Hey, y’all remember that one Konami game, Contra? You know, that really fun run ‘n gun game where you and a friend can join together, blast apart a bunch of aliens, take on a bunch of ruthless, yet incredibly satisfying platforming challenges, and just have a grand ol’ time together? Yeah, weren’t all of those games great? Well… what if we just made a game that kinda takes all that and… ruins it? Like, it doesn’t necessarily make the game one of the absolute worst things in the world, but it just removes a lot of the elements that made the original game fun to begin with, and what you are left with is an empty shell that feels like it is trying to be Contra, but it just can’t quite get there. That, my friends………….. would be Contra: Rouge Corps, but that’s for another time, because today we are talking about Cyber-Lip instead.
I had never heard about this game before playing it today, and it didn’t really sound or look like the most appealing thing in the world. The few screenshots I had seen did look cool enough, even if it looked like it was trying a little too hard to be exactly like Contra, but nothing about what I was seeing was really telling me that I had to check this out. That is, until I found out that the game was developed by SNK, and if there is any chance that I can take to make fun of SNK, then you damn well know I am taking it. So, I downloaded it on totally legal software, played it, and realized that… yeah, this is literally just the poor man’s Contra. This game is like when you have some kid on the school playground, doing some cool shit that everyone else is impressed by, but then you have that one kid who then goes “Not impressed! I can do that too!”, and they try to do the exact same thing, but ends up slipping up and falling on their face, leading to all the other kids thinking they are a loser and going back to the cooler kid. That is essentially Cyber-Lip in a nutshell.
The story is as generic as the game itself, where in the year 2030, a supercomputer named Cyber-Lip that was created for the sole purpose of fending off an alien invasion suddenly goes haywire, turning evil and joining sides with the alien forces to take over the world, so it is up to androids Rick and Brook to set out and take both Cyber-Lip and the aliens down and save the world, which is about what you would expect from any Contra game or Contra-clone, so this all makes sense. The graphics are fine, looking like if SNK just took the visuals of Contra and slapped their own filter over it, which does look nice enough, but nothing too impressive or memorable, the music is alright, having plenty of tracks that fit with whatever is going on in the levels whenever they pop up, but it is, again, nothing too memorable or exciting, and the gameplay/control is… well, take a wild guess as to how it is.
The game is a 2D run ‘n gun game, where you take control of either Rick or Brook, go through a set of six and a half different stages across plenty of different boring environments, shoot down any moving thing that you see before they can get the jump on you using whatever kind of weapons you can find, gather plenty of different weapons for your gun, as well as additional support upgrades to help you on your way, and take on plenty of big, threatening bosses that do have the same amount of difficulty and strategy one would find in a Contra boss, while also forgetting to bring the charm along with it. A lot of it is pretty standard for the genre, and I imagine if this was someone’s first exposure to run ‘n gun games, they would have a great time with this, but for all of us who have played one or two of these before in our lives, this is nothing all too exciting or fun that you can’t get from other titles from before and since.
I will give the game credit, as there are some interesting ideas at play here that I did enjoy, things that was implemented here before Contra would do the same in their series. First off, in terms of the weapons, not only are there a lot to choose from that can be refueled inside of these rooms you will find throughout the levels (which is kind of pointless, but whatever), but you can even swap between all of the weapons whenever you get them, even after you die. It isn’t much, but it is very helpful just in case you wanna stick with a specific weapon throughout, and it makes dying less of a bitch, as you can jump right back in with a power up as if nothing happened at all. Secondly (spoilers for a game that is over 30 years old), I also really like the ending, where you end up destroying the Cyber-Lip computer, and the guy that has been giving you mission briefings the entire time reveals that he is one of the alien invaders, and now that we have killed the supercomputer, he and his race can come down and take over the planet for their own use. Not gonna lie, that’s a creative plot twist for a game made around this time, and a pretty grim ending too, which I can definitely respect a game like this for doing.
Unfortunately though, everything else is either incredibly lackluster or plagued with issues. The main gameplay itself is very uninspired, providing very little innovation to the run ‘n gun formula other than that weapon swapping thing I mentioned earlier, while also feeling like a downgrade in comparison to those games, such as with aiming, where you can only really aim in several different directions, rather then the full 8 you got from Contra, as well as with the movement, where it can feel really weird and janky to control at times, especially if you try to move and shoot at the same time with some certain weapons (because you know, how dare I try to move and shoot in a RUN AND GUN GAME). Not only that, but there is also, of course, the typical problems that these kinds of games loves to throw at you, such as arcade syndrome, where they will throw plenty of enemies at you to deal with while paired up with difficult platforming sections, and a boss rush at the end of the game, although this boss rush is thankfully not that much of a ball-ache compared to other games.
Out of all my complaints though, I think my biggest one would have to go to the game’s auto scrolling levels, because they are EVERYWHERE. Seriously, I think half of the levels in this game are auto scrollers, which completely kills the pacing of a game like this, where instead of having non-stop, explosive action taking out all of these enemies, the game puts a hand in front of your face, causing you to have to play at its pace, which is not something my fidgety-ass wants to deal with. Now, I don’t wanna throw auto scrolling levels right under the bus, because in some RARE cases, these can actually be decent enough and provide a good challenge, while also not feeling like that much of a pace breaker. However, when these levels do pop up and break the pace, you FEEL it, especially when it comes to this game.
Overall, despite some neat little quirks here and there and having a gameplay set-up that works well enough, this is definitely the poor man’s Contra in every sense of the word, trying to imitate and copy everything that those games did while adding some more to it, while also completely missing several of the elements that made Contra fun and wonderful to begin with. I would recommend it for those who are HUGE run ‘n gun fanatics, as well as those who maybe wanna get into the genre somehow, because the game certainly isn’t bad, but trust me, you could do WAY better than this, even with the games that came out before it. But you know what, at the end of the day, if I were to give SNK and Cyber-Lip any credit for doing anything whatsoever, I will give them this………… this game is a hell of a lot better than Ikari Warriors. It shows that maybe, just one day, SNK will actually make a good video game that isn’t a fighting game….. or one that isn’t named Metal Slug.
Game #577
I had never heard about this game before playing it today, and it didn’t really sound or look like the most appealing thing in the world. The few screenshots I had seen did look cool enough, even if it looked like it was trying a little too hard to be exactly like Contra, but nothing about what I was seeing was really telling me that I had to check this out. That is, until I found out that the game was developed by SNK, and if there is any chance that I can take to make fun of SNK, then you damn well know I am taking it. So, I downloaded it on totally legal software, played it, and realized that… yeah, this is literally just the poor man’s Contra. This game is like when you have some kid on the school playground, doing some cool shit that everyone else is impressed by, but then you have that one kid who then goes “Not impressed! I can do that too!”, and they try to do the exact same thing, but ends up slipping up and falling on their face, leading to all the other kids thinking they are a loser and going back to the cooler kid. That is essentially Cyber-Lip in a nutshell.
The story is as generic as the game itself, where in the year 2030, a supercomputer named Cyber-Lip that was created for the sole purpose of fending off an alien invasion suddenly goes haywire, turning evil and joining sides with the alien forces to take over the world, so it is up to androids Rick and Brook to set out and take both Cyber-Lip and the aliens down and save the world, which is about what you would expect from any Contra game or Contra-clone, so this all makes sense. The graphics are fine, looking like if SNK just took the visuals of Contra and slapped their own filter over it, which does look nice enough, but nothing too impressive or memorable, the music is alright, having plenty of tracks that fit with whatever is going on in the levels whenever they pop up, but it is, again, nothing too memorable or exciting, and the gameplay/control is… well, take a wild guess as to how it is.
The game is a 2D run ‘n gun game, where you take control of either Rick or Brook, go through a set of six and a half different stages across plenty of different boring environments, shoot down any moving thing that you see before they can get the jump on you using whatever kind of weapons you can find, gather plenty of different weapons for your gun, as well as additional support upgrades to help you on your way, and take on plenty of big, threatening bosses that do have the same amount of difficulty and strategy one would find in a Contra boss, while also forgetting to bring the charm along with it. A lot of it is pretty standard for the genre, and I imagine if this was someone’s first exposure to run ‘n gun games, they would have a great time with this, but for all of us who have played one or two of these before in our lives, this is nothing all too exciting or fun that you can’t get from other titles from before and since.
I will give the game credit, as there are some interesting ideas at play here that I did enjoy, things that was implemented here before Contra would do the same in their series. First off, in terms of the weapons, not only are there a lot to choose from that can be refueled inside of these rooms you will find throughout the levels (which is kind of pointless, but whatever), but you can even swap between all of the weapons whenever you get them, even after you die. It isn’t much, but it is very helpful just in case you wanna stick with a specific weapon throughout, and it makes dying less of a bitch, as you can jump right back in with a power up as if nothing happened at all. Secondly (spoilers for a game that is over 30 years old), I also really like the ending, where you end up destroying the Cyber-Lip computer, and the guy that has been giving you mission briefings the entire time reveals that he is one of the alien invaders, and now that we have killed the supercomputer, he and his race can come down and take over the planet for their own use. Not gonna lie, that’s a creative plot twist for a game made around this time, and a pretty grim ending too, which I can definitely respect a game like this for doing.
Unfortunately though, everything else is either incredibly lackluster or plagued with issues. The main gameplay itself is very uninspired, providing very little innovation to the run ‘n gun formula other than that weapon swapping thing I mentioned earlier, while also feeling like a downgrade in comparison to those games, such as with aiming, where you can only really aim in several different directions, rather then the full 8 you got from Contra, as well as with the movement, where it can feel really weird and janky to control at times, especially if you try to move and shoot at the same time with some certain weapons (because you know, how dare I try to move and shoot in a RUN AND GUN GAME). Not only that, but there is also, of course, the typical problems that these kinds of games loves to throw at you, such as arcade syndrome, where they will throw plenty of enemies at you to deal with while paired up with difficult platforming sections, and a boss rush at the end of the game, although this boss rush is thankfully not that much of a ball-ache compared to other games.
Out of all my complaints though, I think my biggest one would have to go to the game’s auto scrolling levels, because they are EVERYWHERE. Seriously, I think half of the levels in this game are auto scrollers, which completely kills the pacing of a game like this, where instead of having non-stop, explosive action taking out all of these enemies, the game puts a hand in front of your face, causing you to have to play at its pace, which is not something my fidgety-ass wants to deal with. Now, I don’t wanna throw auto scrolling levels right under the bus, because in some RARE cases, these can actually be decent enough and provide a good challenge, while also not feeling like that much of a pace breaker. However, when these levels do pop up and break the pace, you FEEL it, especially when it comes to this game.
Overall, despite some neat little quirks here and there and having a gameplay set-up that works well enough, this is definitely the poor man’s Contra in every sense of the word, trying to imitate and copy everything that those games did while adding some more to it, while also completely missing several of the elements that made Contra fun and wonderful to begin with. I would recommend it for those who are HUGE run ‘n gun fanatics, as well as those who maybe wanna get into the genre somehow, because the game certainly isn’t bad, but trust me, you could do WAY better than this, even with the games that came out before it. But you know what, at the end of the day, if I were to give SNK and Cyber-Lip any credit for doing anything whatsoever, I will give them this………… this game is a hell of a lot better than Ikari Warriors. It shows that maybe, just one day, SNK will actually make a good video game that isn’t a fighting game….. or one that isn’t named Metal Slug.
Game #577
mom can we get metal slug
no we have metal slug at home
metal slug at home:
no we have metal slug at home
metal slug at home:
Would be pretty fun but it has a lot of auto-scrollers, repeating environments, and some deal-breaking movement glitches. There's something fucked up with moving - you can sometimes stay in your running animation for a moment after you come to a stop, and if you hit up or down during those frames, you'll continue moving forward. Constantly died because I ran into an enemy when I intended to crouch. No idea if revisions ever fixed this.
Saw this one played on Nick Arcade and thought it looked interesting but unfortunately its nothing special. Cyber-Lip is this close to being a decent game, but there’s little here that hasn’t been done better in other games. Ending is wild though, I'll give them that.
Definitely more interesting as a precursor to Metal Slug than particularly good as a game. It's not completely lacking in fun, but the stiff controls and ever-so-slightly too-large player character make what would normally be a rather easy shooter needlessly frustrating. The ending is great, though.
An average Contra derivative with visuals that previewed the Metal Slug series.
Thirty-second GOTW finished for 2023. Feels like a precursor to the Metal Slug series. Repetitive level designs, wonky movement and aiming, and no diagonals left this one really showing its age. Boss designs were pretty neat though, even if one of them looked awful similar to Contra. Ending was unexpected.
really really cheesy. Controls weird, but i'd say its one of the better early neo geo games ive played so far. Feels like a sort of progenitor to the metal slug series in a lot of ways with how the run-and-gun gameplay is.
I am not insain, I have just been evilly reprogrammed