The third game of the Contra franchise (hinted in no small part to the number next to the title), Contra III: The Alien Wars, was released for the Super NES in 1992 by Konami. Well, technically the third game of the franchise was Operation C, released the previous year for the Game Boy….but I digress. It’s a 2D run and gun game designed to survey you on how long it takes before you scream at the top of your lungs at the screen.
Contra III follows the story of its predecessors, Contra and Super C (The latter, ironically, released on the NES as well as the former). It’s 2636, and aliens have invaded the planet Independence Day style and left it completely in ruins. It’s up to the only two humans left to save us from an alien apocalypse. That’s right; throwbacks from the Schwarzenegger-Stallone Era.
With that said the game sends you straight into the action as it pits you and perhaps a friend with wave after wave of aliens of varying sizes, attacks, and degrees of cheapness. The game plays much like its NES counterparts, with a few new tricks to compensate for the extra buttons. The basic controls, though, still apply.
The game is a side-scroller, so most levels will have you running from left to right and shooting anything on the screen that isn’t you. The Y button is to shoot, although in a game where enemies practically cover the screen and come from anywhere, you’re probably better off finding some electrical tape to hold the button down for the whole duration of play. If you’re concerned about ammo, don’t be. Apparently these two brutes seem to have no issues with such trivial matters, probably due to the fact that they have munitions manufacturing facilities inside their super-manly biceps. Not only do enemies come from every direction, but they spawn infinitely, at least in most of the parts in each level. Most of the game you’ll have minions constantly coming from the edges of the screen and either shooting or charging at you, and you’ll sometimes find yourself just standing there shooting enemies (perhaps on purpose….maybe you want a few extra lives…).
Another improvement in the third iteration of Contra is the ability to carry more than one weapon. The X button will allow you to switch between two weapon slots, which can prove useful in that when you die, you only lose the weapon in which you were currently equipped with. Of course, if you happen to die twice in succession (which happens quite often), then you end up dropping into the fray with nothing, which can be incredibly frustrating when fighting a boss and only having your default machine gun which is about as effective as throwing bread at a wall. Admittedly, this game also made me feel like an idiot at some points. Occasionally, hazards which you must avoid (sometimes necessitating superhuman thumb dexterity) could be just as easily solved by shooting at it. This was especially true in the third stage, when fighting a flying drill bot which, all of a sudden, morphs into a wall-walking….walker….bot….thing….and leaves you forced to play slalom as you climb a wall and try to squeeze yourself between missiles which seem to get narrower and narrower in width. Of course you can shoot them (didn’t realize that until the third playthrough, because I’m really smart) but they move much too fast to take them down before they drive through your supple, muscular body and leave you in a trance of frustration.
Without a doubt, the worst part when playing this game is in the second and fifth levels, when Contra III takes a break from side-scrolling alien genocide, and changes up the gameplay to top-down alien genocide instead. The entire section struggles when it’s damn near impossible to control your character. The directional pad moves in the complementary direction, but you need the L and R buttons to rotate your character. This control scheme does work a bit better when using an SNES Controller, but it is still cumbersome when trying take out enemies coming in four directions, avoiding fragile highway sections from collapsing, and trying to destroy pillboxes who love nothing more than shooting a literal wall of bullets at you.
Fighting bosses in this mode is even worse. Although you have unlimited room to run around, they seem to love either spinning around and rushing you faster than you can run (killing you) or shooting an entire spiral of lead at you (killing you) or leaping high in the air only to crush you when it lands (also killing you….but in a much more embarrassing fashion). On top of that, the game expects you to hit its under-sized weak spot to damage it, and his penchant for spinning himself like a merry-go-round of death somehow almost always leaves his body completely in the way of his weakpoint.
That’s it? Bah! I could just pop in that Konami Code and BAM! 30 Lives. The famous Konami Code does not work in Contra III. There is however, an option screen which allows you to change the number of lives you start with, to a maximum of seven.
Damn! Yeah, I know. I attempted to do the code both the regular way and a second way in which you replace left and right with L and R. According to what I could look up, a 30 lives code works in the Japanese release of the game, but is in fact NOT the Konami Code we all know and love and is actually a Hadoken motion of Down, Down-forward, Right, Start. Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Suck.
Harbinger of Disappointment (HDR) Rating. This game is hard…probably too hard for most players to go through without cheating, using the illuminated save state/reload, or launching their console through a tree grinder. The masochistic hardcore shooters though, might get a challenge out of dodging eleventy billion glowing shots flying in every direction.
ESA Protected? Unfortunately, Konami is among the companies that are protected by the Entertainment Software Association, so if you own the original and you’re seeking the ROM of this game, you will not be able to download it off of the internet…easily, at least.
