#alien wars

Can you identify this radical reimagining of a classic Konami game?

alien wars

Ancient world sees a war arrive on its land

Set several years after the first game, aliens have returned to Earth, and they are pissed off!  They launch a full-scale attack against humanity, and the only ones who can stop them are... Jimbo and Sully?  Yes, Jimbo and Sully, at least according to the manual. 

When Contra III:  The Alien Wars was released for the SNES in 1992, I all but ignored it.  I loved the first two games, but I must admit, I was a bit intimidated by the idea of playing a SUPER version of what were, at the time, the hardest games I had ever played.  It always seemed like it would be a waste of a rental to pick up Contra III, take it home, only to get stuck on level 2 or some shit the whole weekend.  I dunno, I just remember looking at the back of the box and feeling like it looked INSANELY difficult.

I wish I had given it a try, though, because it’s a really cool game and I probably would have really dug it as a kid.  The cinematic presentation alone would be knocked my socks off, similar to how the opening cut scene for Super Metroid blew my mind.  Sure, I probably would have still got stuck on level 2 (I’m gonna give my younger self credit and maybe say level 3), but I would have had a blast nevertheless.

As it stands, though, I really enjoyed the game as an old.  The action is fast and furious, as one would expect out of the franchise, and I love some of the additions to the gameplay.  For example, in Contra III, you no longer have to live in constant fear of losing your favorite weapon, because the game gives you two weapon slots, where you can either switch between weapons on the fly or have one on stand-by as back up in case you get killed (in which case, you DO lose whatever weapon you happened to be using).

Speaking of weapons, the standard go-to favorite, the almighty Spread Gun, is actually not as effective as it once was.  Not only has its power been nerfed (I suspect), but a lot of the other weapons are actually quite useful depending on the situation.  I, for one, prefer the homing missiles, which pack a wallop and cover your ass from enemies sneaking up from behind.  I also quite like the Crush Gun, which is another missile launcher that is stronger, but the projectiles do not home on enemies.  Hell, even the flame thrower, which sucks ass in the previous games, is much more effective in this one.

Another major gameplay change, besides a bomb you can detonate to clear the screen of enemies, is your character can now climb walls Ninja Gaiden style!  The level design make effective use of this new ability, with intense sequences like the mini-boss you fight while climbing a wall and avoiding its legs or, my personal favorite, the boss fight where you fire at the enemy while hanging off huge missiles being launched by your allies. 

That’s something else I love about this game over the NES games: the level design feels so much more epic, and well thought out, than the levels in either Contra or Super C.  These aren’t just levels - these are scenes in an action movie.  From the moment your character is introduced via running over a fuck ton of aliens before leaping out of a tank to later in the SAME level when an alien ship fires missiles at you and creates a fiery inferno for you to escape.  It’s friggin’ awesome!

One point of criticism that is common about this game are the top-down, Mode 7 stages.  While they are irritating, once you figure out how to get through them, they are hardly deal breakers, although there is ONE stage towards the end of the game that is incredibly annoying where you have to fight a boss while also trying to navigate in a whirlpool of sand.  It’s disorienting to say the least, and will result in the most cheap deaths of the entire game.