Oh, thank god. The first entry on the Game Boy of a well-known Konami series...that...ISN'T SHIT?! Seriously, though, this game is a very pleasant surprise, comparing it to Castlevania: The Adventure. The only thing they have in common other than being the first entry of a Konami series (starting with C) on Game Boy is that they both have great music. However, this one instead has much more reused music, taking up about half the tracklist. It's a little disappointing, but these are pretty good renditions of those NES songs from the original games. The graphics look nice, especially playing it on the Konami GB Collection (which is how I played it). The gameplay is very similar to classic Contra on the NES, with a few (bearable) changes. Some of them were even good, such as the built-in autofire. Yep, no Machine Gun power up, it's the default. Laser was also booted, leaving Spread, Fireball, and a newcomer. Spread Shot was downgraded to 3 bullets per shot, though by getting another Spread Shot power up, it's upgraded back to 5 bullets, with higher shot speed as well. Fireball is about the same as Super C, but with the autofire mechanic built in. And finally, we have the Homing power up. It's first-tier Spread Shot, but it has homing. AND YES. IT IS VERY OVERPOWERED. I got from Stage 1 to halfway through Stage 4 on one life JUST because of Homing. Speaking of stages, there are five. Less than the NES' eight, a humble number, but still enough so that it has some meat on its bones. The stages are as follows: Harbor, Base, Jungle/Waterfall, Alien Base, and the Laboratory (not official names, I made these up). Stages 2 and 4 are top-down, like Super C, and the rest are normal side-scrolling. I'm glad they went with the top-down stages, but I think it would've been cool if they threw a 3rd-person hallway stage in there. Nothing is wrong with these stages, hell, I think they're pretty good (favorite is stage 2), but none of them are very memorable. They just feel like...more Contra stages, nothing revolutionary, but obviously I can excuse that for being a GB game. For Contra fans, this is definitely a must-play, even if just for the novelty of it. I think it's a great addition to the series. Would be cool to see a remake, but of course, that probably won't happen. (but if it does get remade like 7 years later, I am officially a prophet)