To me Contra Hard Corps represents the Sega Genesis perfectly. It's action-packed, full of attitude, and loud noises. This instance here where one guy in a jet pack is defeated with the result being the most massive explosion ever that lasts five seconds is peak Genesis.

Multiple characters with multiple weapons, and multiple paths with multiple endings including a joke ending and one for joining the bad guy is a crapton of replay value. It really makes you wonder why they went out of their way to make it so hard in the western versions. Oh right, it's Konami. They hate westerners, same shit they've been doing since Bayou Billy. Actually, I do feel it's debatable whether traditional one-hit kills or three hits per life is better, but one thing I absolutely detest no matter what is limited continues. To hell with that, either play the JP version or use the HP restoration patch. Crank the lives to ten in that if you must, because this game is fantastic and should be played by everyone regardless of skill level. Potentially a top three Genesis title for me, at the very least right now while I'm on my Hard Corps high. Konami seriously had their shit together on the Genesis.

I also just learned they gave the PAL version one less continue to work with than the NA version. They had life hard enough with the dopey changes you made to the sprites and 50hz displays, you really gotta kick'em while they're down like that?

Put Brad Fang in Smash Bros. Such skill to drive a motorcycle one-handed.

El mejor juego de Contra que se ha sacado, la dificultad es algo increíble en esta entrega, la banda sonora es simplemente de las mejores y fue el primer juego de Contra en tener varios finales alternativo y la posibilidad de escoger entre varios personajes (cada uno con su habilidad y arma únicas), la historia es bastante simular a la de entregas anteriores, pero eso no le quita lo entretenida que es. El juego al igual que sus entregas precedentes cuenta con versiones diferentes dependiendo en la región en la que se jugó, la versión Americana es la más difícil ya que en esta pierdes una vida por un solo golpe, por lo que es más fácil perder la partida (recomendado solo para personas con buenos reflejos o que ya se conozcan bastante bien el juego), la versión Japonesa es un poco mas simple, ya que en esta se requiere mínimo 3 golpes para perder una vida, por lo que es un poco mas fácil llegar al final de nivel, la versión Europea es igual a la versión Americana, solo aplicando censura, convirtiendo a todos en robot (supongo que en aquella época estaba mal visto que humanos fueran a una guerra contra robots, por lo que supongo que remplazaron a los humanos para que fuera una guerra de Robots contra otros Robots).

Finally, I get to talk about a good video game.

Contra: Hard Corps lives up to its name. It's tough as hell and leans heavily into a 90's "hardcore" attitude that drives the pace and action of the entire game. Some of the most insane, colorful, and explosive set pieces on the Genesis are all crammed into this one little cart. You start the game plowing through enemies in an armored vehicle, which you then fly out the front window of with barely a second of respite before you need to mow down swarms of attacking bad guys, only to wrap up the game climbing to the top of an out-of-control rocket containing a grotesque alien who is actively breaking through the hull to attack you. That's assuming you stick to the main story path and get the true ending. There's an impressive amount of alternate exits and routes you can take, with a number of different endings to earn along the way. In a way, it's like a prototypical Shadow the Hedgehog, although that game doesn't let you travel back in time and marry a monkey. A rare knock against Shadow the Hedgehog, but if any game were to one-up it, it's Contra: Hard Corps.

As is the case with most Contra games, Hard Corps is best enjoyed with a friend, and each character provides enough of a difference in terms of their movement and weapon options that everyone will find one that suits them best. Personally, I really like Brownie. He's a tiny robot, which means he has the smallest hitbox, and I'm 5'6" so it's good to have representation in video games. That said, Hard Corps is good enough that if you want to play it solo, you'll still have a great time. Either way, just be prepared to die a lot. Hard Corps is absolutely brutal, but learning the game and overcoming it feels satisfying in a way that's unparalleled on the Genesis. It also throws you back in the action so fast that a game over only feels like a mere hiccup, and if you find yourself becoming frustrated with one particular route it's not asking too much to simply switch onto another.

The soundtrack is also completely off the wall. Every track is about as frenetic as it can possibly be. Hiroshi Kobayashi and his team knew their way around the YM2612, playing to its strengths, particularly in its ability to produce an incredibly grungy sound. Needless to say, it's well-suited to the action and aesthetic style of Hard Corps.

Everything about Hard Corps adds up into the best possible experience you could have with a Contra game, and it might just be one of the best run-and-guns on the Genesis to boot.

Did the two routes I skipped over on my first playthrough this time. I don't think I'm as partial to these two (Ultimate Being and Alien Heart) as the others, but it's not really important. What is important is just how much content and replayability there is here. More surprising is the amount of grotesque detail in all the final bosses, the unique movement and code for every individual boss, all that kind of stuff. I would say I don't know how this was pulled off in 1994, but if you look around a bit there is an absurd amount of cracked games from that year, and really the 93-95 period as a whole.

Gunstar Heroes is still my preferred of the two, but a big thing I like more here is the convenience of switching between free and fixed shots on a dime, whereas in Gunstar Heroes you have to choose between them at the start and stick with that. The soundtracks are about on par with each other, and Gunstar wins in most other aspects for me. Both 10s for sure though, and I'm not sure how I didn't realize it for my first playthrough of either of them.

I talked about it the first time, but this is actually another victim of difficulty being ramped up in the US version. I'm not actually sure if there's translated versions of the JP rom, but there are patches to add its health bar and unlimited continues into the US version. I would definitely recommend that first.

Fuck, man. I love run n' guns. I oughta try Metal Slug soon, everybody seems to love that one.

The best game on the series was somehow on the Mega Drive all this time. I legit wasn't expecting to like Hard Corps this much.

For starters, four different characters, each with their own weapon loadout - that's sixteen mostly distinct guns. My favorite ended up being FANG, a humanoid wolf with a gun for an arm, that also wears sunglasses. Video games, man.

Half of his guns don't shoot in multiple directions, but they are all absurdly powerful, making for an incredibly satisfying character.

The game also features some branching paths, with a few unique levels between those paths.

There is also a slide with some very generous i-frames, and it's immensely satisfying to use that.

But really, maybe what puts this above other games in the series is that this is a healthy challenge. Something like Contra 4, for example, is absolutely brutal, and the NES games are stuck in that memorization arcade mentality.

The auto-scroller boss is a bit of a pacing killer though, and fairly brainless. So brainless that you can actually fast-forward through a good chunk of the fight on an emulator, since the screen just auto-scrolls and you can't damage him at all in these sections. Lame.

Play the Japanese version though, or the American version with the proper romhack. It features a 3-hit life bar and infinite continues, while the western release has you die in one-hit and features limited continues, get out of here.

Hard Corps idea of an introduction is having you plow through some unsuspecting goons with your truck tank and it doesn't stop escalating for the remainder of its terse runtime. A single one of Hard Corps vividly imagined and gorgeously animated encounters would probably drain a considerable portion of a modern triple a production's budget but here the mega cyclops tearing up half the city in the first stage gets checks notes 30 seconds. That there are multiple characters, paths and endings slathered on to this action behemoth is the cherry on top for me. What a wonderful introduction to the world of run and guns.

Yeah, It's fucking awesome. Konami squeezed every little thing out of the mega drive with this one. The music rocks, there's explosions and shit everywhere, four playable characters, you can slide now, there's branching levels, a secret ending where you fight a robot belmont (y'know, the castlevania guys), go back in time and become monkey king or whatever, and it's actually accessible with a heavy asterisk because yet again 90s game localizers and/or publishers were just moronic sometimes and were convinced that everything needed to be made arbitrarily harder to artificially extend playtime. There's no beating around the bush here, play the Japanese version. If limited continues and one hit per death sounds daunting, just know that there's always a version of the game available with unlimited continues and 3 hit points per life. This and Alien soldier cement the mega drive as the platform for run 'n guns of the time. Pure high octane, high adrenaline action.

The game is good, I liked it, the feeling of going back through old levels and mastering them to get another shot at making it deeper in and eventually beating the game is a gameplay loop I enjoyed. However, it frankly feels like this game just didn't earn a lot of those restarts. Attacks that came out without warning or were too fast to reasonably react to as a first time were where the majority of my deaths came from here, rarely did I actually die to a boss after learning what their attacks did and what their telegraphs were. It felt like it was forcing me to go back instead of me going back as a result of me not being good enough. But admittedly that isn't a terrible issue, the game (on a single run) is short, only taking about 6 levels to get to the end (at least on the path I took, I assume the others are around the same length).

The game has very high replayability, with 4 distinct characters to choose from and different level paths being available, which definitely helps the longevity of what would otherwise be a pretty short game.

The game aesthetically is wonderful, high quality visuals with a great soundtrack that perfectly fits the gameplay as well. I really love the sounds the Genesis produces in general, it makes for good music.

I think Contra Hard Corps was a good game, but it's overhyped, especially in the difficulty area. If this is the best the series has to offer, I'm unsure if I'll continue spending my time with Contra. I do hope to complete the other paths of this game in the near future though, maybe I'll change my mind on it after I truly finish this one.

Has some weird pacing--Long Hand Guy is a vibe-killer every time--and there are some parts that are way too easy to cheese with homing weapons... but other than that, this is a kick-ass and truly generous video game, with 4 playable characters (each with 4 unique weapons) and branching paths with six different endings. Plus, if you're playing the JP version, you get infinite continues, checkpoints, three hits before a death, and restored health at the end of a level(!!!); which, on top of the nice bevy of extends you get for scoring, makes for a downright pleasant 1CC experience (depending greatly, of course, on the path you choose).

The Mega Drive was just a goddamn embarrassment of riches for run-and-guns, huh? Alien Soldier is my one true king, but I honestly don't know which I'd choose between this and Gunstar Heroes... shocked to even be saying that, but there it is. GG Konami.

Finally: best character-select screen in a video game? Maybe. (Has anyone made a Coolest-Character-Select-Screens list on here? I should do that.)

Alrighty, I had actually never heard of Contra Hard Corps prior to this, in fact the only game like this I heard of was Hard Corps which was a spiritual successor to this game. I honestly think this game does a lot of stuff that took Contra to that next level that I didn't think it'd go to.

You get options of 4 characters and all have different loadouts that differ quite heavily from each other. the game goes at a VERY fast pace and it's quite difficult for it, sometimes to the point of being unfair. The bosses are actually a joy to fight because they don't follow any of the conventions of the past games and stages are all different and have different story paths leading to different bosses and different stages connecting.

I feel like this is how the Contra series should have moved forward, while this game is pretty hard, it's rewarding by being different and a breath of fresh air to the series.

Cleared on March 4th, 2023 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 2/160)

Contra Hard Corps is a 2D side scroller shoot em up where you run through dangerous battlefields and enemy territories to stop them of their devious plan to use the Alien cell for world domination, and it is radical. It's really hard as you lose a life in one hit (oddly some versions have it where you take three hits before losing a life), but it's a game that you can get really good at because it doesn't go over-the-top with its difficulty through spikes although still hard enough that it may warrant using save states if you don't have patience.

They save the over-the-top aspect for the visuals and the action because good god it's wild. It's a sci-fi military world in chaos with machines and aliens running rampant and it looks incredible in its pixelated form. Also, I just love the music of this game. GTR attack is a hype-infusing song that boosts adrenaline and the bosses that this song accompanies tend to be the most fast-paced. The Last Springsteen invokes terror and suspense as you are about to square off against whatever monster you end up having to face last.

One of more interesting features of this game is that it has multiple routes which lets them add so much to the overall game while confining the general length and encouraging replay value to see what set of bosses you will get to face next. There are four routes that change based on the simple decision that only serves to move you along one of those routes. Of course, some bosses are mandatory to fight in all routes.

If this somehow sounds tedious, there are four playable characters and you could do what I did and assign those characters to a specific route. I'll go over them one by one.
Ray is about what you'd expect a Contra character to be. All of them share the same core mechanics as you jump, you shoot, you run, duck, and even powerslide (which from my understanding is new for this game and you are going to need it). However, Ray has weapons that are familiar enough to a classic Contra game like the Spread Shot from all Contra games and the Homing Shot from Contra III. However, from what I hear, the Spread Shot is argued as the best weapon in most of those games, but here, it feels kinda underwhelming and really, he's just the most underwhelming of all the characters to me.
Sheena is a favorite of mine as all of her weapons feel useful in some way. Her weapons deal impressive damage and if she needs some spread damage, then her Ax Laser should help her.
Fang is a cool character in visual style, a cyborg anthro wolf with sunglasses? That's awesome! But when playing as him, be extremely careful during the opening level because early on he picks up a charged shot in the middle of an enemy barrage that will put a delay on your attacks which will make you very suspectible to getting taken down. This is an issue exclusive to Fang and unlike the others, he doesn't really have a "Spread" shot, but his weapons do supposedly the most damage.
But then we get to Browny who is quite frankly the most busted character in the game. He's small which gives him an advantage when it comes to having a smaller hitbox than all the others. He doesn't jump as high, but why worry about that when he could double jump? He has many weapons for different situations be it single-target damage or pulverizing mobs. But what really stands out is his Yo-Yo which just shreds bosses and it locks on too. So if you ever find yourself struggling with this game, bring these guy out.

The routes themselves also linked with difficulty. Route A and B are kinda easy (at least for this game's standards), but Route C and D are pretty hard. My advice is to just start with Route A and then go from there, and you'll have a much better time with the game.

But regardless of how you do it, it's a fun game and among my favorites from the Sega Genesis catalog.

January 7th, 2024 Update: I went back to replay the game as the Japanese version intended with 3 hit points, and I was shocked at how easy the game was in comparison. Not only does 3 hits give you a better chance to not get smoked almost instantly at the first level, but because of how the game's mechanics work where you lose the weapon you have equipped upon losing a life, you can actually hold on to your weapon much longer which allows you to deal significantly more damage throughout the game, making it much faster to clear. If Contra Hard Corps is giving you a hard time, finding the means to buff your health points be it through a patch or the Japanese version may be your best shot.