(Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/10/2024)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Contra III: The Alien Wars
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Genre(s): Run 'n Gun
Platforms: SNES
Release Date: February 28, 1992
On the hard reboot or direct follow-up spectrum that many SNES sequels fall under, Contra III definitely verges towards continuing the events of the Contra series even if there is no overarching story that connects every game in the series narratively. However, Contra III reversing the conflict dynamic found in the previous two titles is a mark of narrative distinctiveness that is arguably too dissimilar to be considered a direct continuation. Instead of defending the Earth from alien and Soviet scum, our heroes are now on the offensive side after the Red Falcon menace has somehow penetrated the military defenses of Earth/America and accomplished their goal of annihilating the free world. Bummer. However, the Hans and Franz of the future wouldn’t be torpedoing themselves into the usurped territory of the enemy if all hope was lost, so don’t let the sullen premise cripple your morale. Actually, to compound the devastation of Contra III’s premise, the two badass agents of the American strikeforce that we’ve come to know and love are not playable characters anymore. Or, at least that’s the case in the Western version of the game. Bill and Lance are still front and center in the Japanese version, but they’ve been replaced by two other musclebound beefcakes named Jimbo and Sully in the North American translation. Changing the faces of the series may seem like the developers are slighting the fans, but I actually enjoy the implication that Bill and Lance were both wiped out when the aliens blew Earth back to the Stoneage. It invigorates the player to take these new guys and use them to avenge the alien conquerors of old.
The Japanese version of Contra III is also the only one to reinstate the thirty-life Contra code, which is bound to upset Westerners more than swapping out Bill and Lance. Before any American decides to buy a one-way ticket to Japan to experience the “ideal” way to play Contra III, the developers have implemented plenty of quality-of-life features across each iteration. I’d advise not pressing start immediately and having a look through the game’s main menu, for the player will be delighted to find that the developers have implemented a difficulty setting as well as the option to choose between starting with either three, five, or seven lives. How anyone wouldn’t figure to pick the option that begins the game with seven lives would be odd. The player needs all of the additional aid they can get to survive that patented Contra onslaught before they expend all of their continues. Oh yeah, and one of the crucial quality-of-life implementations for Contra III is giving the player four chances to continue if all of their lives are depleted. If we do the math, multiplying the maximum seven lives with the four continues gives the player 28 total chances to die, which is only two less than the coveted thirty. Add the extra lives earned from score bonuses into the equation and the player is granted a safety net wider than any of the NES Contra games would allow.
Contra III also continues the influx of weapon capsules flying overhead that made Super C the favorable one between the two NES Contra games. They don’t quite flock in pairs like they formally did, but the player will still feel as if they’re constantly aiming up in the sky to catch these zooming contraptions. Unlike with Super C where every weapon was a slightly tweaked hand-me-down from the first game, Contra III showcases a genuine evolution for each of its iconic tools of alien destruction. The “fire gun” that blasted a bulbous ball of flame is now a bonafide flamethrower that blows a continual jet of fire that spans a great distance. The laser is no longer a languid electric streak that lags but a bolt of weaponized lightning guaranteed to deal massive damage to enemies. The barrier is no longer a rare item, suggesting that the player will need to be shielded from the enemy's firepower at a more frequent rate. The bomb is now a screen-spanning explosion, and the player is refreshed with one in their inventory each time they die. On top of each of these nifty enhancements, Contra III adds plenty of new deadly tools to the alien-slaying arsenal. The heat-seeking missiles aren’t as effective as some of the other weapons, but the gun that spurts them in a bevy of directions is perfect for eliminating weaker enemies that come in packs. Conversely, the cluster bomb weapon compensates for its limited trajectory by walloping bosses and sturdier enemies with a concentrated blast of nuclear energy. Unfortunately for the Contra veterans, the spread gun does admittedly get lost in the sauce among all of its new and improved weapon cohorts. It still eviscerates anything at close range in three separate angles, but the selection of weapons sort of dwarfs its effectiveness. If one is feeling sentimental, a quality-of-life enhancement present here is the ability to carry two weapons at once, swapping with the X button on the controller. Being able to use both L+R triggers with two weapons and pose a “lord of the hill” stance is macho as all hell, and I will puff out Jimbo’s chest like a gorilla whenever I have the opportunity. Still, the real appeal of having more than one weapon on hold is that if the player loses one upon dying, the alternate gun will be stashed in their back pocket so the player doesn’t have to revert back to the standard blaster. As sad as I am that the spread gun has practically been rendered obsolete, it’s a bittersweet sting that signals that better things have sprouted with the series' evolution.
Which Contra weapon dethrones the spread gun as the dominant tool used to eradicate those alien bastards? Actually, I can’t say for certain. Every available weapon, except for the spread gun, sadly, has its perks given the situation. Some might conclude that this statement means that a balancing act has been conducted to ensure that the player doesn’t sandbag the one particularly powerful weapon as they tended to do with the spread gun in the first two games. What my comment actually entails is that the player is forced to learn which weapons to utilize for specific sections of a level. The level design for the NES Contras had a point A to B kind of trajectory, with an onslaught of bullets swarming the player from all corners of the screen to complicate the journey to that area’s boss. In Contra III, the levels are heavily segmented by mini-bosses, and each of these brutal baddies that interrupt the side-scrolling action are almost puzzle-like in their duels. Sure, each of these bosses can technically be eradicated with the straight-shooting default gun. However, every player will soon notice that each boss has a hidden weakness. For example, the eye of the Tri-Transforming Wall Walker during its first phase can only be reached with the flamethrower from a safe distance from the jungle gym beam above. Otherwise, good luck timing your escape from its clockwise-moving arms when they start oscillating wildly upon its defeat. The player won’t even witness the full extent of what the monstrous turtle boss has in store for them if they are in possession of the cluster bomb gun. If you’re not one of the lucky ones, enjoy dodging his fire breath, his secretion of insects, and avoiding a piddly little energy speck that is bound to catch you off guard. I don’t even know how anyone destroys the shielded enemy ship without the heat-seeking missiles. The player is likely to be too preoccupied with swinging on every incoming rocket to keep their position while making sure the ship doesn’t shoot them out of the sky with a projectile. While the “scenes” spread around Contra III’s levels certainly make them more memorable than a constant stream of alien underlings, their memorability carries more of a greater context past impressionability. Only with repeat playthroughs will the player learn the effective method of defeating one of these bosses, and it's through an unfair trial and error curve rather than organically mastering the game’s mechanics.
Speaking of the game’s mechanics, the ones present during the alternate levels take some serious adjustment to overcome. As per tradition, Contra III changes the gameplay to another perspective in order to spruce up the whole experience with some diversity–except that it’s the second and fifth stage in this instance. Contra III continues the top-down perspective that Super C intuitively changed from the first game’s alternate levels, but the objective has been shifted from simply running and shooting from a bird's-eye view. In the settings of a dilapidated turnpike and a desert canyon, the player must scour these settings and find all of the enemies that are barricaded by a titanium shield atop a manhole or a spider-spurting fissure in the ground. Once they locate all of the targets, the boss will appear. The objective sounds elementary enough, but the challenge of these sections surprisingly isn’t the spraying of bullets from the enemies. Unlike the simple controls involved with the top-down sections from Super C, Contra III decided to take advantage of the SNES’ gimmicky graphical feature Mode 7. Because of this pixelated parameter buster, the player can shift the placement of the entire stage with the left and right triggers, which is necessary when the standard movement controls do not cooperate with the intended trajectory. Not only is the additional layer of control too much for a mere two levels, but the cracked sections of the road and the jagged corners of the canyon are far too wary and precise for a game whose focal gameplay is dodging and shooting. The swirling quicksand pits of the fifth level make the Mode 7 movement absolutely nauseating. The “advanced” control scheme intended to make the vanilla top-down sections from Super C more engaging only mars them in execution.
If you couldn’t already tell, Contra III more than upholds that ball-busting reputation the series is renowned for despite all of the next-generation advancements it implements. The player might be tempted to change the difficulty setting to easy in order to ensure that their voice becomes less hoarse from screaming obscenities at the TV, but Contra III is also the first game in the series to make one’s struggles worthwhile. In the game’s version of the alien hive, which looks effectively creepy and foreboding now thanks to the 16-bit graphics, the player will face a gauntlet of reinvigorated foes from previous nest climaxes before they face off against the toothy, saliva-covered smile of Jagger Froid and his sentient tentacle arms again. If this fight is finished on the easiest difficulty, the game ends there. On medium, the player continues the battle against Jagger Froid’s brain whose attack patterns coincide with a roulette wheel of options that the player can control with impeccable timing. On the hardest difficulty, the brain regains energy and coats itself in a metallic casing to chase the player in a last-ditch effort to squash them. By obscuring content from the player on the lower difficulties, it motivates the player not to give in to the temptation of squandering their full capabilities, even though the pain of constant failure is easy to yield.
Even though I prefer many aspects of Super C to Contra III, it’s hard to argue against the third entry of the Contra series as the superior way to experience the iconic run ‘n-gun franchise compared to those that came before it. Is its superiority inherently based on its advantages on an advanced piece of hardware? Duh. It’s the same case for every SNES sequel, so why would Contra III be any different? It exhibits far too many objective improvements on the foundation of the series to champion either Contra 1 or Super C as the greatest game the series offers. It features plenty of appropriate accommodations for a brutally difficult game, offers a larger variety of gameplay attributes, and can fulfill ambitions for the franchise that never would’ve been capable on 8-bit hardware. Mode 7 is admittedly one of those ambitions that muck up a few levels, and perhaps the developers were too blind to their enterprising goals to notice that they might have been too unforgiving to the player. Still, Contra III sparks high-octane invigoration through my system moment to moment more consistently than Super C ever did. The refurbishment effort that Super C made was admirable and effective and does fit the definition of a “super” game to a sequel on a Nintendo console. Still, the thrills and frills of Contra III’s 16-bit panache equally fit that categorization, and it’s just too cool to compare.
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