Aside from Stage 6 being somewhat of a RNG hell, everything else in this game is stellar. I had an absolute blast with this game, it is fantastic.
Super C is a great follow-up to the original Contra. Everything gets an upgrade: the backgrounds and sprites are bigger and more detailed, the music gets broader range with bassy orchestra hits, and levels are given more varied layouts with vertical and horizontal traversal within the same environment. The pseudo-3D hallway crawls of the first game are replaced with far more challenging and interesting top-down levels that would later be even more intense in Contra 3. The standard run, jump, n' shoot formula is just as strong as ever, with Spread still being the "Activate Easy Mode" weapon of choice.
It's not all glorious warfare for Bill and Lance, though, as there are a few elements that hold it back from a perfect experience. Enemies love to spawn from behind you on the edge of the screen and catch you off guard. Some environmental gimmicks/mechanics can lock you in an inescapable death loop if you get an unfortunate pattern, particularly on the "downward" vertical levels with blind drops. Most unfortunate of all, however, is bosses offer practically zero challenge. Most of them are motionless (albeit impressively designed) full-screen monster towers, but only 3 out of 8 require you to do any real dodging maneuvers. One boss in particular can be beaten without moving at all, since your attacks destroy theirs. If you have Spread going into any of these fights, the bosses might as well have not even bothered showing up to work that day for how quickly they're dispatched.
Super C does exactly what you want out of a sequel: gives you a slightly better, slightly more challenging expansion of the game that came before it. Even with a few old-school game design flaws hanging about, it's still one of the absolute best action games on the NES.
It's not all glorious warfare for Bill and Lance, though, as there are a few elements that hold it back from a perfect experience. Enemies love to spawn from behind you on the edge of the screen and catch you off guard. Some environmental gimmicks/mechanics can lock you in an inescapable death loop if you get an unfortunate pattern, particularly on the "downward" vertical levels with blind drops. Most unfortunate of all, however, is bosses offer practically zero challenge. Most of them are motionless (albeit impressively designed) full-screen monster towers, but only 3 out of 8 require you to do any real dodging maneuvers. One boss in particular can be beaten without moving at all, since your attacks destroy theirs. If you have Spread going into any of these fights, the bosses might as well have not even bothered showing up to work that day for how quickly they're dispatched.
Super C does exactly what you want out of a sequel: gives you a slightly better, slightly more challenging expansion of the game that came before it. Even with a few old-school game design flaws hanging about, it's still one of the absolute best action games on the NES.