Contra: Hard Corps (1994)

The Good: Damn it's amazing. The perfect run-and-gun. The most radical early 90s anything you'll ever see.

The Bad: Holy shit is it merciless. One-hit kills, and yeah, it's a Contra game. Do not go gentle into that good night.

But still, you've gotta play it. Use save states (via emulation) or rewind feature (via Switch Online) if needs be -- just be sure to experience this ridiculously over-the-top but brilliant "action movie" spectacle, enough to make the Gunstar Heroes green with envy.

I was able to beat the top path today (chase dead eye jack, fight the scientist guy) and that feels really good! I've got most of it locked down. I also beat secret the joke ending.

I'm gonna go for the good ending before writing up a review and marking this one as "done"

Really awesome game though! Since I'm used to really hard shmups like DoDonPachi this wasn't as hard as I thought it would be based on the hype. It's still hard though

Really enjoying this game so far! I played it a few years ago and rage quit after not being able to pass the third level, but for some reason this time around I'm smarter about how I play it and have been finding ways to cheese the bosses and waves of enemies. It's not so hard if you take the time to look for spots where you don't get hit and how to leverage different weapons to maximize or hit enemies from safe positions.

I've gotten to the very end of level 4 so far with Ray on the top path and I'm sure I can get to level 5 if I give it another attempt. I'm hoping I can beat this in 2-3 more sessions.

While this game is very difficult, it's not impossible but limiting the lives and continues so severely makes it hard to get into this game even when it's this fun. But if you can get good enough to survive, you'll be treated to some awesome levels and bosses. I liked that there are branching paths, different endings and different characters with their own unique weapons. The addition of the slide move was great and added a new twist to the series. The variety in this game is impressive. I still remember the running highway level and Deadeye Joe in his giant robot. I had to play this game as Browny since he has the yoyo weapon and can double jump. He's also small so you can survive a bit longer with him. I never beat it on the Genesis although I think I got fairly far into it.

I'm not sure how good the Contra games after this one are but I do miss side scrolling shooters like Contra and wish they would come back. A sequel along the lines of Hard Corps with multiple paths, endings and characters with unique weapons would be amazing. Or just take this game, add 4 player simultaneous co-op and provide options like activating the Japanese version's 3 hit health bar and increasing the number of lives and continues.

Funnily enough I just discovered that there are apparently "repro" carts of an enhanced edition of Hard Corps that include hacks that restore some of the Japanese features to the US version to make the game's difficulty more manageable.