Comments on: Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES) http://rvgfanatic.com/wordpress/index.php/contra-iii/ Relive | Replay | Remember Mon, 16 Mar 2026 02:55:48 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.41 By: Steve http://rvgfanatic.com/wordpress/index.php/contra-iii/#comment-108316 Sun, 18 Aug 2019 23:54:51 +0000 http://rvgfanatic.com/wordpress/?p=4375#comment-108316 My girlfriend and I recently tackled Contra III, just the other weekend actually, and we had a blast (while we lasted, lol). It’s certainly one of the best 16-bit action games ever created, and for me easily falls in the top 20 all time SNES games category. I know opinions are opinions, but I’m not sure I’d trust any SNES top list if Contra III weren’t in the top 20 somewhere. Sort of kidding on that one, sort of not… :)

]]> By: StarBoy91 http://rvgfanatic.com/wordpress/index.php/contra-iii/#comment-108059 Sun, 18 Aug 2019 03:07:18 +0000 http://rvgfanatic.com/wordpress/?p=4375#comment-108059 There’s really nothing that can be said about this game that hasn’t been said before by many other people. I consider this to be one of Konami’s all-time best Nintendo 16-bit contributions next to Pop’n TwinBee, TwinBee: Rainbow Bell Adventure, and their Super Famicom-exclusive turn-based RPG Mōryō Senki MADARA 2. I like the high-adrenaline non-stop action, its exhilarating sense of challenge, the different environments, the Aliens-inspired aesthetic and gradual buildup during the final stage as you got deeper and deeper, its music rocks (especially the third stage, and the fact that three of its composers would go on to compose the exclusively instrumental and effective soundtrack to Mōryō Senki MADARA 2 shows how much range they had early in their careers before Suikoden), and despite how short it is the game’s a lot of fun while it lasts. =)

Contra III: The Alien Wars was, for the longest time, the only Contra I played until months ago I downloaded Contra Anniversary Collection on the Nintendo Switch which gave me an opportunity to play the other Contra titles available on it, and it was neat to get to play not only the original Japanese version Contra Spirits but also the PAL SNES conversion Super Probotector: Alien Rebels (it’s also interesting that Konami included both the corrected 60 Hz speed AND 16.7% slower original 50 Hz PAL speed; not sure why, although it’s *there* if anyone wanted to know what a Nintendo 16-bit game running at that speed was like, and the European version has grown on me a little despite replacing the human commandos with robots.

Interesting choice to base Bill’s pose in the Japanese cover art on Schwarzenneger’s Mark/Joseph from the cover of Raw Deal–I guess someone *did* see that movie (or most likely the poster) considering it didn’t do all that well. And I guess the codes were removed in the localized version because the way you access them was too close to how you perform the special moves in Capcom’s Street Fighter franchise (down, down-right, right, Start for 30 lives; right, down, down-right, X for sound test) and Konami got heat from it after the Super Famiversion came out? That, or they figured leaving the codes would make the game far too easy and manageable outside Japan with 30 lives and unlimited continues at your disposal, that’s probably why. Still, fun game on the whole. =)

To each their own

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