Contra Anniversary Collection

Overall a complete collection of contra during it's early days. A bit disapointed that some of the games still get slow downs on today's computers. I remember being able to run those game an an emulator all the way back in 2007. How this is not able to run smoothly today is a mistery really.

Worth 5 dollars or less, but definitely not 20$.

Overall still positif

For these classic collections, it doesn't fully pass the "needs to be a better experience than piracy" test (no rewind, only one save state, no added bonus challenges or anything like that) but it does have s booklet with background information on the games and it's just tons of fun. Although without rewind I think I need to find that guy from high school who blast through these games without blinking.
It lists 10 games but it's really 10 variations of 4 games (5 if you count the Game Boy game, you can argue on the exact number of distinct games), but the games are fun, so what the hey. a solid 6 or 7 experience from some games that are still a lot of fun.

Worth it but honestly the emulation so far is kinda bad and makes some games almost impossible to complete without abusing save states...which have just one slot by the way. The game starts in windowed mode and there's no way to change it, you need alt+enter to force fullscreen. Worst of all, to exit the game you must go with alt + f4 since there's no Exit button in the main menu. Seriously Konami, you crazy? Other than that, it's a complete collection of all classic Contra with achievements, so I recommend it...but with a decent sale.

I remember playing Super Contra when i was just a child and even if it was very difficult , i learned the game step by step until i finished it . For those times this was like the modern dark souls games where you had to learn step by step , to get good at the game.

It's definitely a nostalgia trip considering I loved the original Contra from the NES era. Biggest problem that I hate about this version is that I can't spam my bullets without turning on turbo mode; compared to the original NES version you could spam the bullets by mashing the B button but now you can only shoot 3 bullets at a time. Not bad, just the small change really makes it less appealing nowadays.

In general, I admit that playing this compilation is a nice experience. I feel that the control is responsive enough and simple. I can use the keyboard instead of the gamepad (my personal preference) and still enjoy games from this compilation. Of course having all "emulation" features like saving the game at any moment, and choosing display "type" is a nice thing, although I can't help for having the feeling, that I don't have such freedom in those options as in any standard emulator - even with such trivial things, as changing control (by some bizarre reason, you can only change the action connected with key, but can't change the key used for the control).
As for the choice of games - I'm very happy with the fact that we have both NES games (Contra and Super Contra), plus Contra III from SNES and Contra: Hard Corps from Mega drive. In my opinion, those four games are the main attraction of the collection. Arcade versions of the first two games are a nice addition (especially since they look and play differently), but I would personally prefer to have instead of some simple GB game or two Probotector games (that are basically reskinned Contra III and Contra: Hard Corps) for example Contra Force - I know, it's a spin-off, but still, I would prefer to have more "separate titles" instead of variations (or have all variations in one position, to switch between them). And ATM I feel like the "list of titles" is a bit artificially bloated. I'm perfectly fine with the Probotector variant, but it doesn't give much in terms of gameplay.

Nice ports of all classic contras and their regional versions that allows you to save replays, also with bonus material like an interview with the director and designer of contra 3 and onwards, and design documents and sketches.
Though having a single save-state, not being able to rebind keyboard controls, and having an ear-piercing bug when you launch the game sometimes sucks.