This game, apparently, has no links to the story of the other Contra games, other than the fact that it apparently takes place in Neo City.

The game gives you a choice of four characters, each has his (there isn't a female character) own ability.

One interesting thing is that when you pause, you can highlight one of your team-mates, and press left/right to cycle through possible forms of attack (Stay Front, Round Cover, Back Cover, etc.), so you can experiment with different ways to get past the various obstacles; what makes this better is that the team-mate is invincible, so you can send him through areas of enemies and have him blast them to bits.

However, these team-mates have time-limits, and once the time is up, they vanish, and you have to go back to the start screen to select them again.

Another annoying thing as that they can't pick up items for you; they just pass by them.

There are more obstacles in the game than pits-of-death and enemies, there are crushers, there are rolling barrels, there are crates that fall and move in conveyer belts (serving as a good way to protect yourself from incoming fire), there are fans to blow you over rows of spikes, and various other things.

One odd thing is the screen often fails to scroll for some reason, and you'll have to walk back a certain distance, then walk to that point to make it scroll.

And the screen seems to only scroll when you hit a specific point of the side of the screen, which is rather annoying if there is a pit or several enemies ahead.

All in all, it's a very interesting and rather addictive game, with a well programmed computer controlled team-mate feature.


So..has anyone other than me played this?