He completado la version americana con todos los personajes y rutas sin continues.

Facilmente uno de los mejores juegos de accion que he jugado nunca, simplemente el juego no para, pusieron al limite a la megadrive llenandolo de jefes uno tras otro (tanto que parece juego de treasure) contando con diferentes personajes a escoger con diferentes finales y niveles regidos por las decisiones que tomes en la historia.

Este es el primer contra en donde te presentan 4 personajes jugables cuya diferencias reacaen sobre todo en las armas que usan, son cuatro 4 armas de las cuales estaras cambiando una con otra para ofrantar cada una de las situaciones que el juego te presenta y esta de mas decir que todas son muy utiles. Ahora en cuanto a los personajes existe una diferenciacion de tamaño que puede beneficiar o perjudicar al mismo, Brownie es el mas pequeño por lo que facilmente puede pasar por debajo de las balas, y de hecho el jefe del cuarto stage se facilita mucho con brownie ya que uno de los ataques del boss pasa por encima de el. Luego esta Fang que es el mas grande y por lo tanto un blanco facil.

Siendo honesto al principio pense que brownie seria el personaje mas OP del juego no solo por su tamaño sino tambien por su doble salto y por que su arma C es muy fuerte pudiendo despachar a algunos bosses muy rapido, pero la verdad diria que el balance de los personajes es cuando menos decente, brownie tiene unas armas muy gimmick por lo que aveces desearas tener armas mas normales para afrontar algunas situaciones, y Fang no se queda atras podra ser grande peri tener armas potentes de corto alcance como el arma B y su arma D esta super OP se trata de un disparo cargado que te va a ser mas que util en varias ocasiones para matar a varios enemigos en fila con un solo disparo o literalmente humillar a algunos jefes. Con respecto a Ray y Sheena, Ray resulta ser el equivalente al personaje clasico de contra con las armas de siempre, y sheena esta preparada para todo.

En cuanto a la historia, aqui te permite tomar decisiones para cambiar el rumbo de la historia lo cual se resume a pasar por niveles especificos para cada ruta que eligas, pienso que la historia es coherente con el gameplay pero solo no me quedo claro una cosa, y es que si decidis dejar vivo a dead eye joe y luego pelear con el doctor desbloqueas el mejor final en donde matas al colonel y matas al alien cell en el misil, pasa que si decides ir tras dead eye joe en el segundo nivel para matarlo el final cambiara, lo que no me explico es como la existencia de dead eye joe afecto esto, siendo que en ambos casos el doctor muere.

De ahi en fuera me a parecido un juegazo redondo, konami fue muy ambiciosa con este contra y sinceramente lo dio todo.

As some reviews have already mentioned, Contra Hard Corps has a lot in common with Gunstar Heroes (another Genesis classic): a relatively brief game with fantastically imaginative set-pieces and boss fights, which somehow manages to convey what you need to be doing despite ten different flavors of chaos happening onscreen at once. But while Gunstar Heroes' vast array of different weapons and forgiving difficulty seem to invite you to experiment and have fun, Contra Hard Corps is brutal and unforgiving, especially in the US version with its one-hit deaths and no continues.

Your moveset (you can switch weapons, shoot, jump, slide, and switch between 'move while firing' and 'stand still while firing' modes) seems bare-bones at first, but turns out to be perfectly suited to the challenges you will face. The controls are tight and responsive and are a big reason why the brutal difficulty still feels fair; being able to switch between movement modes at will ended up being an essential skill, as it gave me a lot of control over my movement and positioning in boss fights. The game throws variety of set-pieces at you - a mini-boss rush while balancing on the wings of a plane, a sequence where you gallop along on a bipedal robot, and even one where the camera's perspective shifts 90 degrees and focuses on you from the front as you dodge attacks from a robot chasing you from behind! It's testament to the amazing game feel that these sequences feel just as tight and easy to control as the side scrolling sections, and never feel gimmicky.

The super satisfying gameplay, combined with multiple endings and an excellent soundtrack, make this one of the biggest highlights in the Genesis library. I recommend this to anyone and everyone - if the high difficulty is a turn-off, try the Japanese version (which gives you a life bar and continues)!

A brilliant run-n-gun game that's marred by the Genesis' controller. Contra Hard Corps is designed and presented as an incredible step-up from Contra 3, as everything is refined so amazingly, and aspects of the formula have been expanded, such as the branching paths that lead to completely unique scenarios and each character having their own unique set of weapons.

The only thing, in my opinion, that stops it from being the best game in the series, is its controls. It manages to utilize everything you can do in the previous SNES game, but that game's controller had 6 buttons, which the game used nearly all of them. Now that they only have 3 buttons to work with, their means to make these functions available is creative, albeit bothersome when you're in the thick of shooting up your foes. It's hard getting used to these kinds of controls, especially considering they're unique to the rest of the franchise before and after.

Regardless, it's worth getting a hang of them and seeing the incredible scenarios this game puts you through, blazing with amazing graphics and explosive gameplay! A must-play for any fan of the run-n-gun franchise!

played as:
sheena (missile ending)
ray (big magnum ending)

Probably the apex of the Contra series. Sweeps the floor with the (already good) previous installments, and a part of me doubts they topped this one since. There's four different characters to play as, all with different weapons, and there are multiple paths with different bosses and endings to come across, allowing for a lot of replay value. I did the two routes that interested me the most first, and will be coming back for the others some day as well.

Difficulty wise, it's the hardest in the series up to this point. You know how hard the final boss in Contra III is? Imagine that for like, a decent half of the game. I plow my way through these older games with savestates, so it didn't hinder me too much of course, but it's very noticeable and I'd imagine doing it normally would be a hell of a task, albeit not as bad as some other nonsense I've played thus far. Luckily there's the Japanese version, which both adds continues and a life bar (new to the series!).

I see this compared to Gunstar Heroes a lot in here, and for good reason. They're very similar AND very close in quality. It could absolutley be coincidental, but keeping in mind Treasure was founded by former Konami employees who broke off after the latter rejected Gunstar Heroes, my guess is this game must have been an attempt to counter that one when it turned out successful. Who knows, though? They both kick ass and you should give them both a go. If I had to choose, however, Gunstar Heroes wins me over just a little due to easier difficulty and aesthetics.

I tried this game several times in the past and it never clicked. I appreciated how weird and ambitious it is but mostly figured it wasn't for me, especially the US version which removed not only the unlimited continues but also the life bar you have in the original version. However I'm cured. This time I got it. The game kicks all kinds of ass. Much like its cousin, Castlevania Bloodlines, this one is even better than its SNES counterpart in a lot of ways.

Probably the most standout gimmick is that this game has a 'story' and branching paths based on a few choices you make at certain points. It's five years after Contra III and mumbles vaguely so anyway you're a super cop who shoots robots and aliens involved in robot and alien crime. The characters are all very broadly-drawn archetypes, with the emphasis on putting you in all kinds of outrageous scenarios. The comparison to a CYOA book is obvious but apt, here, as a slight variation on the usual film inspirations which Contra has always worn on its sleeve.

So you've also got four whole playable characters in this one: A boring human dude and lady, a robot, and a werewolf with robot arms, which I don't need to tell you is the coolest shit you've ever seen. They each have different weapons and some slight variations in ability, and that all feeds into the non-standard weapon system this one has that makes co-op play more interesting and kind of helps the whole 'oops you died once now rot in hell' factor old Contras had. I like this system enough that it's a shame it was never actually built upon for any other game to my knowledge.

Ultimately, though, it's the levels and bosses that will sink and swim a goofy action game, and Hard Corps delivers on both game and aesthetic design here. Everything is so goofy. One of the first bosses is a gigantic cyclops robot that dances for no reason. At one point a bunch of enemy soldiers make a human pyramid as another miniboss encounter. Beautifully deranged stuff. The patterns are usually pretty simple and you can learn and dodge everything with practice, which is exactly what I want. There's definitely a Gunstar Heroes vibe to it, though I'm not sure how many staff the games had in common. With the game being much easier than Contra III, though, I really didn't mind the fact that they made it so much harder! I'm much more confident trying to beat this than III and its not close.

Hard Corps represents the best parts of the Genesis/Mega Drive, which is being bonkers, having farty synths, and kicking ass. I was an absolute nincompoop for thinking it was bad all these years.

The other day I was playing The Adventures of Bayou Billy, a beat-em-up for the NES developed by Konami. It was incredibly ambitious for its time, packing brawling, lightgun shooting, and 3D driving all on one cartridge, but what stood out to me wasn’t the technical mastery, but the fact that it was hard as balls. Even as someone with Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, and Gradius under my belt, this game was absolutely ridiculous. I looked up some info to see if I was doing something wrong, but as it turns out, when localizing the game for the west, Konami more than quadrupled the difficulty. You deal half the damage and last half as long in the brawler sections, and when driving you don’t get a health bar at all, instantly dying from any mistake. After my desperate struggle to finish the game, I booted up the Japanese version and beat it in one shot without dying. So, not only was I upset at Konami for putting westerners through that, I was also annoyed that there isn’t a, for lack of a better term, correct version of the game. One is way too hard, but the other is so easy that you can just stand in one place mashing the punch button and get through just fine.

The reason I bring this up is because Contra: Hard Corps was also tweaked for the West, but that might not be obvious when you first boot it up. It plays just like any other Contra game; you jump around trying to upgrade your gun as fast as you can so you can fill the screen with bullets before enemies kill you in one shot. So, what did they change? As it turns out, in the Japanese version you have a life bar, which seems like an alien concept to the Contra series. Dying in one hit is one of the little things that gives the series its identity, so this time when I tried the Japanese version after the American one, I had a much more puzzled reaction. The game was still hard, and I enjoyed how the repetition was much lower, but there was a feeling that it wasn’t quite right. Before jumping into Hard Corps, I had beaten Contra, Super C, 3, and 4 back-to-back, so the aforementioned departure in gameplay, combined with its shift in aesthetic, made it feel more like an imitator than a true member of the series. It didn’t make the different characters and weapons any less cool, and the set-pieces were still the best in the franchise, but it didn’t quite feel like Contra.

So, the question now is how much that feeling is truly worth. If analyzed by retro-gaming fans, I’m sure they would say the western version is definitive, while reviews done in a contextual vacuum would likely prefer the smoother Japanese version. What makes this extra complicated is how it’s influenced by a factor outside the game’s control, and even outside the control of the games it’s compared with. Contra used to be a huge name in gaming, but now it’s been more than ten years since any well-received titles have come out, and the cultural knowledge of what Contra means is fading from memory. So, what’s considered the better version of Contra: Hard Corps may slowly change over time, purely through a slow evaporation of the cultural context which set it apart from its contemporaries. Even that might be optimistic thinking though, considering how this game has never seen a rerelease, and is likely to disappear as soon as the brand consciousness which anchors it to gaming history starts fading away. That would be a shame since I really love this game, BOTH versions of it, so to help keep Contra alive, play this one. Remember what Contra was all about.

Every now and then I'll play an older game that makes me go "whoa". I didn't expect a Contra game to achieve that. Yet another split-second decision to play during a long car ride, I ended up beating it five times over two days to reach all the endings. Don't get me wrong, the Contra games are all fine. They're fun, twitchy types of games that ask you to be extremely precise with your movement to the detriment of the overall experience, since you die in a single hit. That's the first big change in Hard Corps, as there isn't a whole lot of those moments. Hard Corps is far more interested in providing spectacle using better hardware than they've worked on prior. The absurdity of the physical requirements is lessened due to the absurdity of the setpieces you find yourself fighting on. I'm sure there's a lot of divisiveness in the core fanbase over whether this change was actually good, as Hard Corps is far more about pattern recogntition and understanding how all your tools can work together to take on boss fights. Most of the game is spent up against wholly unique boss monsters who usually have fairly deliberate tells for each of their attacks. I will choose this type of challenge one-hundred times over the type of difficulty offered in earlier Contra games. There's still some grievances I have with one-hit deaths and loss of power that comes with it, but you get to keep any of the upgrades you didn't have equipped when you die, which is nice, and Switch has save states, which makes the lives system optional. Regardless, the pattern-recognition style of gameplay isn't as fun when you absolutely have to die in order to better understand them. You can make adjustments in other games, but that's not really a possibility until you see how an attack works, which will usually result in getting hit and losing core abilities and precious lives. But this is all minor when put up against everything Hard Corps excels with. Not a single dull moment passes in it's 45-minute campaign. You can even unlock different stages and battles through choices which makes the prospect of learning the systems through replay more engaging. All the characters have unique weapons which can impact how you fight in a variety of ways. The game has basically no slowdown or flicker despite constantly banging out what should be too many effects. This is among one of the best action games ever made. 6/6

(endings finished so far: all of them including the secret one)

yyyeah this goes really fucking hard lol. i kinda prefer the simplicity of the nes ones but i also absolutely adore the direction they went with, the whole multiple endings shtick is awesome and everything is just loads of fun to play through.
i do recommend getting a patched american version that brings back the 10 lives and 3 hitpoints from the japanese version if ur gonna play this tho. might make it almost too easy at points but also this IS a game where you die a lot. i would say its harder than the two nes ones but definitely easier than contra 3 if played the way i did at least