Retronauts - 611: The Contra: Operation Galuga Wail

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Wrapping up Contra series with a look at WayForward's Contra: Operation Galuga, with Stuart Gipp, Thomas Nickel and John Linneman. Bandanas on! 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, it's time for a Galuga whale. Hello, welcome to Retronauts. We're not quite done with Contra. This is going to be our, what, third Contra episode in a year because I talked to Tom Hiller about Contra Operation Galuga prior to it coming out. We did the four-hour-long contra ranking Hootenny, which was very well received, apart from the people who died during the course of listening to it, which, you know, that was a shame,

but, you know, the risks you take in the podcasting game. So, yes, the Uranauts have returned, or at least two of them, and we're going to talk now in hopefully, some relatively breezy detail about contra operation gluga which is now out and you can play it and you can buy it with your hard-earned cash at least the cash you don't spend on the retronauts patreon which obviously is not very much because you're pouring your entire life savings into our beloved and important work i'm stewart jip who's joining me today we've already heard your voice john so let's uh yeah i'm here i think i've lived in europe for a

quarter of my life now so i get to be a euro nut yeah the honorary you're in all Yeah, full tell. But who else is here today with us? Hello, it's me again. It's Thomas Nicol, and for today, I think I am quite locked and loaded. Nice, nice, yeah. You never want to come into a podcast, neither locked nor loaded, I think. No, we really don't.

I'm loaded on all the podcasts. It's the only way I can get through them. Frankly, loaded doesn't really compare to Contra anyway, so... It's true, yeah. I don't think there's going to be a loaded episode, unless we do, like, disappointing top-down shooters or something, which we could be... Games with really ugly baby characters in it.

Oh, yeah. Let's see 3. Yeah. Let's go for that. That would be quite... I do think there could be a... I think top-down run-and-gun could be an episode at some point, actually. But that's not this one,

because this game contains no top-down running gun. It's Contra. Operation Galuga, the first Contra since Contra Road Corps. So the first real Contra since what? Contra Rebirth? Yeah, I think so. Probably. What was earlier? Rebirth? The Xbox one.

I'm not sure. Oh, God. Which one have I forgotten about? The anniversary collection. Hardcore uprising. Oh, yeah, hardcore uprising. Yeah, which one had come forth? That was quite hardcore. Doesn't have the word contra in it, though.

Man, if there only was a podcast about that, talking about these games at length. I know. If only there was a podcast, if only there was a podcast that in a detailed manner went through every single game in the entire series, wasn't on a phone for hours, and one mini podcast awards. For example, longest podcast. You can't have everything, so we can't win it.

In non-facious terms, yeah, if you missed it somehow, we did do your contra-ranking hootnanny, which was extremely detailed, and if I dare say so myself, very good indeed. So you can go and listen to that with this current cast plus Audi who's not here today because they're too busy making games or something. Yes, contra operation Gulga Way forward developed as with Contra 4 and brings along quite a lot of

contraforisms to the table it's out now and I think it's fair to say the reaction has been quite mixed and I'm going to just lay all my cards on the table and say I think that there are quite a lot of reviews of this game that didn't

really play it that much is that a controversial take a controversial take I don't know because I think there are people or there are outlets who have maybe beaten it on story mode once and then gone well I'm done with that

which you know you'll have every right to do but you know Contra's not really about playing it once but before I get into my alienating myself from all my colleagues what did John let me start well it's a breezy sort of overview manner what was your take on Operation Guliga

did you enjoy it I'm interested in there's going to be dissent here It was sort of a love, hate, love kind of thing where I was excited for it with the trailers, but then I made the mistake of downloading it first on Nintendo Switch, only to learn that the Nintendo Switch version is extremely bad, probably should have been canceled, and it made a very, very bad first impression, but I grabbed on PS5. I had some issues, which we'll talk about, but I was like, all right, fundamentally, there's a good game in here, so I bought it. And I have turned around on it. And I do think it's a good game. Not a great Contra, but it's a good Contra. And we'll get into why as this episode continues.

We absolutely will. And Thomas, how did you receive this gift of Contra? So it was a bit similar to John, actually. What happened is I saw it in the direct, of course, and thought, hell yeah, new Contra way forward. What could possibly go wrong to quote a famous person? So I was quite enthusiastic. I saw the demo.

I did not play the demo on Switch, luckily, so that's good. I got the demo on PlayStation 5, played for a bit, and found it okay. The demo, I think, is a bit of a disservice to the entire game, actually. Then I got a review copy of the game because I am a reviewer, and I had the honor to write a review of the game. And what I played then in the final version was a lot better, I think. And I think this game is one that really grew on me over time. So I had a nice time at first, a better time when I sat down to really get into it and finish the game.

And when I was done, I had a really good time because then I just had what I need to know and what I need just to really enjoy what else there is to on offer. Yeah. My experience, I mean, I think I dodged a bullet because I never played it on the Switch. Oh, God. I played it on Steam entirely on PC, and I found it just, you know, slick and perfect, played perfect for me. It's probably a good choice, yeah. Yeah, I mean, my review of this, not to sort of plug it, is on the Retronaut's website, and it's a very kind of gushing review because, as I've mentioned earlier,

I do feel like maybe a combination of the demo plus lingering, valid anti-Kanami sentiment, sort of in a modern gaming space, may have done it sort of a disservice. Do you think that is a thing, anti-Kanami sentiment? because from what I've seen, always they announce I'm thinking everybody is, oh yeah, thank God, Konami is back, there's a new Konami game, and only afterwards they get maybe disappointed or not.

Maybe I'm mistaken. I just, you know, there was that whole hashtag fuck Konami thing, and everyone always goes on about Pichinko. But I think that's long ago and a whole different ballgame in a way. Fair enough. So that was something I wanted to bring up, actually,

is do we think that Konami is not back, but do you think they're on track? with their old properties. I wouldn't say that necessarily. They've certainly improved from the Pachinko only days, but I think Pachinko is perhaps losing some of its luster anyway. So if I might make a comparison about Konami in this regard. So if you buy a fish from the market and you saw the fish,

it might move a little bit because the muscle is spasming and so on, even though the fish is dead. That's how Klan feels to me right now. They're dead fish with muscle spasms. You've heard it here first. By and large, some of the issues they've made is that they've just selected partners that I don't think are up to the task of doing the job they've been asked to do. And then a lot of the collections they've released, the last, the Contra, the Rogue Corps and various other things they've put out have all been good ideas. But when you look at the execution, you're like, this could have been done much, much better.

However, I will go to bad for the collections, because I think these turned out really well with the documentation and everything. I think that was really nice. Come on. I think they're acceptable. Felix the Cat collection, and everyone's pissing a moment. We've got Felix the Cat back. Yeah. But anyway, let's get to Operation Galuga here.

Yes, let's definitely do that. So I think this game has still one hard obstacle to overcome, and that is it's downed only right now, I think. No, it's not. It is. Well, there... Right now it is. That's true.

You can order a physical version. Fight. But at limited run, which means, of course, Europe is... pretty much screwed at this point and the thing is what I did before we did this podcast I had just asked around a little bit on various enthusiast message boards

about the game and the general consensus was yeah it looks nice I want to wait for the physical interesting yeah I agree I agree there's nobody I would and I mean this with at most respect to your chosen online communities but there's nobody I would less listen

to than enthusiast's message board I think. I based that on the fact that I've been on many enthusiast message boards and maybe I chose the wrong enthusiast message boards, I don't know.

Yeah, I'm on the old M-Games one which is still a rather nice. Okay, yeah, that's like... Well, okay, I'll give a shout-out to the insert credit message board. That's pretty good. Right. Not anti-shout to reset Eric.

Fuck off. Anyway, moving on. No, I kid. I love you guys. You're the best. I love it when you get mad about things that are really easily preventable. So, yeah,

Contra Operation Galugel, the main mechanical thing that was being brought into this game, I would say, is the new sort of overload system where you can sacrifice your currently held weapon for some sort of OTT effect, like a huge spread of missiles or drones that will come and help you out, or even if you unlock it in the perks like the healing. So did anyone else find that they completely forgot that they exist, isn't really used them? Yeah, certainly. I used it at later bosses. there it was rather useful sometimes. I think before we get into the nitty-gritty, though, we should talk about just sort of like the state of Contra, as of 2024, the state of Way Forward, the history with the series, all of this, right?

So obviously, Way Forward made this, and Way Forward goes back always at this point, shall we say. They have a good track record overall. And in fact, Tom Hewlett, he was, I believe, a producer from the Konami side on Contra 4. Yeah. and has a lot of passion for the series. And I was happy to see that he got to work on this one as well. But a lot has changed with way forward since Contra 4 as well,

and that they used to be primarily a pixel art-focused game with their own technology. And however they did it, their pixel artists were extremely good. I guess it varied per project. But in the case of Contra 4, they actually had Hank Nieberg do the artwork for it, I believe. He was one of the main guys on it. Hero of gaming. He's a god of Pixar, right? Let's say Lionheart, Avengers of Lomax.

There's many, many things. Flink. Battleax. All incredible-looking games. Battalax, yes. So, yes, it's an excellent, beautiful-looking game contrafore. But there's this point where Way Forward kind of transitioned away from their own technology and started to develop games, and I hate to say, they started to develop games in Unity.

And I don't want to knock Unity. I've used Unity. I think it's a powerful tool in the right hands, but I have to say it is often misused, might I say, or at least developers fail to leverage it as well as they could. Not all. There are definitely some very impressive unity projects out there. Would that be around half genie Hero?

They really sort of went into that. It was after that. It was after that. Right. That one was okay, actually. Yeah, I liked that game a lot, but yeah. But once they transitioned fully over to Unity projects, I noticed some things coming out of one way forward.

First of all, the visual quality largely declined, partially due to the, I think that their 3D artists aren't as, they're not able to match the quality of the pixel art in 3D. And 3D is expensive in its own way and difficult, so I get it. But the bigger problem is that the performance started to suffer. The frame rates went down. Wayforward was all about 60 frames per second, and suddenly they kind of weren't. or they were but only to some degree

and there was a lot of technical hiccups and problems and some of that stuff does plague Contra which ties into some of my issues with it but I still think Way Forward's track record was good enough that it made sense to bring them in as a partner here and really right now I can't think of too many other studios that would have been quite the right fit right at this moment necessarily

Well, who made Blazing Creme? No, that's Joy Masher. There's, my good buddy Danilo and his friends down there. The thing is, though, is those guys are a very, very small team, like three or four people. Like, there's not many. I don't think that they, I think they could have actually done a better game than this, to be honest. But I think that there's a lot of time required there to make it happen.

And I suspect Konami wanted a larger sort of a. established development studio rather than the small indie, though I would have loved to have seen what he could do with the Contra IP. Yeah, I think anyone who played Blazing Chrome was probably thinking, like, what if this was Contra? So, yeah. So basically, we come to this when this game was announced, and I think coming off of Rogue Core, which we talked about in that ranking episode, Rogue Core is largely seen as

a bad game. I would say it's the worst Contra game. It's a disgusting game. And it's weird because I never understood why it was greenlit, why they felt it was a good idea. It was clearly, to me, made by people that didn't understand Contra, the appeal of Contra, what people would want from the series. And they tried to modernize it and put in mechanics that feel very smartphoney in many ways. I think we mentioned it on the episode, but for me, on a baseline level, a Contra game where your weapons constantly overheat and you have to stop using them is a massive. a fuck-off. Fundamentally a bad

idea. So to come back to John's what he said, I think the game is phony, but not smart. Correct. Yeah. So there we go. That's kind of where we were at. So when this comes in, way forward, they've had some rough patches recently,

but they're still largely, I would consider a very good developer overall. And they know how to make good games, right? And I would say, as we'll get into this, they have made a good game with Contra. And it is absolutely well made. But I think to begin with, I want to start right at the beginning when you first start the game. I actually think the first stage is the worst looking stage. And I think the second stage is the most boring stage. And then the game starts to get really good.

That's interesting. I agree with that because in the review, which as I mentioned is quite a gushing review, because I got a lot out of this, which we'll get into. But I think opening with like, I don't want to be. too uncharitable, but it is very much just like, oh, it's this again. It's this first level of Contra 4 again, you know? Kind of. And it is. It's just, it's the same. The design is very different from 4 because it doesn't have the grappling hook or the tall stage necessarily, but it is, and they're intentionally trying to go back to that original jungle aesthetic of

the original contra. That's what they're going for. And I get it. It's just the actual way that the 3D, the lighting, everything looks there is not good. It's, it's an ugly stage compared to what comes later. And also, I think this, the story mode stuff is a good idea, but I think the presentation of it is also very lackluster. And it just having those like static, high-res images of characters popping up often with no voiceover or just, okay, voiceover. It just, it feels, it feels very cheap and not that interesting.

And unfortunately, that's how the game opens if you're not playing in the more arcade-like mode. So when you put all the things together, you see how it kind of makes a bad first impression, right? You really got to stick with it then. I think that, yeah, that married with the fact a lot of people were going to be picking this up on Switch. Oh, which is... Not a great idea. But for me, the story mode stuff, I agree with everything you've said.

It doesn't bother me that much because it's the kind of thing where I play... I'm going to play that mode probably one time. And then I'm never going to watch the story again. I did enjoy the sort of contra fan service touches and the story. Spoilers for the story, by the way. like when Brad a character named Brad turns up and you just know

that that guy's going to be a wolf man by the end of the game you know it's very satisfying well so that's funny thinking of Brad I think he pops up in the second level

on the on the bike right when he first appears and that actually highlights one of my problems that stage is very long you're just riding your you're floating jet bike along this path

and then Brad shows up about halfway through the stage and it's just exposition for what feels like a very long time and it just absolutely destroys the pace and if you're playing with the more difficult rules which is how I like to play it rather than using the life bar just with the one hit death

and everything and you end up having to redo that whole stage it sucks but yeah you know it's just a thing the pacing is a bit off in parts in the game I think out of the first stage I mean there's complaints of stage being too long I think for the first stage this really applies because I think you could have

condensed many sequences but my main point is you know all on the scene with a helicopter crashing down

right yes that's a it's a nice idea but it's just it takes too long you stand there what's happening now

what's coming now oh it's coming now so this takes all the speed out and also for me destroys a bit of the replay value

for that stage it's like a bit for me it's when the kind of the fan service crosses over into maybe like

maybe you shouldn't have bothered with this because they're doing an homage obviously to the Contra 3 bombing. And that all means. That takes like 10 seconds if that. And to be honest with you, when I play Contra 3, even that

bit now I kind of get like, okay. Yeah, it takes a little bit of time. So having a bit that takes maybe like 20 to 30 seconds of a relatively unimpressive helicopter crash. Yeah, that to me is not great. I can see where you're coming from.

with the first impressions, because it is a game that it took me a good, a while to really be like, okay, yeah, I'm feeling this. And it was in stage three that I started to really kind of feel it. Yeah, stage three, yep. Stage two on replays, I don't mind too much, because usually I'm told up enough that it is very trivial. But at the same time, it's very trivial, you know what I mean? Even on the hardest mode, it's kind of just like, yeah, whatever. And that's not great for contra.

I don't particularly like the boss on that stage either but that's the hero there but coming up from that from stages like three through what and eight after that I was pretty much engaged the whole the whole way through I was kind of curious because the demo stage is a melding of stages one and three

right yes so I was like where's the demo gone but then of course when that turns up I think as its own stage it's paced much better agreed when it's married with the first Well, not so much, but what kind of, what I found is, like, when you've got a game that has eight levels and two of them on your first playthrough are maybe just, it's not especially interesting, that's a hard kind of seller. I mean, people are just going to stop playing it, like, which is a problem, because they're going to miss the good stuff.

Yep. I think, I think, okay, so, I think, we'll get to the good stuff, but I want to talk more about these presentation issues and everything. So early on, we mentioned hardcore uprising, right? And however you feel about the game, it sure as heck makes a strong first impression that bright blue, vibrant sky, everything. That's a PS3 era game that I think looks visually much better than this. And so when you come into this in 2024, you're just like, oh, so it has that issue. Then there's just like the intensity. Like you remember playing hardcore, the original hardcore, the hardcore on Mega Drive the first time.

the speed of everything. When that level opens, the very first stage, you go crashing into, like, it's scrolling so fast, your eyes can't keep up. One of the best openings to any game from it, yeah. It feels freaking great. The thrash metal means they're going to drive for a drive as well. And they have none of that energy in this. It's just kind of slow.

And then, lastly, on that front, I have to say it, if you listen to it on its own, it's quite good. But in the game, I think the music's not good at all. It does not work. It doesn't deliver the energy that you want from Contra. It feels like these kind of quiet, almost like, Hollywood-esque takes on contra themes. So they're kind of interesting to listen to. But again, it just doesn't have that raw intensity you want.

So the whole game just kind of has the slower, kind of laxadaisical feel to it. And that's why I have that relationship where there was a period where I thought this isn't that good. Do you, I mean... You know that? Sorry, still. No, well, I was going to say, really, the soundtrack thing, like, for sort of two points. on that really quick ones. One of them, of course, I mean, the thing is, it's a bit of a Band-Aid,

but you can switch the soundtrack to another one. That is true. However, as I say, that is a Band-Aid. But I don't know what happened with Vert, with Jake Kaufman and Wayford, but he seemed to just stop doing stuff for them. Yeah, I think that's a very complicated situation,

as I understand. Yeah. However, whatever happened with Jake and between them and way forward, and I think Jake definitely went through some tough times. as well. You're right. I agree.

Jake's music was part of Wayforward games. And when they lost, when Jake and them basically stopped working together, I think Wayforward's games lost a lot. Well, I mean, I was playing yesterday, this is relevant, I swear, I was playing half Junior Hero on my Steam deck, and I was doing, like, the Mermaid Factory stage, and that's a bop. Like, that's a hell of a bop. And I was thinking to myself, like, I like, I like, I like this game, but I, I wouldn't. I mean, I love this game. I do. I think it's a great game, but I wouldn't love it if it didn't have this soundtrack. And then when I play Chanty and the Seven Sirens, which is perfectly fine, I don't want to play it. I don't want to finish it because of that doesn't have that vibe. It's the music. The lack of the music, that game turned me off too for the same reason. It's like without that kind of soundtrack to it. And I think that is a pillar of any great retro style game is great music. It loses something. And it's really important. And unfortunately, Operation Galuga just doesn't get it right. You know, that is a thing

where I see a bit of a connection. The problem is the game seems to take itself a bit too seriously sometimes. Now, we are contrary. We are the new game. We are so big. We are like this movie, story experience. And what they, of course, had to do,

they took all that stuff that the developers in the 80s just, yeah, we like Arnie, and we like alien, and we like other stuff. Let's just make a game out of all of this. And then they tried to make a story out of this. And then, of course, I also want this

Hollywood-style soundtrack in it. And this makes me think of these movie trailers where you always have this the pop song

in a slow epic version, which I hate to my bones at this point. And this is how stage one feels to me. You have this sort of musical sludge clattering up

the audio, and at some pieces parts it even starts with La Contra. And then, when I went into the challenge mode with the other music,

Right, now we're talking. This is how it just sound like. No, I think the retro soundtrack, I think you can buy it in the game, but also you just get given it if you own the other contra-cult, the other Konami collections, right? Like, there's a Castlevania one. There's like an arcade-hicks one. But I think you can unlock them, right?

Yeah, you can. The Canami code unlocks one as well, I believe. The problem, though, is like, I bought all these collections on Switch, and then I'm like, the Switch version of this game is terrible, so I bought on PS5 and, whoops. Yeah, it's an interesting choice, isn't it? The thing is, though, is they actually got really good composers to work on it. They got Hibino-san, who's been along with Konami.

Yeah, T. Lepas is in there, right? No, he's not in there. And then they got Yuko Komiyama, who has been, she worked, I guess, on Monster Hunter, games, among other things, and has generally done some really great soundtrack work as well. So it's like, they have good musicians working on it. I just think that the direction they went doesn't work for this game. So, yeah. I mean, I'm not going to lie.

T did not work on this game. Oh, right. You would have known if he did. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I just saw him retweet the soundtrack or something because they had some mates on it or something. Yeah, that's probably what happened. But whenever I play this game, I'm usually playing with the old retrochins on which. Apparently, he did one track on it.

Oh, hooray, vindication. So. It looks like you've been contrary. addicted. Oh, boy. So, yeah. Oh, that's do. That was, you know what? That was worth. That was worth missing that just to get that going. That was amazing.

Thank you. I'm actually really proud. It's probably the best thing I've ever done in my entire life, actually. Might be. Yes. But anyway, we should probably talk about some of the good stuff about this game as well. Well, I mean, I think something that interested me was the feedback online that I was seeing. I saw, and again, I'm looking at different places to everyone else. So, you know, maybe this is just my perspective.

Of course, it's just my perspective. But I saw a lot of, oh, my God, stage six, that this is dreadful. I can't do this. And I died so much in stage six, and I was loving it. I was just like, yes, this is more like it. Like, there's so much in that stage that I absolutely adore. And it's really long, and that's actually part of the joy of it for me, because it's constantly throwing, like, you go in all over the place, up, down, left, right, all these.

You've got these bits where you're running through these crystals that are, like, refracting you, so you have to kind of try and judge where bullets are coming from while you're sort of sideways or upside down. And it's only momentary. So it's not like a complete... You have reverse controls now, fuck you. It's not like that. It's just these moments where you have to stop for a second

and think about how you approach it. And all the traps popping out everywhere. You know, you can play this game either with full 360 aiming or with the eight-way old traditional aim. And I don't think I could do it with eight-way. I just don't think I'd have been able to finish the game. But for me, once you get past those first two stages, it just kind of goes up so much and stays there all the way to the end.

That's when the cool stuff starts coming. That's the key, isn't it? Like, right away, you get to stage three, it's the village. It's like, all right, this is starting, like, it's starting to look better. And you're starting to get into the groove. It feels less tutorial-y, if that's even a word, it's not. It looks more interesting. It looks more interesting.

The scenarios are more interesting. It feels like at this point, they sort of trust you with the game a little bit. where the first two levels are like is trying to like get people accustomed to what contra is but it takes way too long to get there yeah and I think it's just like the way the multi-tiering of the stage works feels really natural with that sort of like village area like running on the roofs and the balconies and just like the wood scaffolding all that stuff starts to work well and yeah it feels to me like it works better with your different loadouts like if you've got a guy who can double jump air dash or a guy who can slide yep both very valid

different like approaches you can take maybe we should talk about the characters a bit because that's a big component of this game and there's quite a few of them in there but the main difference is in fact when even getting onto the characters which do have their own abilities

you've also got the option to select and equip two perks which are very for me feel very like yeah we know like this is kind of hard we want to create this customised sort of difficulty and I think that they succeed at that quite strongly because if you really if you want I mean you're going to breeze through it if you

want to have an easier time just give yourself 6 HP you know um but if you feel more confident and you want to just dash through bullets without taking damage equip that and you know choose your eight way choose your 360 you know play easy normal hard you want one hit KO it's there's so much customise ability is that even a word customize ability I think so yeah I think it just delivers for more or less anyone like I like a beginner could get good on the lower skill level and ramp your way up. And the game does reward you for that because the more difficult you make it for yourself, the more credits the game is going to give you, which you're going to use to buy more perks and more unlockables and such. So I think

they created a rewarding kind of a loop there. Like, there was a lot of talk about the credit economy being quite stingy. And I was finding, if you just run the first stage on hard mode, you're going to get like $2.50 minimum, I think. And that's quite a lot, you know. And, of course, the more stages you beat consecutively, it multiplies the number of credits you get. So, I don't know, when people say that the credit economy is stingy, part of me just thinks, like, are you just not playing the game? Well, no, they say it when they just finish the story mode first, because you don't get match after the story mode. You don't? But, I mean, not too much, but afterwards you can just start cashing in.

Yeah, yeah. I guess that's where it differs for me is that I wanted to play these levels again. even the first couple because as I say the second stage which I do think is probably the nadir of the game in general for me it was quite breezy it was just sort of free money but then of course the later train stage I thought was exceptionally good and that's pretty long as well the ice train doing all the ice one yeah that one

they did a really cool job of even though it was quite long I thought they did a good job of making it challenging you've got to really keep your eyes open and where everything is and even though it is familiar the robot joining the party as in aka sort of as in hardcore i thought they did really well um but well i mean what was your sort of like general sort of load out that you used when you played or did you not use perks because you're rock hard i did not use perks uh i ended up just i mostly played it with the one hit death mode with no perks that's and wow yeah and it was hard actually which is what i was

looking for actually yeah that's that's where i found the most fun i actually felt like i think think the perks are cool as an option to make sure people can get through it and enjoy it. But for me, it just, that dying and learning is a huge part of the process for me. And like, it does, that's, that's basically what helped me fall in love with the game in the end. It's like, it does actually do that quite well where, uh, it, it, it is tough when you play it in contra classic mode. And it does force you to sort of learn and memorize the stages, like the classic ones. Yeah.

And I found that really rewarding and fun. See, I'm not at that level, and I've beat the game with HP sort of pluses initially because stage six, as I mentioned, it took me to school. It was hard. And not only is it a hard platforming stage plus dodging everything everywhere all the time, but then you've got to fight big fuss at the end, and that's rough too initially, when you don't know what he's going to pull out at you. So I would get to that boss and lose it and die and have to start over a lot,

and I was loving it. I was in Cloud 9. I was just like, yes, finally. I'm getting my ass. Same, same. I mean, I got destroyed on this, on that mode. Like, I did actually have trouble getting through the game in that way, but I loved it. Yeah.

So, yeah, I went for some of the trades that let you keep your weapons when you die, because these makes just the bosses on the first go a lot more enjoyable. Yeah, I think I used the start with the spread gun a lot because I'm a big fan of the spread gun. You know, I like things that spread. Butter, for example, you know. Yeah. We're going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be.

The thing about you. sure I find, though, is that which weapon you use, this is the things that classics do well is that every scenario kind of has like the optimal weapon, so you kind of like try to time when you get the next weapon, you know

when they're going to come out. I did find that a little bit trickier in this one, due to the, I guess, with the way the weapons were working, but I eventually kind of got into a groove and found it and yeah. And also, I think what's a big deal here is that the weapons are all very fun this time.

They are. They are. And some other characters have different variants of the weapons as well, which I thought was interesting. You've got the additional two-level weapons where you collect the same weapon twice, it gets more powerful. But what I liked, and I'm coming back to the sort of overload system now, which was, as we mentioned, is the big mechanical new thing here.

I thought what that did is it made trash weapons have a purpose. Because, like, you find a homing. You don't want the homing. But if you've got a spare weapon slot, you can equip the homing and you can use its overload, and that's going to help you out. Especially if you've got, only if it's good, but anything's better than nothing.

And also, if you have the overload heel perk, that's a free point of HP right there, which I thought was a very nice feature as well. Did anybody of you ever play a series Zenshi Spriggan on the PC engine, a vertical shooter? Yes, of course. That has this system where you can, at every time, just detonate your weapon for a nice special attack,

and which makes you cycles with weapons all the time because you get so many weapon pickups. And it's a bit like this here, because, okay, there's a thingy flying, with a new weapon, so I shoot it, weapon drops, I use my weapon overload, and I pick up the new ones. So it makes me actively change my weapon around more often, which is something I appreciate.

Yeah, I like that too. It must familiar my experience, although it took me a while, as I mentioned earlier, I think, to even remember the overloads were a thing, because I'm so in Contra. I know the rules of Contra, and then you're like, oh, shit, yeah, I forgot, if I hold LT, I can scrap this weapon,

and it will give me like a nice little buff or a barrier or something useful. that's more useful and I can stick with the weapon I love and keep that in slot one even have a perk on that means I never lose it, maybe, you know? And that was nice, I liked that.

I did find a sort of maybe more so than other Contra games. If I didn't have a weapon, like if I died and lost my weapons, I would find it very arduous killing some of the bosses because they just had a lot of HP. Which is why I kept that perk.

Yeah, there's a good one to hold on. So that's actually one of the benefits though of playing with the one-hit kill mode Because you die, you know, basically when you lose a weapon, you end up dying, you're done, you got to redo the stage anyway. So usually when you do get to the bosses, you've already reached a point where you can get there with your weapon. Yeah, yeah. It's not one hit kill, but when I did eventually get good at stage six, it was because I could make it to the end with at least one decent weapon, you know, because I was learning to really, I know I keep coming back to that stage. I think it's my favorite stage in the game

because it really does make you use everything in your arsenal. Like, all the platforming is there, the traps that don't really appear anywhere else. The situations that you get into that stage are just not like any of the others in the game I found because it doesn't have the forward momentum that most contrast stages have.

It's very much more of a take your time, figure it out. Right, right, right. And I appreciated that a lot. I liked, on a very baseline level, I did enjoy the fact that the boss in the middle of it was just basically the fan service man because it's just like he's doing Sparckster attacks at you.

Like he's doing the sword swipe from Sparkster and it's just like, yes, yes. Sparkser should be unlockable in the game, though, I feel. Yeah, but speaking of which, let's maybe go back to the characters, right? Because that's what we start out with. And that's something I really like that you have these really different feeling characters

this time. And they included the pro-protectors, so that's, you know. Of course, that's also great. But I mean, they're same as Bill and Lance, right? They don't differ from them, apart from the looks. What I really liked is when I had finished the game for the first time, that I unlocked, what's his name? Stanley, the Buckman.

Oh, Stanley, yeah, he's cool. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he has this very nice hovering move that you can go out with a jump, and that just feels wonderful every time I do it. Yeah, I had a lot of fun with him. You can really blow up the game with him if you could. Because I think he's got the double jump as well.

Yep. It was nice that another element of sort of custom sizeable gameplay, really. I do, it would be nice if you could fully mix a match, like you could have a custom character which had the custom, like, the abilities of another one, but I think there are, there's at least one combo for everyone in there, you know,

and beating the game unlocking the hardcore cast as well, although Brownie is wrong. Brownie is not meant to be full human size. It's a mistake they've ever done. Yeah, what's up with that? Yeah, they didn't incorrect Brownie. It'd be original Brownie or the kind of

Moe Brownie from Contra rebut, It feels acceptable. It feels slow. And actually, you know, Brownie's so quick and agile in the original game, right? But I actually kind of felt, so a weird thought I had, I think the game's probably fine in terms of gameplay speed, really, but there is the sense that you're playing a 50-hertz version of what should be a 60-hertz game is the feeling I often had while playing this, where everything just felt a little bit slower than I would like. I think it's, again, the 2.5D factor that's coming to play. It might be that. You know, if they couldn't do a full 2D game, I really wish they would have at least

considered trying to get to do 2D sprites. Kind of like Hardcore Uprising did, right? I'm, yeah, I mean, I've got to be honest with you. Just my, again, it's my opinion. I don't particularly like the mixture of 3D and 2D that Hardcore Uprising has. Oh, man. I love the way. Or, you know what?

It is possible, though, because like, I think Shattered Soldier on PS2 has a much faster feel than this, right? it just it kicks your butt it moves so that that game I think got it right and this one still it just I like it but man there's just something about the feel the animation and the

speed of everything just feels a little bit off so you finish this on one hit kill John well I'm still working on finishing on one hit kill I actually did do a play through with the default life bar

first yeah and now I've been, when I have time, I've been working on slowly getting through it with one-hit kill. And so far, I think I'm on stage six. It's not bad at all. So I got past the ice train with that creepy, crawly guy. Yeah. And then, yeah, stage six. Yeah, I know that guy from Castlevania.

He was cool. Yes. But yeah, stage six on one-hit kill is really brutal. Yes, yeah. Also, stage six has this slight tarragon feel to me. Anybody agree here? Or is it only me? I can see where you're coming from.

because it's less of a running gun and more of a platformer with gun. Yeah. Also, the setting and everything. Yeah. Some of the weapons are very Turrican. I think it's Lucia's spread gun reminds me of Turrican's arc, like, laser thing a lot. You've got the, there's like, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff we haven't mentioned. Like, there's, like, charge shots, the sliding, the grapple hook has back for some characters. But the grapple hook, for me, the gravel hook feels vestigial without two screens in a weird way. Because that was the real gimmick for me

The fun of the grappling hook Was that you would go from the bottom screen to the top screen It was super smart design To connect those two screens together, right? Yeah, yeah I mean stuff like that Contra Force stage Where you can see the aliens in the air duct above you Oh yeah, the second stage

Yeah, that's really cool And there is a fun staged in a lab in this game as well But it feels a bit like a remake of that Because it is just that stage really like thematically, with a lot of the same enemies like the exploding sort of zombie things as well. Yeah, you know, it feels to me like I think in far they had more freedom than with this one.

It's possible. Well, so one thing I do want to mention here since you mentioned the word remake is that it does feel like they were intentionally trying to take a lot of inspiration from classic Contra games. And one of the areas you see that is in the boss design. There are a lot of bosses in this game that are straight up sort of remakes

of classic contra bosses throughout the entire series which I am actually a fan of I thought that was pretty cool because they did they did enough new stuff with them like usually when the bosses would appear the patterns would be different or you know it's like this is a familiar boss

this design you know this design but how you beat them changed and I thought that was a fun way to sort of give you that homage feeling but still present a new challenge yeah I mean for me as you've met as we've said repeatedly, it's that first stage where you fight

the building, the wall boss that I thought was very, a bit too familiar because I've done that so many times and even the expansion on it when it comes up in the background is just merging the stage one and two boss from the original contra, really. Sure, I mean, I know what you mean, but I still, I think that's kind of cool. Yeah,

it was cool, but I guess the fights with, say, big fuzz is completely different. Like, he has some of his familiar attacks, but he executes in a completely different way. Completely different. And the fight with the Hugh Jelian. Which guy is big fuss again

because I'm not the familiar with the names of the... Big blue robot that pulls the walls apart at the end of the three. With his fists through and like pulls it back. And it's the raddest thing in the world. Oh my God, back in the day, that was just... Good stuff, yeah. I mean, we talked about that in the other episode, but I still get chills thinking about that.

Seeing that back in the early 90s, like the way the music changes the sound effects of him coming through. Gosh, that was intense. That was so good. Yeah. So I think that the familiarity stuff, they do enough to twist it in this game after those first couple of stages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree.

With stage two, my main issue with it, it's just kind of flat. Like, I mean, like, you're just kind of going right. Yeah, you just go right. Not much is happening. There's that dialogue sequence with Brad. And if you have the right weapons, you really can just sit in the middle and aim left from right, ultimately and kill everything. boring. I really think that stage needed to be about half as long. They drug it out too far.

But, man, the overall stage design, though, I think, like, we've kind of been saying, like, once you get past that, it really does pick up a lot. And it gets really interesting. And I genuinely enjoy that part of it. Did we like, how do you feel in general about the boss battles in this game? Like, do you have any particular favorites? I mean, always, the guy in level, at the waterfall, of course, is always amazing, I think. I was going to say, yeah. Stage three at the end there.

Yeah. When he comes up over the building, yeah, that's amazing. That's a nice homage as well, but it's like, that's actually a really cool sequence. Yeah, I really enjoyed that boss fight. I thought it was a good mixture of challenging affair. Though I did hit a bug in challenge mode where one of his attacks would always kill me even when I dodged it, which was annoying. But yeah, I think that's a known one. He's got this attack where he puts his claw in the foreground.

And then it's not meant to hit you because it's in the foreground, but it would always hit me. he does this thing you're supposed to dodge and I would dodge through it and it would still kill me and then I went online and it turns out that was like a known thing so I'm assuming that's getting patched out

but yeah boss battles I got a kick out of I think all of them overall even as I mentioned even though the building is familiar I did enjoy the fight it's a good building yeah especially on the harder modes

when it really makes you think about positioning like you've really got to be on your game for the harder modes on that one There's stuff coming from all sides. It's great fun. It's interesting. I've been working on this Sunsoft video at the time of recording, and I played through Sunsoft's Bay Route, not named after the city.

And I finally truly grasp how much of a Contra-style game that actually is right down to it having its own version of the wall. Yeah. I mean, it is, wow. So if you're also looking for a Contra game, you may never have played. Go check out Beirut from Sun-South. soft. Yeah, that's B-A-Y space root.

R-R-U-T-E, or Rout, if you're in America. Rout, yes. No, B-R-R-R-E-R-T. Oh, geez, I've been corrupted. Yeah, unfortunately, it's all changed now. But how did you feel about the finale in this game? Because it really felt like they were doing a Metal Slug 3 in a sense there. Oh, gosh, the escape ship thing?

Yeah. Oh, gosh. And just the alien, like, taking up the entire screen, and you're walking on it, basically. I thought it was really bother cool. Yeah, actually that part looked surprisingly good. It was kind of massive and just like this, when you're standing on his hands with those eyes sneering at you and when you drop back down and just, it does, it has a really nice sense of scale that I appreciate that I think that is one use of technology that I'm not sure was fully possible in the past where they're able to do a gigantic multi-screen filling animated boss that you're, fighting on. So in that sense, I do like that. I did enjoy the tension when I thought that because when you're standing on the boss, you're like, this thing is hostile at any point

this could go south. Like, I don't know what it's going to do. But I thought it was fun and fair, again, difficult, but fair. And it was a nice set piece for sure, yeah. Yeah. Now, do we, I do feel like maybe one thing that is slightly lacking, which I've come to expect from contra was set pieces here. Because while that's not necessarily, necessarily a bad thing. It did feel a bit more traditional, more like the original Nes-Contra and sort of like stage, here's

the stage. Whereas when you get to stuff like hardcore, it really is just kind of set-piece, set-piece. I think that's what they were going for, though. Yeah. More like the original contras. And I think that's fine. I like that, actually. I think maybe set-piece stuff is fun and cool, but it got a little bit too heavy

in the later years. Yeah. And even I love hardcore, especially at the time, was very unique. But that game is pretty much like set piece the game. It is set piece for yeah. Yes, I love it as well, but it does bring some aspects of it down for me. Which again, to me, it always

felt like they're like, let's make a game that beats treasure at their own game. You know what I mean? It's a Konami Treasure game effectively. Yeah. And that's not the vibe I get from this. You do not get that vibe here. I think that's very clearly intentional.

They were not trying to make hardcore. They were trying to make a contra run and gun And they succeeded, I would say, very much so. And when it does flow, when it's good, I think this, I mean, I'm not going to say it's up there with stuff like Alien Wars. No. Because I can't. I think when this game flows, I would say it's up there with my favorites. I mean, if I was to rank it, I honestly think I'd probably put it behind Super because I really did enjoy myself that much playing this.

And I'm still playing it. That's great. Well, I like it better than, I like it more than Shattered Soldier because I don't like the hit rate stuff in that game. I find it make, I always feel like I'm failing if I don't get the hit rates. The thing about Shattered Soldier, though, I mean, for the, I guess when I consider how I felt about Shattered Soldier versus how I feel about this now, I feel like Shattered Soldier made a stronger impression. And yeah, the hit rate stuff wasn't great, but like the levels are super well designed. It's basically hardcore too. Yeah.

It has an awesome soundtrack. It's extremely driving. it just like it feels like contra putting its face or sorry putting its foot in your face yeah for sure you know it's just it's like here you go eat some boot and it's like oh man here's some heavy fucking i feel like mill house entering my name yeah bones that's not because obviously that's not me bagging on a shadow soldier which you know it speaks for itself doesn't it i mean this is a series that i think is so good generally with you know only a few exceptions that honestly I mean, ranking it was difficult as hell.

Sure, sure. I mean, apart from number one and two, that was like, you know, for me, that was a foregone conclusion. But, yeah, but, you know, in a way, I think it's an inverted contra now, Galuga, because all the great contras have this very strong first impressions. Always, first level of hardcore, it's amazing. First level of alien wars is amazing. And in this one, it gets better over time. It needs to grow on you, as I said.

And I think this is something that makes it. for many people, difficult to get into. Yep. And that makes it also difficult to rank in a way. One thing I think it's missing, though, and I know these weren't always popular, but I really would have liked more of those unique stage designs, like the overhead stuff or, you know what I mean? Like, I know.

It can be controversial, but I think that was what made those earlier Contras special. It's, and where it's like, all right, you're shifting what you're doing dramatically per level, so it kept it feeling fresh. And I think we really saw how important that was when they did the Game Boy Advance version of Contra 3. And they replaced all the overhead levels with hardcore levels where it just made it all feel kind of samey and blend together. Even though each level was good on its own, it just had a negative impact in the overall pacing and feel of the game. And I think the bike sections in this one do not make up for that. Yeah, I would say you don't need two bike sections.

The ice stage is enough. And as soon as you're on the bikes, I mean, there's nothing in that ice stage that I think is unreasonable that it throws out at you. I think what I would have liked to have seen here, if I may put out an idea, is if they had borrowed a page from neocontra, where they had at least a couple stages that were essentially more like a neocontra, where it's this overhead sort of differently-paced stage. Because I think neocontra did the overhead stuff better than any contra on its own. But that's all that game was. but if you had just a couple stages kind of like that, you could keep a lot of the mechanics that you have in the final game. The only difference would be instead of maybe a jump,

you have like a dash. I mean, Contra 4 had the shooting gallery stages, and it surprised me that they didn't make a return, because you could do some pretty spectacular stuff with that now, I think. Absolutely. Oh, 100%. I mean, the sequence in Contra 4, where I'm going to say it again, sorry, Thomas, a big fuzz is chasing you backwards.

Big fuzz. through the stage you've just sort of demolished and then you have to manually close the doors on his head by shooting the switches. I think it's a really nice change of pace and yeah I think maybe if a couple of stages here had been that

or top down as you say I would have been into it for sure the Contra 3 top town stages get a lot of flak but I think they're great fun they're quite breezy, quite easy I think a lot of people didn't fully understand the controls at the time even though you're effectively doing like modern sort of strafe turning where you know the d pad is just strafing around and then you use the RNL to turn so it's kind of like playing with a modern right stick camera system but from above yeah but at the time that kind of thing wasn't that intuitive or you know common so I think people really struggled with it but I think it's very intuitive and plays very well.

Thank you. So overall, how do we feel about the length of the game? Oh, I think it's a good length. I mean, wouldn't you agree, Thomas? Like, it feels like it doesn't overstay its welcome. If it had been longer than this, I actually think it would have been a problem. Because these games are meant to be replayed, right? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and that's when they get good, as I said. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it's eight stages, and I think Contra 4 was, I want to say, nine. Oh, yeah. Contra 4's, I think, is overall shorter, but way more difficult. Yeah. But, of course, Contra 4 as well has the broken, breaks it up with a two or three base stages as well. Yeah, yeah, the 3D ones.

I was quite satisfied with the length of this, but at the same time, I worry that even, because some of the levels are quite long, I found myself thinking, like, maybe I would, maybe this would be better if some of these stages had been split into two stages. Yeah, or just chopped up. or just chopped up, yeah, because running through arcade mode, I think it's just long enough to be a little bit arduous. I mean, it's meant to be arduous, but you know what I mean in terms of way. Yeah, it's a little bit on the long side. Like, most contras are about an hour or a little less on a full run,

and I feel like Contra, I haven't timed it, but I feel like this one is longer than that by a fair amount. Pacing a contra game must be really hard to do. Oh, I don't, you know what, for all the complaints I've had, I still think these guys had an incredibly, difficult job on this, and I think they did a pretty good job all things considered, knowing how tough it is to make one of these games. But talking about length and not values, I don't like to get into sort of pricing stuff here, but I mean, we haven't really talked about the challenge mode

at all, which is a vestige, not vestigial, it's a carried over from Contrafort, where it's like, here's a section of a level, the rules have changed, it's either you can't shoot, or you only have a certain amount of ammo and you've got to kill this boss, which is, you know, prioritizing accuracy, basically. And this stuff's hard as shit. Like, there's one early on where you fight the stage three boss, but you only have about 60 shots

of a laser, and that boss takes about 50 to kill. Like, if you are stray with your weapon too much, you'll lose. And I killed it with my last bullet, and I didn't get the credit it. It says you failed, because you ran out of ammo. So I'm watching this boss die

and screaming, I didn't fail. I'm still alive, and it's dead. That's not fair. But something that I think is a good addition for hardcore players and is maybe slightly a burden for me is the fact that the challenges aren't just you beat it anymore. It's you either beat it or you beat it in the part-time. And beating it in the part-time gets you more credits than beating it normally. This is another way to earn contra coins or credits or whatever they are called in the game now, which you'll then spend on your perks. but I'm one of those people

who gets frustrated when they get graded so I like things to either be done or not done so I don't know maybe that's just me because finishing one of those genuinely difficult challenges and then seeing you've got two stars because you didn't quite do it quick enough I didn't like that but a lot of people are going to see that

crack their knuckles and just get down the business so I guess that's the intention there I think the unlocking credits while it's nice that you can choose the things you buy it's not as cool as unlocking like new characters unlocking the interviews

unlocking concept are unlocking old contra games you can then play but again they were probably quite restricted on that stuff now so what they did these times are over

probably yeah it's a shame yeah we can sell that separately why would you include and have yeah so did you guys tackle challenge mode at all

did you have a good time with that one yeah I did absolutely I mean I like just to be forced to use certain mechanics or certain weapons, certain characters.

So just I get to learn them is something I really enjoy in games usually. Yeah, I mean, that's how I because I couldn't really, I couldn't beat Contra 4 until I did challenge mode and learned all the levels piecemeal. Because you basically play through the whole game multiple times, use only a bit at a time

with much more restrictive rules and much harder than it actually is in the main game, but just for short periods. And then when you go into the game, you're like, oh, I know this bit, this bits, I can use this, I know this bit, and it's a nice another nice way of training the player how to play contract right i guess you know how to play it the way it's intended to be played it does make me wonder if they if they had actually kind of doubled down and gone like no you can't have extra HP this is how it's going to be and it had been rebalanced that way if it had been received more favorably i don't know i have i feel like it didn't get that fair of a shake from either community or from like many outlets and it so bums me out because i think it's a better game than it's been given credit for, broadly speaking.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, everyone's entitled to their opinion. Not far bit for me to suggest otherwise, but... It's not for everyone. I feel like my opinion should be considered the best opinion, you know, and everyone should just kind of use that as a baseline. Yeah, but of course, on the other hand, your opinion is built on having played the game for a lot,

and a lot of people are just going ahead, yeah, yeah, looks a bit, me, don't want to play it now, now, not for me. So that's, of course, that's a pity. This is a broad topic, but this is the first Contra, traditional Contra, that's been released in an era where people are making response videos within minutes of it being released. Oh dear, yeah.

And those response videos are generally marketed with thumbnails of them making a disgusted, grimacing face and impact bold text. This new Contra is, worse than a nuke being dropped on your house or something like that because I saw a lot of that on YouTube

maybe I've just been watching the wrong videos but probably yeah I mean there's some real real altos out there who really... You're going up against a fan base that's if you're a contra fan then you know you must be pretty like I don't know metal

although at least kind of hardcore in the first place because it's not an easy series it's never been easy I've been trying to beat Contra 1 like properly, and I can only get to stage five and I get absolutely bodied. I'll do it. I'll do it one of these days properly. But I don't know. Do you know what I mean?

I just worry, I just wonder how it feels releasing a game that's targeted at kind of a more sort of hardcore audience when that audience is so... Yeah, and do you know, do you know what their biggest problem is? What is it? It's the nostalgia of the Contra fans. Yeah, maybe. Because imagine, Contra

fans have been playing these games for years. There hasn't been a new one in years. So, of course, for many of these people, the old classic games have been, in a way, inflated in their heads, have become so much bigger and better than they ever were even, even if they are brilliant. And to go up against this weaponized nostalgia of the fan base, that is pretty hard. It's, yeah, because I've not seen a lot of positive coverage of this game, really. I understand what you've seen has been different to my experience, but I don't know. it just makes me, it's a little bit sad for me

because I thought this was really good and I wish more people agreed with me. Basically, my entire life is just wishing people agreed with me about things and finding that it happens all too rarely. Indeed. But I don't want to end this on like a downer really because I feel like we're coming, like we've talked about everything

in this game now, I think. Some might have been minimal exceptions, But what I would like is for anyone, if people who've listened to this who have not sort of form an opinion, I haven't played the game and I may be interested in doing so, like, for the love of Christ's sake, play it on a console or play it on the PC. Don't play it on the switch because that version's not there yet. Like, I don't know if they... Actually, I should probably maybe detail what's going on there in terms of like what...

So the issue with it is that, first of all, it's 30 frames per second, which is not really cool for Contra, I would say. but it's not even a consistent 30. It's a 30 that dips. It's a 30 with stutters. There's huge pauses. The whole thing just feels juttery and unsmooth. In addition to looking absolutely terrible, like the resolution is lower, the details, the textures.

Everything's been cut way down on an already not amazing looking game. When you compare that to Hardcore Uprising running on a PS3 at 60 FPS, no less, I mean, hardcore uprising looks like a game that's a, generation newer than the switch version of this. That's the difference that we're talking about here. And it's just a very frustrating thing to see it because I know the switch can do better. I know Way Forward can do better, but however this played out, it just didn't come together well on the switch.

And I know the switch market is a huge audience for them, but this just wasn't the biggest problem. And the thing is, yeah, this is argument. The switch could do better. this at the moment holds true for pretty much every game coming out, and that's a bit of a pity, because we all know what the switch can do, and it is more than that.

It's also more than many other games recently have delivered. Not to get into rampant speculation, but the successor to the switch was delayed, right? Well, we can't really call it a delay or not, you know what I mean?

It was never ever... It was really announced. Correct. Okay, okay. Maybe I don't know where I heard that then. But people expected it. to be out by now. There is a feeling based on things that had been heard that it might have been delayed

but there's nothing official so we can't really say that. Yeah. I do wonder if when it drops there are going to be games patched to take advantage of what it can do. I sure hope so. If it's backwards compatible, which if it's not, I'm just not going to buy it. I mean, speaking of which...

Oh my kidding, of course I'm going to buy it. Go on. You're going to buy it, too. Yeah, I'm going to fucking buy it. Completely This RPG, Adrian Chronicle is coming out in a few weeks from this recording. And when they started a Kickstarter for that game, they already said, this game is coming for PS5, is coming for Xbox, and it's coming for Nintendo's new hardware that will be out by then. And, well, guess what? It's not out.

It reminds me of all of the... Everybody expected a new Switch, a new Nintendo hardware to be out at this point. Yeah, because, I mean, it's sort of the opposite of when there were a lot of kickstaters for Wii U games that ended up becoming Switch. games. Yeah, where's my mighty number nine for the Vita? Yeah, well, I mean my

I want the 3DS port. I've still got a pre-order. It's coming. 2025, it says, it's coming, okay? Yes, excellent. Gaming is coming back. Back will save us all.

So, I mean, where do we end this? Like, what is the final sort of word on this? I guess from me personally, get past levels one and two. Like, that is when it gets very good, because it is very good. because it is very good to me. I loved it. I gave it five stars, and I stand by that

because it's based on, it's not based on tech for me. It's not based on other perspective. For me, I love this. I'm going to go back to this. I'm going to keep playing this

because it delivers for me. That's why I love it. I like, I don't really mind the first two stages because I just bombed through them anyway. But that's the perspective of someone who has finished this game more than once, you know?

I know what's going to happen. I know what's coming. But that first impression is just not there and it's a shame and I really implore you to give it a go it's I didn't as I said I didn't want to get into pricing stuff but this is what a $40 game I believe so yeah and it makes me wonder if this was a $30

or even $25 game which is not viable probably how much more popular would it have been like how many more people are going to drop the go yeah I'll give that a go at 30 you know I mean it's so tough to make a call on that you can go out today and buy Metroid dread for 25 pounds in any shop you know I'm going to say it again they screwed up by making

the demo itself I think doesn't show the game at its best but the fact that you can download the demo on Switch oh boy I mean it's just it makes such a bad impression I suspect there is a fair number of people that played it played the demo on Switch and said whoa I am not I am not I am fairly sure that's the case for sure yeah something we we should mention actually even though it's not really related to this game apart

from cross-promo stuff, is just yesterday, I believe, they put out an announcement trailer for a vampire survivor's crossover with Contra, which I've got to say looks pretty good. Which is hilarious, I think. Yeah, I mean, I think that vampire survivors is, how can I put this? I sort of hate it, but I like it anyway. I play it anyway, you know. For me, it does, there is something about it that I find compelling

that goes beyond the Skinner Box kind of mentality of level up, watch number go up. Once you get to the highest stages, there is a lot of, like, corraling of enemies involved. But of all the things to cross over with vampire survivors, they don't cross over

Castlevania, because it's already an unofficial Castlevania game anyway. There's so much plagiarism in that fucking game of just blatant use of any. And I'm not even just like similar. There's like, as a bone tower,

there's the frigging ton for skeletons. I look the same. Guys, let me share that quickly. Last semester, I had a lecture at the university and I talked about NES games. I showed Castlevania. After a bit, somebody, is there a reason why this all looks like vampire survivors? Yep, there certainly is.

Oh, my gosh. Well, if you all like vampire survivors, I suggest you go play Ike Unite from Sunsoft. Oh, okay. Or if you like, vampire survivors and are also slightly a deviant, like me, why don't you go and play Holocure? From KU, who did the sprites for River City Girls, last bringing us back to Way Forward. Oh, yeah. Or we can hope for a sequel to... Go ahead.

Sorry, John. Please. I just wanted to give you my takeaways from this whole game and... Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to mention that in passing because it's a new Contra thing. So, yeah, my takeaway is

it really pays off to stay with this game. Yeah. Even if you aren't into it in the first, in the first 10 minutes, give it a few more minutes, give it a few more levels and you will see it will grow on you. Yeah, it's a grower for sure.

Number one. But on the other hand, I also have to say at the takeaway, towards Way Forward they really need to find a style of their own again because right now Way Forward isn't a sort of no man's land

they're just doing serviceable, okayish 3.5D stuff it's a bit like the New Super Mario Brothers game which also have this utilitarian look in a way and this is right now what for me the Way Forward games look like

they work, they get the job done but they don't have character They don't really have So I mean The old games When I saw a way forward game I could see one screenshot Yep

That's way forward all right Nowadays, yep It's a 2.5D game It's funny I agree Sorry John go ahead Sorry No I was going to say

It's funny you say that Thomas Because back in the late 2000s there Way Forward games looked unique At a time when everything had XBLA disease And like had that specific Downloadable game look

Well now Way Forward Has basically adopted that look I mean I think I agree to a point. I wouldn't say it's any kind of a sort of a loss cause because they are still putting out stuff like River City Girls, which while, yeah, it's licensed, it's very way forward, I think, you know. And even back in the day, there were things like Double Dragon Neon, which, I mean, I love that game, but it's not a look at, you know. Well, Stu, though, to be fair, it at least is 1080p, 60 frames per second on a PS triple. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? I do agree I was thinking about this when I was playing half junior hero yesterday that what happened with this series and I thought oh yeah Shanta advance is coming out they're releasing in

they're finishing off that cancelled Shantay GBA game and I thought wow I'm really excited about that that's probably going to be really good I have hopes for it but then I think hang on a minute that's not new really like I don't know

when I think of the sort of way forward but I do still get excited about their announcements, but it's not like Bakugan and, like, War of the Monsters, which I did like, but it just didn't feel like a Way Forward game for me. But because they've always balanced these licensed games with their own kind of more interesting stuff, but even the licensed stuff looked good. It had like Hank Neiburg on the Thor game, on the DS, you know.

Where the Wild Things are on the GBA, it looks amazing. So, yeah, I mean, I like Way Forward. I'm sort of strong with Way Forward. I look forward to their games. I keep an eye on their games. I look way forward to their stuff. Very nice. Very nice.

But it would be cool to get back like DSW era. I think they need to rediscover the presentation side of things. The visuals are often dull and the 2.5, the 3D stuff they're doing. And they're not hitting it on the sound front. Yeah. Like not that they have some good people doing work over there, but like it's just, man, the sound of older. Get some teelopes on board. Get some tea lobes. There's other people beyond him. He's a very busy man, but there's others out there. Like Sean Bialo, if I said that right, who did Donat Dodo and also worked on pennies with tea. Donald Dodo is dope. Amazing guy. And there's a lot of really good people out there, but I don't think it's just about the person doing it. Like they had very talented composers working on Contra. Just the direction they went was wrong.

I really need to rethink that approach. Yeah, less cinema, let's Hollywood more fun again. Bring it back. So, yeah, I think that brings it to an effective conclusion. I think this has been quite good. I hope we were fair. I hope I was fair. I feel like it was a little bit harsh, but I do actually really, I like it now, but

it has those issues that I mentioned. I mean, I'm glad that we had, not dissent, but I'm glad there was a good spread of opinions because I was worried it would be either too positive or, you know, or two negative, but no, I think it's quite fair, and I think that is a nice addendum to a contra-ranking Hutanani, which is now complete. I won't ask you to rank this game, because that would require redoing the ranking, and we can't,

because as I mentioned, it is now officially locked down in the books of history as the official definitive. We could always record a second ranking. Do you have half a day? Anyone got six hours to spare? Yeah, ranking two. I have a bottle for peeing in, that's fine. Yeah, it's okay, yeah. I could get some snacks, and we could

make a day of it. Right. But no, we have to rank something a lot less contentious. We have to rank the entire Sonic series from start to finish next. Good idea. That's going to take a solid week. Anyway, thank you very much for listening. John, as if we don't know already, where can people find you on the internet? Oh, well, I'm still at Digital Foundry.

So, you know, YouTube.com slash Digital Foundry on the X platform. is that I struggle to say it. Dark one X on there. And that Sunsoft video might be out by the time that this drops, yeah? Yeah, we'll see. Hopefully, it's over two hours long, so there's a lot to it. And Thomas, where can we locate you online to peruse your activities? Well, if you were into that sort of thing, you could find me, of course, on Twitter as Bimbo Fortuna,

or you could find me on the way nicer blue sky at Tapia Fortuna. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, that is something you can do. Or, of course, if you are in Germany, by an issue of M games, where you can read lots of the stuff I'm writing. What does the M stand for? Well, funny story. The magazine was called Maniac when it was launched, and after a couple of years, they decided, okay, we have to get games in there somehow, because people don't know where to place us on the magazine shelves. Next to the serial killer magazines and things, yeah.

Yep, exactly. So they went to M games, which is, I mean, we all called MNiac still, but that's what it told us. Maniac games. I like that. Yeah, it's a great magazine. It's the last multi-puffer magazine left in Germany and one of the full left in the world, I guess, at this point. And I think we're doing some pretty neat work at this point with lots of specials, lots of in-depth articles,

like about Sunsoft, for example, which might be somewhere related to John's video. I don't know about that. We might have been there at the same time. But yeah, if you're in Germany, give us a read. We appreciate that. I have an issue because my book, All Games are good. now from Amazon and limited ring games

was featured in it. Thank you very much. Pure corruption, by the way. Absolute nepotism happening here. But I can't read it, because I don't know German, unfortunately. But what I do like to do is take it with me on the train and pretend I'm reading it, you know? And every so often, while I'm reading it, while I'm reading it every so often,

I'll either raise my eyebrows and I'll go, that's very interesting, you know. And of course, Stu, as you know, if you speak German, you can't be a bad person. It's true. It's true. Nobody that speaks German could be bad. It's a DM games

Yeah So yeah I'm Stuart Chip You can find me on Twitter The Last Guy in Dying Gasp's of Twitter At Stupacabra Don't blame me if you go there And it's all just pictures of fannies Because that's what Twitter is now

And also yeah My book, all games are good It's an extremely entertaining book I recommend you buy it It's also very heavy So you can stave someone's head in with it Which is a tip I submitted To one of those serial killer magazines

As I mentioned earlier But thank you you for listening to this episode of Retronauts. If you like the show and want to support the program, you can go to patreon.com for slash Retronauts and for, there's a $3 tier, which gets you the episodes early, but there's also a $5 tier, which not only gets you each weekly episode a week in advance, thus making you, yes, I'm going to say it, the coolest kill on the playground. You will also get access to two bonus monthly episodes that are completely exclusive to the Patreon, as well as Diamond Fights, brilliant. And they are,

They're really good. This week in retro columns, where they cover varying, interesting topics, usually based around anniversaries that have occurred, but in a much more interesting personal way than I've just made it sound. And they also record those as podcast as well. So, you know, get them listened to, please. There's other stuff, too, but I forgot what it was, thus making me the worst PR imaginable for retronauts.

I'm going to have some stuff on there, too, soon, but I haven't decided what yet. So, yeah, there's another reason to sign up, get even more of me stumbling over words. and not remembering things. That would be a good column. Stuart Gipp doesn't remember this game every month. Thanks very much for listening, and we'll be back soon, probably with something that's not Contra. So until then, let's attack aggressively in Contra reference.

You know, Oh! Thank you.