And one of the 2D games' 3D sequels that stood head-to-head with the originals :D

Alien Soldier: Hold my beer

Contra 3 is not even close to this masterpiece.

This is way better than any other Contra, or similar styled games.

@@BiriBiri925 Contra 3 has the whole movie like soundtrack, it definitely feels like you are playing in a movie, helping the original Contra heroes Bill and Lance to defeat the aliens. Of course this is the follow up that takes place 5 years later, but loses that movie feel to it.

Then you should try Trouble Shooter and Battle Mania: Daiginjou :)

It's the generation that best justified having multiple consoles on the market, imo. Each system's respective strengths and weaknesses imposed a certain vibe on each console's games. Even the few ports between the systems would have a different feel just because of the machine they were running on and that *owns*

Both Contra III and Contra Hard Corps were good. The former had the SNES hardware and was frenetic. Hard Corps had a party aspect (different characters) and if you had the JPN version like I did, each character could take 3 hits before dying with each life (making the game far, far easier).

Can't get why this one is your favorite. This game is like one big boss fight, and another one boss fight, and another one boss fight. There is no classic run'n'gun moment except few mins in first stage on a completely flat ground. In my childhood I played only Contra NES and SuperC so I have no nostalgia feelings for this one so it's "hard" to get this fascination for "Hard Corps". Game has some cool ideas for bosses, but there is nothing else than bosses... why? xd Where are some stages, platforming, mass enemies to kill off etc.?

I could never get used to Fang's weapons. Once I played Sheena, it's hard to use any of the other characters!

@@jballs5434 Not sure you why you feel that way but maybe because I'd used the Game Genie when I'd played it.

And it was faster than Contra 3.

This and Contra 4 are some of the hardest Contra games out there.

This had time to bake in the oven, Contra 3 was near the beginning of the SNES's lifespan, and Konami was still getting their feet under them when it was created. Konami was also familiar with the guts of the Genesis, as the Motorola chip inside was close to the same one arcade units used. Though Konami had their fair share of misses on the Genesis (Sunset Riders, Castlevania Bloodlines, the story just didn't fit the timeline's standards,plus the game was short, and the weird way the characters walked on stairs, they floated above the stairs, and the damned boss rush copout in Hyperstone Heist, when the game could've used 1-2 more unique stages to it). This game is good, but it has some bits to it that are as dull as plain white bread.

@@Bloodreign1 Ah no not really, did not have any bits that are dull as plain whit bread more than any other game would have.

@@karlizen4990 The boss that you have to follow through almost the entire stage before you can finally fight it would love to have a talk with you. That stage in itself drags the game down a bit. I've seen bosses that you'll see in the background of stages, but not one that you can't do anything to until you reach a certain part of the stage, yet it can still kill you throughout that stage.

@@Bloodreign1 Yes, this game did drag a bit sometimes. This game was longer than Contra 3, but I think Contra 3 was more fun. For some reason this game wasn't that hard for me, a lot of the bosses have blind spots that you're totally safe in. Between the SNES and Genesis it's Contra 3/Gunstar > Hard Corps.

My strategy on stage 1 in this game is to fire forward most of the time, and fire backward in small bursts at regular intervals. Also, you can actually stand underneath the eye of the big miniboss near the end and just keep shooting at his eye, and this will kill him before he is able to hit you.

That's the beauty of contra, its that insanely fun

Yep, so true, such a great game!

Genesis had tonnes of great looking games...

The game's true forte are sound effects and music. Graphically? Yes, stock SNes can do what the Genesis can albeit far more laggy. And to be fair, it should be done using stock hardware and because of that, I believe the SPC chip will be struggling and it's gonna get maxed out to keep up, even though the music and sound effects will likely to get an obvious downgraded. The SPC chip was great and only having more cart space would allow for better music because it uses samples while frequency capped at 35khz MAX and it could only play a certain amount of samples per channel, leading to SFX or instruments cut outs (in example: Top Gear 2 port) You only need space for specific samples in the YM2612, and this game suffers from Clipping for the amount of stuff going on at once rather than cut outs! The rest is just commands for the chip to produce any sound or music capped at a MAX of 53khz! But it was a tricky chip... What I'm saying, it can be done, but due to the SNes's stock design, you'll need the extra chips to have a seamless experience. Otherwise on Stock snes, sacrifices's got to be made like Konami didnwith Sunset Riders on the SNes, music was great, but at what cost...? Shorter levels and because Nintendo, censorship. 😅

@@RetroArcadeGuy I am against the spreading of this false narrative that would suggest it's basically an automatic for SNES games to be more laggy. Yes, you have to work harder to avoid lag on SNES like for like because the system is a little slower overall--nowhere near the amount the pure CPU numbers would suggest--but lag is not some inherent feature of the system. It's more than possible to make solid 60fps intense action games on SNES, like Rendering Ranger R2 for example. And, once you get to 60fps the job is done--you can't get any better than a solid 60fps on either of these systems. Lag and stutter is also not unique to SNES, and Genesis can succumb to it too, as very clearly seen in Thunder Force IV for example. But, with some smart design and optimized code, I think a game like Hard Corps could run fine on SNES, and certainly well within acceptable standards for any SNES and Genesis fans. The homebrew Alisha's Adventure is a pretty good case to look at there and see what's possible by only one person for example. So imagine what a full team from a company as talented as the likes of Konami or Treasure might be able to pull off if their intention was to push the system to its absolute limits and achieve the all round highest quality possible. I also disagree with any notion that the sound will have to be downgraded on SNES. First, that assumes that FM sound is somehow superior to PCM or something. I definitely disagree there. Second, I presume it assumes some KHz number for one specific aspect of the sound determines the overall quality of the final audio or something, which it just doesn't. It's not that simple. And it also ignores something like being able to support Dolby Surround sound on SNES, which is a unique feature to that system and a clear enhancement there for example. People can prefer the sound on Genesis, and people can prefer sound on SNES, but I fully disagree that a soundtrack made to play to SNES' strengths would sound worse in the slightest. And, personally speaking, I think it would likely sound superior ultimately. There's nothing on Genesis that sounds as good as the likes of ActRaiser or Donkey Country to me for example. I don't think Sunset Riders is the peak standard to judge what's possible on SNES regarding audio. I think, if we're trying to judge what kind of quality the audio on some SNES port might reach, we'd be far better off looking at games like ActRaiser, Donkey Kong Country, Yoshi's Island, Star Fox, Super Metroid, etc. Actually use some of the best audio on SNES as the reference, because surely that's what we'd want there. No doubt this game is impressive in many ways on Genesis though, hence my interest in seeing a port on SNES. But I still don't think it would overall be a downgrade on SNES outside of the horizontal resolution. In many ways, I think it could actually be an upgrade, with some changes here and there to accommodate the SNES' specific specs too of course. What I will say is that I already think Contra III both looks and sounds better in many ways than Hard Corps. And the FastROM patch fixes the original slowdown there too. So I think a port of Hard Corps at that level on SNES, and even beyond in modern times, could be great. Of course, it's all just opinion until it actually exists.

​@@inceptional People can make it exist, but the whole experience is gonna take a massive hit wherever you look at it due to the console's weaknesses. And I doubt anyone is gonna port a perfect game to a console full of inconvenients for it. And the patch doesn't really get rid of slowdowns. It just mitigates them. You rarely see a slowdown if none in Hard Corps. I never noticed any except and ONLY at the train stage when you defeat the athletic cyborg and that slowdown is on purpose to show how the train rips that robot apart!

@@RetroArcadeGuy The only weakness of the stock SNES compared to the stock Genesis that's relevant here is the CPU speed, which, with decent programming can be overcome. And then, other than the smaller horizontal view, the rest could actually mostly be improved imo, with much more and nicer colours, proper transparency effects, more background layers for additional parallax, smoother tilting on the first boss for example due to the SNES' higher fidelity column scrolling, support for Dolby Surround sound, easy mapping of the smart bombs on the SNES' controller so they can actually be used at the same time as jumping and firing, etc. The Contra III patch is just a straight FastROM switch, not a code optimization patch too. It currently gets rid of most slowdown, and with some more code optimization it would be possible to get rid of the rest, certainly to a level that's beyond acceptable to both SNES and Genesis fans. A FastROM port of Hard Corps that's properly optimized and actually designed with the SNES' capabilities fully in mind doesn't have to suffer from any notable slowdown. So the end result, if done right, could be a SNES version of the game that runs at a solid frame rate and has less horizontal view but otherwise looks, sounds, and even controls slightly better. Again though, until it exists, anyone can agree or disagree however they see fit.

Speaking of classic Konami games, have any of you noticed this uses the same explosion sfx as Hyper Crash on the arcades?

+Oswald Epic Loquendero Blockbuster went bust a few years ago, didn't they?

Also this game (JP version only) had Infinite Continues and a code. (Imagine, if the JP version would be harder?)

+NintendoComplete As a corporation, yes, though there's still a few "Blockbuster Video" stores in operation. They were originally Blockbusters, then just before the corporation folded, they allowed the owners to "buy" permission to continue to use the Blockbuster name and logo. So the ones that are still around *look* like the old Blockbuster, but are actually "mom-and-pop shops". My best guess is that the stores that remain are still surviving for a few reasons: (1) They were in a good location from the start, so they still get lots of foot traffic; (2) Some people still prefer the personal touch instead of putting money in a machine; and (3) more recently, changes in the Redbox terms of service. I've never used Redbox, but what I've heard is that now you can only rent videos for one day, no matter how many you rent. So if you rent 5 or 6 at once, you'd better be prepared to binge-watch them. That *might* help the surviving video stores.

Hey ! It all depends what you choose. Nowadays there are lots of Sega Genesis clone consoles, and some of them are fairly cheap, but the cheaper ones often doesn't have stereo audio. Still its not difficult to spot one, and some of them even comes with built-in games. Used official Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive in some parts of the world) is also something that varies with price, because it all depends on the console overall shape. Scratched and dirty ones with missing controller or AV cable are naturally cheaper than mint boxed ones. Speaking of the game, the original cart can be pricy, but if you dont mind not having an original one then Aliexpress will be your friend, where the games reproductions are often very cheap, being a matter of only few bucks. In my opinion you can acquire a full set for approx 40-50 USD, counting the console with necessary accesories (AC adapter, video cable, controller) and reproduction game. It is really worth it, because Sega had gotten some really good games over time. I really loved games like Batman, Outrun, Sunset Riders, Space Harrier, Panorama Cotton (Japan only release), Streets of Rage 2 and many more you can find on the system. Plus nowadays you can get almost all of them on a flashcard, or buy a reproduction from China - excluding the Virtua Racing, since this game used a special chip. Good luck with finding the console and have fun playing !

A Genesis won't run you much, this game however, isn't exactly cheap anymore. Neither the original cart that has the Konami name imprinted in it, or the Majesco reprint (it has no Konami name on the back) will run you a bit of cash.

It truly is the game ever

Por favor! Contra fue hecho mucho antes que Metal Slug, nadie pensaba en un Port para Génesis xq Metal Slug no existía en esa época.

Hahaha it was sheer luck that I figured that out. Maybe providence ;)

Heh. Well, what can you do (besides shrug off mortal wounds)? Kidding aside, I always get a laugh out of seeing attacks that clearly hit a person counted as a miss for some reason; typically weird hitboxes. Especially when the hit is blatantly obvious. =3

Yep. Typically, you make the hitbox of the character smaller than the sprite itself while projectiles can be more "boxy" in collision as a tradeoff

That's the EU version of contra games where they're robots because of censorship i think

@@junitsadelheid Yes, Probotector. Rambo wasn't cool in Europe, but making it all robots fighting meant the violence was okay.

Yo tambieeen jajaja

yup

Sheena

@@dragons_hook Many thanks for the answer! :D

*2 megabyte cartridge

See also Resident Evil. Apparently their version, Biohazard, had weaker enemies and autoaim.

The JP version actually gave you 3 hit points! Lol.