Those are the only two arcade games in the compilation: everything else is based on home releases. It also doesn’t help that, unlike most other arcade games, Contra and Super Contra only let you continue a few times before both decide “nope, sorry, that’s Game Over now”: you can’t just brute force your way to the end with continues. It too has a slight delay when you turn and shoot, so if you struggle with the original arcade Contra it’s going to be the same here. That said, those used to the home versions will take a little time getting used to the arcade game because its aiming mechanism is very different: it can take time for your character to change the direction they’re shooting in, which can lead to some frustrating deaths until you adapt.įollowing Contra is Super Contra, the arcade sequel that features similar gameplay in its side-scrolling sections, but ditches its predecessor’s third-person maze stages in favour of top-down shooting levels instead. Right from the start, kicking things off with the original arcade version of Contra, it’s clear that you’re dealing with quality here. It’s also worth bearing in mind, though, that the Contra collection doesn’t have a single bad game in it, which we couldn’t say for the Castlevania collection (bow your heads in shame, Simon’s Quest and the first Game Boy adventure). It’s also technically only five when you consider that two of the games – Contra and Super Contra – are here in both arcade and NES form.
What initially looks like 10 games, then, is actually only seven: still nothing to be sniffed at, but it’s one fewer than the other collections. There are fewer games in Contra Anniversary Collection than in the others, despite Konami’s best efforts to disguise this on the menu by listing some games twice (as their different regional variations). After giving us an arcade collection that was heavy on the shooters and a Castlevania collection that celebrated the spooky series’ early days, the same treatment has now been given to the Contra series, which offers some of the finest run ‘n’ gun action in gaming history. And so we come to the end (for now) of Konami’s triple helping of retro compilations.
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