? What did you watch your rundown? It mainly makes me sad that's the thing about this game. We mentioned all the bad stuff already. It plays title, of course, weapon cool in the control game is also a bad idea. Oh, I forgot.

Oh, Jesus. Right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's what you want in a contra game. You will not be shooting. Yeah.

Yeah, but the two things that make me sad is, A, it's a Nakasato game, and I'm sure this guy knew that he was on a death march when he made this game or when it came together. There's no way he can't have known that this would be absolute rubbish when it came out. Still had to go, make a brave face, and show the game to the press. I feel sorry for that, for this guy, and I don't know what that did to his career at Konami. It sucks.

And, of course, the other thing is, I think Konami had a little bit of hope maybe this would catch on, and maybe they would make more interesting games, of course. This absolute pile of rubbish probably killed every effort inside Konami to follow. It's like to make games like Contra Rogue Corps, which makes Contra into a like currency game, like resource gathering game, which is like what happened with something like Metal Gear Survive, right? Which I haven't played. I've heard it's actually not horrible, but it's the same sort of business, isn't it?

It's like resource gathering kind of time-consuming. content. Yeah, it is. And that's why it sucks. But the core of what you do in that game is better than this. Yeah, no doubt. It's from that heightened air. And I don't want to be the kind of, like, podcast, which is just slagging off Konami, because I think there's too much of that,

to be perfectly honest. I mean, this is a Konami franchise. It's been almost all positive. Yeah. But, like, they've been doing good stuff more recently. And, I mean, we've got Rocket Night coming back. You know, how cool is that? But I'd like to see good new stuff sometime as well. Yes, I totally agree. I

I mean, Contra Rokechor to me is the definition of a game that, like, shouldn't have happened. Like, I don't understand how or why it happened. It was never going to make money. It was never going to be good. And I just wonder how many other projects, this game killed bit with this, when it didn't work out. I mean, let's give it a number score, Tom. What are you thinking? 15.

15. Fucking hell, hell, yes. The Taryl P.S.1.1 is worse, but... It's worse, but it's less offensive to me. I will say this one was really boring, but that C, the Contra adventure, like, it actually made me feel kind of ill. Like, I just, I don't know, it had a really nasty effect on me. Yeah, that's, I mean, wow. Okay, this has been what can only be described as an epic podcast. We have done almost four hours on this. It's going to be cut down to something near, but the music and everything. This is definitely the longest one we've ever done. I want to just say before we top these up, I want to thank all of us. I want to thank all of us. you for your time. And I think this has been

lots of fun. Yeah, I think this has been a lot of fun. It was. Absolutely was. And I'll bring you back for another ranking who had it at some point, not to mention the other ideas we want to do, but for now, it's time to do the rundown of the scores if we're already. I'm so ready. By the Stewart, did you give you a number on

a roll car? Was it 15? Oh, it's 16. It's 16. It's garbage. It's meritless trash. It belongs in the toilet. It belongs in hell. It belongs in worse than hell. It belongs in double hell. Please don't. It's all toilets. When I wrote the book, all games are good, I meant except Contra Roadcore. Thank you.

But let's begin. Let's begin. Let's count down from 16 to 1, the definitive final absolute ranking of every Contra game ever made from worst to best. And you cannot argue with this. There will be forum threads debating this. You are all wrong. We are right. This is definitive.

There is no room for opinion. This is actually nailing it to the wall. Okay. This is the end. Number 16. The worst contra game is contra rogue core. Thank you. I agree.

With 61 points, very, very high. Next up, number 15, see the contra adventure with 58 points, very close. Yes. But not as close as the next one. Number 14, Contra Legacy of War, 56 points. Number 13, Contra Force, 53 points. Number 12, Contra Advanced the Alien Wars, EX, 49 points. Number 11, Contra at the Alien Wars for Game Boy, 44 points.

Number 10 is hardcore uprising, surprisingly enough, at 38 points, but that still means it's good. I would say that's the exact point in which we delineate the good and the bad games. I agree. Number nine, Neo-Contra with 33 points. Number eight, Contra Shadowed Soldier, with 27 points. Number seven, Contra, for NES, 26 points. Number six, Operation C, 25 points, the Game Boy. Number five, Super C, NES, number 23 points.

Number four, Contra Rebirth, the Shock One, at 21 points. Number three is Contra 4 with 16 points. Now, way forward should feel very satisfied with that placement, which means fairly obvious number two is Contra Hardcore with eight points. But the winning game and the best Contra game in the entire season, series, undisputed, irrevocable, there's nothing you can do about this. If you play it and you think otherwise, I'm sorry, you've made a mistake. Contra 3, the Alien Wars, with six points, is the best contra game.

Super Pro-Retector, Alien Rebels. Well done. Was it ever any doubt? Thank you, everyone, for coming along to this. We have done what can you be described as a great service to the gaming community. with this one. I mean, who honestly came into this episode thinking that Contra 3 was going to be anything other than

number one, realistically? I thought it could be a toss-up between that and hardcore. Yeah, I think we are so weird we might have given Hardcore the Edge, maybe, but... I think for me, this was actually a surprisingly conservative thing, in terms of the set, like, it came out about what I'd expect. The only outlier, the only outlier was Contra Rebirth, which I did not think was going to trouble the top 10, frankly.

How do you agree? A good thing it did. Yeah, I knew I was going to rate it highly, but I didn't think anyone else was, so I'm quite pleased about that. M2 did not pay me for that. Yeah. Yeah, no, I certainly haven't received

a large bounty of money from M2. Thank you very much, M2. Buy more M2 games. Yeah. We've lost, we've lost highly. They've had to jump off. They've had to go. They've had to attack aggressively elsewhere.

I think we can do the... I think, John, I think you can cover the plugs for both of you, can't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. because we'd like the listeners desperately desperately so i was at dark one x on x i'll call it uh yeah obviously you can find me at digital foundry on youtube dot com slash digital foundry audy joins me for many of those things as well and he's at pc 98 underscore audy over on that social media platform uh and he also his day job is limited run games and they're putting out some cool stuff including

that Rocket Night collection, so yeah. Yeah, I can't wait for that. Thomas, why can we find you online? So if you care to find me online, for whatever reason, you can find me on Twitter. I won't say the other name, at Bimbo Fortuna. You can also find me

at Blue Sky at Tapir Fortuna because, why not? And, of course, you can read my stuff usually in M games if you are fluent in the German language. I think, Stuart, you got your issue recently. I did, I did. I did. Thank you for that. Yes, I did. Oh, you're very welcome.

Yeah, that's what a print magazine. Back in 2024, isn't amazing. It was fascinating to see it. I haven't seen one in so long. Right. I mean, don't you have any more in Britain, right? No, we don't have any magazines or any print media whatsoever. We've just given up on reading completely over here.

We just make noises like, and hit each other. Yeah, that's what I gathered for my last visit in London, yeah. Yeah, it's not a good place. Yeah, so that's our tremendous guest. Apologies to, you know what? Thank you for hanging in there for three hours, 45 minutes, Odi. That's very much appreciate. It makes sense that you would have to leave.

Life has been occurring around us during the time that we have done this, so many terrible things have happened in the world that we've missed completely. Too bad audio to leave. I want to run with that. You can pick up his smut at my place, finally. No mind. We'll get back together and do some more

Euronauts episodes, as I am now calling them in the future. But for now, thank you for listening to this. If you are, enjoy Retronauts and you'd like to support us on the, you can go on patreon.com for slash Retronauts, where you can give us $5 a month to receive many, many bonus episodes. There are tons on there now.

There's about four years worth. And it's every couple of weeks, I believe, there'll be a completely exclusive bonus episode full length on many, many exciting topics. For example, relatively recently, there was Super Metroid, which obviously everyone wants to hear about. A nice deep dive into that game.

Oh boy, I'm from Metronaut. I didn't expect that. Thank you, thank you. And you can also get Diamond Fight's tremendous this month and retro columns on there, as well as early action. access to all the weekly episode so you can be the coolest kill on the playground. As I was recording, I

just saw a new one went up that I'm excited about Sonic and Knuckles Part 3. Yeah, part 3 of friggin 5 that we've deep dived into that. It's up. Oh, by the end of part 1, we had only done up to, I want to say, like Carnival Knightsland. We went

deep and hard into that game. We are not done. Five parts. Well, we actually we've done five parts. I am now so look forward to my next longer drive. I will learn so much weird British stuff again You will, I hope you enjoy it Will you, by the way

Will you also talk about a game called Sonic 3 and Knuckles? We may get to it I think in this episode We managed to do the first act of Mushroom Hill I think No, no, it's more than that You'll see, you'll see

So yes, thank you for listening There'll be more episodes coming soon There's actually also quite a lot in the tank that I've not yet put out Which I've done with this group Which have been also fun including a lot of asterix talk which is

I think the most exhaustive asterisk gaming coverage ever I would say look forward to that and thanks very much for listening it's been quite the hoot-nanny we're all very tired and fight

yes Ha ha. Thank you.