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Every aspect of their design serves a clear purpose and comes across as very well thought-out. I love how Hard Corps implemets these characters. His only true weakness is that his weapons (with one exception in the bizarre electric yo-yo) aren’t as damaging as his teammates’.
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His double jump and jet-assisted gliding make him the best at dodging attacks and platforming in general.
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Browny (aka the Model CX-1-DA300 Combat Robot) is the smallest and cutest squad member. He makes up for these deficiencies by dealing out massive damage and by being a wolf in shades with a chaingun for an arm named Brad. Brad is bigger and slower than the rest and several of his weapons have a shorter range. Rounding out the playable cast are a couple of oddballs, Brad Fang the cyborg wolfman and Browny the robot. Ray deals a bit more damage with his guns and Sheena is slightly more nimble, but the pair generally function like the traditional soldier protagonists from the older games. Said team includes two humans, Ray and Sheena, with average capabilities and fairly balanced weapons. Mysterious terrorists steal a sample of alien cells from a government lab and the world is in for no end of apocalyptic mad science mischief unless the Contra team can stop them. The events of Hard Corps are set five years after those depicted in Contra III: The Alien Wars.
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Do all these innovations make Hard Corps the ultimate Contra experience, as a vocal fan contingent maintains to this day, or is the simpler approach of the early games ultimately more enjoyable? Let’s find out! But first things first: It’s pronounced “hard core.” Got that? If I never hear anyone talk about “Contra: Hard Corpse” again, it’ll be too soon. If so, this was one rivalry gamers everywhere should be thankful for. It’s been speculated that many of Hard Corps’ most ambitious new features were an attempt by the development team at Konami to outdo another specific Genesis run-and-gun shooter some of their former co-workers were involved in creating the year prior for Treasure: Gunstar Heroes. Each character even had his or her own exclusive arsenal of four special weapons. Hard Corps introduced branching paths and multiple endings to this formula, heavily emphasized bosses over regular enemies, ditched the alternate viewpoint gimmick entirely in favor of 100% side-view action, and added character selection to the mix with four diverse heroes to choose from. In addition, they would typically include a couple levels utilizing a pseudo-3D or overhead view, presumably as palate cleansers-cum-graphical showpieces. Previous Contras presented players with a gauntlet of linear platforming stages, each of which featured a hoard of cannon fodder bad guys throughout and a big boss fight at the end. Unless you count the wretched Contra Force from 1993, that is, which many don’t, as it was an unrelated project that had the Contra name slapped on it in a desperate bid to help sales. More significantly, it was also the first to make any substantial changes to the design template established by the 1987 original. It’s noteworthy for being the first installment to make its way to a non-Nintendo console. My selection today is the sixth entry in the series, 1994’s Contra: Hard Corps for the Sega Genesis. Konami doesn’t make ’em like this anymore, after all. Addictive as it is, I’ve found that diving into an unfamiliar Contra title is best treated like bringing a bottle of exceptionally fine wine up from the cellars. Practically synonymous with the side-scrolling run-and-gun genre for the past 32 years and counting, Contra is renowned for its tight controls, breakneck pacing, and blink-and-you’re-dead challenge, all wrapped-up in a bombastic “commandos versus space aliens” scenario stitched together from the greatest action movies 1980s Hollywood had to offer. There are a select few gaming franchises I have to make a serious effort to not binge my way clear through in one insane, thumb blistering marathon.