The Village of Cursed Blossoms – Nioh 2

The first main story mission seems innocent enough with a few Gaki to eliminate but eventually, a massive boss-like Gozuki appears. You could deal with it or run away…the latter is pretty much needed since it slaughters you almost instantly. Things only get slightly easier from there as you venture to the Yokai realm with all of its hazards, face off against various other Yokai and humans, and finally battle a Mezuki (which is far from a pushover).

It’s been a banner year for anniversaries in video games. Zelda turned 35 in February, Pokemon turned 25, Street Fighter 2 turned 30, Halo is about to turn 20, the list goes on. But on April 25th, another video game legend celebrates its anniversary. It’s the Konami Code, probably the most well-known cheat code ever, which turns 35 this year.

To celebrate the code (and Gradius, which is where it initially appeared), Konami has released several remixed “lo-fi” tracks, complete with a cool animation of a pilot playing Gradius in space. While most folks probably associate the Konami Code with 1987’s Contra, where it would give you 30 extra lives, it actually got its start in the home release of Gradius in 1986, where it would unlock just about every power up in the game.

The story behind the code is that Kazuhisa Hashimoto, who worked on the Famicom port of Gradius, which was originally an arcade title, found the game so hard to test that he added the code to help him beat the game. Konami didn’t learn about the code until after the game came out, but they decided to leave it in instead of removing it and potentially messing up other sections of the game’s code.

Unfortunately, Hashimoto died last year, but his legacy lives on every time someone inputs Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start.

You can check out the lo-fi Gradius remixes below, courtesy of Konami.

CONTRA

When Contra was at its peak, it was one of the best franchises in the industry. Contra games brought with them a guarantee of riotous fun, gruelling action, and non-stop carnage, and when the franchise died down with the advent of time, it came as a bitter disappointment to a lot of people. Recently, Konami revived the franchise- perhaps “revived” is the wrong word though, because really, all Contra: Rogue Corps has done is drive the series even further into its depressing grave. Opting for a third person shooting style instead of the sidescrolling run’n’gun action the series is know for, Contra: Rogue Corps completely misses the mark in every way possible, and doesn’t seem to understand what fans liked about the series in the first place. It’s failure is made all the more baffling when you consider that an indie game called Blazing Chrome that came out earlier this year delivered everything that made people love Contra in spades- and yet Konami seem to have completely lost their way. Perhaps it’s best to let the legendary property die with some dignity.

E3 is getting close, and as always there’s all kinds of rumors and leaks coming out. One such leak today is a particularly interesting one. It seems that a listing for a new Contra title has appeared- could one of the original hard-as-nails shooters be making a comeback relatively soon?

The retailer in question is NetGames, and you can get a look at the listings here. It mentions a game simply titled Contra as getting physical releases for PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. It’s also not listed as a full priced release being set at €34,95, whereas most new, full priced releases go for €44,95-€49,95 on the website. It has a release date of September 29th.

The IP holder, Konami, has largely backed away from large scale games, but it could be a small scale revival like Super Bomberman R. It could also be related to the classic game collection that was announced earlier in the year. And it’s always possible it could be nothing, as these leaks some times end up being. We’ll just have to wait and see.

In Contra games, you play as a soldier, progressing through waves of enemies that approach you from varying angles, all the while keeping cognizant of hazards and using precise character control. Contra games express all of the tension of a carefully-advancing guerrilla unit, through the difficulty of design. You are not a superhuman, or a robot. Though in some games, you can do cool somersaults, and duck or shoot while ducking to more safely place fire on screen, or spin around…

Movement in early Contra games is restricted, which places more demand on the need to be precise and cautious with timing jumps and progressing forward. Basically, your firearm is your offense and your defense. However, players can pick up different weapons to use, in the form of item drops found in levels. These are typically much more powerful than your default gun, with their primary benefit coming from the greater reach or speed that the weapons enable. And thankfully, you can aim your weapon in multiple angles, and shoot while in the air.

The first Contra game dates all the way back to the arcades, and was later released on Nintendo Entertainment System. When people might hear of “Nintendo difficulty”, Contra certainly lives up to and perpetuates that reputation. Players progress through varying gameplay display perspectives –  2D with multiple elevations, and dungeon-crawler-style – to clear stages. Don’t forget that you’re sometimes racing against a time limit in some stages, lest you lose a life. The earliest Contra games were designed around an arcade-style sensibility particularly popular during the late 80’s, wherein you had as many chances as you had coins to allow you to retry from your game over point. Contra also has the distinction of being a co-op game, one of the earliest games of its kind as a scrolling shooter, and later Konami games such as the licensed beat-em-ups they developed for the Super Nintendo were arcade-style co-operative games as well.

The second Contra game, Super Contra, followed a similar format of being first released for the arcades before being ported to the NES and other platforms. It introduces a stage designed around a top-down perspective, but is also shorter than the first game’s seven stages. The sequel did not arrive without new gameplay ideas though – weapons can now be upgraded by picking up the same weapon upgrade twice, stages now include slanted surfaces for varied and challenging level design, and jump height can now be adjusted by holding up or down after leaving the ground. Contra III: The Alien Wars, the third mainline Contra game, was released on the Super Nintendo years later. It introduced climbing on walls, ladders, and ceilings, and attaching to poles. Additionally, players can switch between two weapons at any time, though both are lost if the player character dies. Some in-game sequences made use of the SNES’s Mode 7 graphical depth impression generator for stages and for boss fights. There are also three difficulty modes to choose from as well, with a true ending only available by clearing the final boss on the most difficult setting. Arguably one of the most lauded of the Contra games, it was eventually ported to the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, and re-released on the Wii Virtual Console and the SNES Classic.

Strangely enough, despite the franchise’s jump to the next generation of consoles, there was one Contra game, Contra Force, developed for and released only on the NES, and radically different in some ways from previous games. Players could choose between four different characters, each of which have gameplay distinctions such as movement speed and weapon choices. Contra Force possesses the wall and ceiling traversal found in Contra III: The Alien Wars. Interestingly, it was never intended to be a Contra game, but rather its own entity called “Ark Hound” – which may explain why the game released even though there was a Contra title already on the SNES. “Ark Hound” was developed in-house by Konami in Japan, but “Contra Force” ended up only being released in America.

Contra: Hard Corps would be the series’ sole entry on the SEGA Genesis, bringing with it some interesting gameplay directorial decisions. Choosing between different playable characters would return, but the shifting view perspectives – a mainstay since the franchise’s beginning – was no longer, with players progressing solely through horizontally side-scrolling stages, though sometimes hoverbike sequences were present. New features included descending through platforms, which is especially helpful if all stages are side-scrollers, an invincible slide, and branching paths wherein the stage players will progress through next will depend on questions that the game sometimes prompts them with.

Following Contra: Hard Corps, the next games would all see release on Sony platforms, with the exception of Contra: Legacy of War also being released for the SEGA Saturn. Legacy of War and the next Contra game, C The Contra Adventure, were both developed outside of Konami by the now-defunct Appaloosa Interactive, which you might have heard of if you are a fan of Ecco The Dolphin. These two games represented an attempt at shifting the games to 3D, en vogue with the generation of gaming consoles at the time as console power scaled upwards, but also represented some new directorial decisions. Legacy of War decreased character individuality increasingly introduced in previous games, but also employs a health meter, and introduces saving game progress. C The Contra Adventure did away with the co-op option present in the mainline releases thus far, oddly enough. Otherwise, the two games share a good majority of design choices. The move to 3D allowed Appaloosa to introduce new movement and environmental interaction options, such as strafing. It is worth noting that neither of the two games were released in Japan, and C The Contra Adventure was released only in North America.

After these releases, Contra also made the jump to the PlayStation 2, but with two very different game design visions. Contra: Shattered Soldier, releasing on the PlayStation 2, saw Contra game development return in-house to Konami, and also saw the return of 2D side-scrolling gameplay though with the introduction of 3D polygonal rendering. Shattered Soldier also utilized charge shots and introduced grading per stages. There are no power-ups; instead players switch between one of three weapons. And, the game features multiple endings based on stage performance grading rather than choices made throughout gameplay in response to dialogue prompts. Neo Contra, also releasing on the PlayStation 2, sees the return of stage progression perspective variety, alternating between horizontal side scrolling, dungeon-crawler-view, and isometric view. However, Neo Contra differs from Shattered Soldier in its weapon loadout customization and the introduction of dashing for quick bursts of speed and spinning in place for a brief moment of invincibility, both as a substitute for jumping. Neo Contra also retains the stage performance grading system introduced in Shattered Soldier.

The following generation saw the release of Hard Corps: Uprising, developed by Arc System Works of BlazBlue and Guilty Gear fame (and with art and music composition credits from Daisuke Ishiwatari of Guilty Gear) was a digital-download title released for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. It featured an aesthetic that took notes from anime, and was positioned as both a prequel to the original Contra game and as a start of its own continuity. Hard Corps: Uprising utilized a health bar and a points system that could be used to purchase upgrades. Contra: ReBirth, a WiiWare title,  was developed by M2 and for the most part skewed to the gameplay formula established by Contra III while allowing for players to choose between three difficulty settings as seen in several Contra games.

Handheld releases include Operation C on the Game Boy, the first Contra game to be released for a portable console, and launching before Contra Force. Releasing during the time of the earliest Contra games, it follows some conventions set by the first Contra game down to featuring remixes of songs present in the first Contra game and using both horizontal side-scrolling stages and top-down. But Operation C was also the first to introduce auto-fire. Contra 4, released on the Nintendo DS, was developed by the esteemed team WayForward Technologies. With their platformer pedigree, Contra 4 was meant to recall the classical mainline numbered titles, with weapons being acquired in the same way that they are in earlier games via icons, and returning to the alternation between horizontal side-scrolling and dungeon-crawler perspective introduced in the first Contra game.

Since its last major releases, the Contra series has not really had any comparable new games. The current gaming climate would seem particularly favorable to the development of a new Contra game, if one were to look at the rising success of indie platformers along with the resurgence of classic platforming games in the 2D space, such as the Mega Man games.  However, by design, Contra is a simple game to play but incredibly difficult to be successful with. The games are not that long, which may be a difficult sell for both consumers and developers who may shy away from making a high-investment sequel on consoles.

It has been quite some time since the short E3 2011 trailer that apparently announced a new Contra game. Not much was featured other than the classic fire arc that forms the “C” in Contra. Besides some stylized pixellated font, there’s no telling what it might have been alluding to – some sort of re-release package or individual, an entirely new game, anything. It is difficult to be conclusive, even in spite of the consistency of Contra releases thus far

It really isn’t out of the question, though. Similar in design to the classic Contra games, Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master was re-released for the Wii Virtual Console and the Nintendo 3DS. For the past few years, SNK of King of Fighters renown has been regularly releasing some of their oldest but most respected individual arcade titles on Nintendo hardware, and also making them available through compilations – one recent notable example being the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection.

What we do see here is a series with a couple of different directions but with a set of formulas that can always be revisited and repurposed. But there simply isn’t much indication of a new game otherwise. Hard Corps: Uprising, launched back in 2011, and what’s been released since then are ports (including Contra III for the New Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U Virtual Console) or pachislot games. While Konami certainly respects the legacy of the Contra series, it’s hard to say what a new game would look like.

The Wall – Contra (1987)

Contra is a great game, given two Rambo knock offs a great excuse to shoot their way through a jungle infested by evil solders, turrets and exploding bridges. This challenge of dexterity must finish off in a suitable boss battle right? Well, how about you stand a safe distance away and shoot at a wall for a second.

Shinobi

Of the many franchises that Sega has deigned to keep alive, Shinobi has been criminally left out. It’s a shame because in 2002, the developer had a chance to beat Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden to the punch with high paced ninja action and ultra violence. It unfortunately buckled under an (ironically enough) insane difficulty, lack of depth and poor level design. Shinobi 3D in 2011 attempted to reignite the 2D side-scrolling magic of old but it just couldn’t match the brilliance of the old-school Shinobi titles.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization. 

King of Fighters

At one point, the King of Fighters was set to have a character that resembled Tetsuo from the movie Akira. The character’s voice actor was even hired for the process. It’s hard to not see the similarities but we’re guessing due to copyright issues, this character was changed to Nameless from King of Fighters 2002 onwards.

There have been many SNES games that have defined a generation of gamers and there is no ONE game that is the mother of all games, because each game listed here has been tactfully designed and woven to cater to the real gamer. To this game the SNES is Nintendo’s crowning glory. With that in mind here are some of the best SNES games that you will ever come across.

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Note: List is in random order

Alien 3

With Alien Isolation coming out soon, many fans are having mixed feeling about the game, with half of them saying it’s not great, and other half saying it’s awesome, but I guess we’ll wait and see what happens. However for those of you who are unaware, there was another Alien game in the early 90’s called Alien 3 which was based on the cult movie. Now the SNES was most probably the best playable version of Ellen Ripley’s quest for killing mass amounts of aliens.  The game stayed true to the film as the source material gave the game a very dark, frightening presentation that expertly evoked the eerie atmosphere of the films.

Speedruns have been around forever. As long as there’s been games, there have been gamers who are constantly looking to outdo one another in seeing how quickly they can complete a speedrun.

Games like Sonic the Hedgehog Mario and Contra have always been some popular classic speedruns that many of us at the very least attempted when we were younger. There are some great new games too that people have began to try and beat faster and faster. Some games have even started to include achievements on based on how quickly a player can complete a mission, level and obviously even the entire game. Let’s take a look at some really great speedruns, from classics we’ve grown up on to new titles that people have played so much that they can seemingly complete these titles in their sleep as they strive to get the perfect run for speedy perfection.

1.Mario 64 Speedrun:

There are quite a few of these out there actually and apparently more than one way to do it. Some gamers try to collect as many of the stars in the game as they can when completing this speedrun. Other’s seem to completely ignore the stars and just power through the game as quickly as they possibly can. The amount of time it takes to do these different runs is pretty drastic.

If they collect no stars it looks like it can be done in under six minutes, if they decide to get the stars it takes decidedly longer; as in well over an hour. The fastest run that exists as far as we know is the run made by Mitjitsu, a gamer who was able to beat Mario 64 in five minutes and 47 seconds. I think this game took me months of frustration and just random exploration to beat, but for this particular gamer it took less time than it takes to cook a frozen pizza.