Contra Anniversary Collection

I love the smell of retro in the morning.

When I think about classic side scrolling action games, Contra is the first game that comes to mind.  It had everything going for it:  Non-stop action, two player simultaneous play, Rambo-like characters (hey, he was big at the time), a variety of weapons, the ability to fire diagonally, and killer bosses.  It was a very influential series, the go-to example of its genre. The 8- and 16-bit eras were full of games that players described as “like Contra, but with x”.   This long-overdue collection is chock full of nostalgia for my generation of gamers.

The Contra Anniversary Collection includes either 5 or 10 classic Contra games, depending on how you want to count them:
Contra (arcade, NES, and Famicom versions), Super Contra (arcade), Super C (NES), Operation C (Gameboy), Contra 3: The Alien Wars (SNES), Contra: Hard Corps (Genesis), Probotector (Mega Drive), and Super Probotector: Alien Rebels (SNES).

Breaking it down:

Contra (3 versions) –The first game in the series still holds up.  This collection contains the arcade, NES and Famicom versions.  The arcade version has the best graphics of the three, but the vertical shape of the screen feels weird on a modern TV.  It’s like watching a video from someone who holds their cell phone sideways.  Don’t… just don’t do that.  You would think the NES and Famicom versions would be identical, but the Famicom has a few technical enhancements over the NES version.  It’s nice of them to include all three versions here, but marketing it as if they’re three separate games is a bit misleading IMO.  Still, it’s great to own a piece of gaming history.

Super Contra (2 versions; the NES version being called “Super C”) – A worthy entry in the series, though it doesn’t really do much of anything new.  It’s like they just added more levels to the first one.  Fun Fact:  Apparently they renamed the NES version because the word “Contra” was very contra-versial (ha ha) that year, due to the Iran-Contra Affair.

Contra III: The Alien Wars (2 versions; the European version being called “Probotector: Alien Rebels”) – This is one of my all-time favorite games.  The controls are perfect, the graphics are beautiful, and it puts you in all manner of crazy impossible action scenes.  It’s been 27 years, but it still holds up.  It’s nice to finally get to play the Probotector version as well.  Fun Fact: Several of the Contra games were altered and renamed “Probotector” (Robot Protector) in Europe/Australia, to make them less violent.  The Probotector games replace a lot of human sprites with robots.

Contra: Hard Corps (2 versions; the European version is called “Probotector”) – I never had a Genesis, so this one was brand new to me.  It’s difficult, but I guess that’s implied by the title.  I like that the player characters actually look different, rather than just being palette swaps.  My wife and I are going to fight over the female character.  Anyway, it's a great game, and I'll be coming back to this one more later.

Operation C – This Gameboy version could almost be called another version of Super C, but it’s just different enough to be considered its own game.  It’s important for being the first Contra game to have homing missiles, and to make autofire the default weapon.  Unfortunately, like most Gameboy games, it doesn’t really hold up today.  I really wish they’d skipped this one and added one of the other Contra games instead.  There’s plenty to choose from.

So, bottom line:  While this is marketed as having 10 games, it’s closer to five.  I mean, sure, the arcade version of Super Contra is a lot different from the NES’s Super C, but you’re probably going to pick a favorite and only play that version.  And you’re not going to play the Gameboy version more than once, I’m pretty sure.  So that leave four games.  Are these four games worth your $20?  I say yes.  Honestly, I think Contra III is worth the $20 alone, and everything else is just gravy.

This is the third of Konami’s Anniversary Collections they’ve released this year.  They haven’t announced any more yet, but I hope there’s more to come.  These are great versions of some of the best games in video game history.