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

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.

Here it is! The Space Marine shooter 80s-90s supreme! The only one missing here for me is Contra:Force which was a 1992 NES release that added 4 different characters with different sets of weapons and styles. The original arcade versions are here, which is a plus. I can remember playing "Ikari Warriors," "Operation: Wolf," and "Operation: Razorback," in the arcade as a child, but I never played the arcade version of Contra.
Contra for the NES, however, is truly a force of nature in my life. Super C (NES) came a little later, without the Konami code. Contra (NES) and James Cameron's Aliens made all the boys under the age of 12 in my neighborhood circa 1988-1990 want to be space marines. I was probably nine or eight years old the first time I played Contra on the ol' NES. The music for the waterfall stage is my favorite.
My best times and experiences playing my beloved Contra have come and gone but this collection is a worthy introduction to my career as a space marine. The only shooter to conquer and humiliate the ol' Contra games was, of course, DOOM. When the Mars Demonic invasion broke into gaming, everyone switched from the ol' Jungle/Snowfield/Energy Zone/Alien's Layer vision of Rambo Space Marines into the interdimensional/teleporting/stair climbing/barrel shooting/door opening salvo of the Rambo-one-man-army Doom Space Marine!!
Setting that aside, the fun and history is all here, except for Contra: Force (NES). I guess that one is the red-headed step child of Contra games. The Contra 3: The Alien Wars (SNES) 3 page comic book advertisement is among my favorites of all published advertising! That's sometimes the best part of an old comic book: the video game advertisements!
Contra was the NES game that united us all in the neighborhood circa 1987-1990. Sometimes even the older jocks would give us lil' kids respect for being able to pull off the Konami Code for the NES Contra, which was no easy feat! Ray Joseph and I spent ungodly ludicrous amounts of time attempting the Konami code on the NES so we could "beat" the game. I recall that you had to wait for the menu music to fully activate before you could do the ol' left-down-up-righ-A-B....err....you get the point. We were so terrible sometimes that when we did succeed in entering the code one of us would outlive the other and carry on until his lives ran out and then we could hit the continue option. We always wondered why one would want to select the End option over Continue. Remember there was only 2 continues, and 30 lives per successful finishing of Contra (NES) so in time I must have died at least ninety times on Contra over the years...at least that I can recall.
I also have vague but wonderful memories of playing Contra 3 on the SNES with my best neighborhood buddy Ray Joseph. The addition of gernades was awesome to us both, but I was also pleased and impressed by the speed of the bullets in the regular starting rifle, much less the amazing fire effects in the first stage....Contra 3 totally blew our pre-adolescent hair back with a vengeance back in the day!
On the other side of the 16 bit wars, somewhere in my gaming archives I still have an EGM magazine issue that contains the review for Contra: Hard Corps on the ol' Genesis, which is a most welcome member here. Konami is really the hero for this beloved series. You can really see things evolve here in this collection.
Super C was really the one that broke me on difficulty. My friend Nelson and I rented Super C (NES) from Blockbuster back in 1990-1991 and proceeded to have both our pre-adolescent bodies drawn and quartered. To this day I can still hear the death jingle in my mind with a strange nostalgic affection! Contra is as unforgiving as it is nostalgic, violent, and beloved in my warped old school gamer brains! At heart there will always be a tiny part of me runnin' 'round with the spread gun saving Earth from alien invasion!

The pure juice from the 80s and the 90s, just feels good.
Several versions from diverse Plataforms like Arcades, NES, SNES, Mega Drive and even a portable version from Game Boy.
This collection includes 10 games and 6 Japanese versions; The emulation is competent, I strong recomend the use of the digital pad for a better gameplay, the save option is a really nice add, there is several screen modes, but I missed a 4:3 mode without the scanlines.
I strongly recommend for the lovers of the 80's.
Rate: 8.0/10

A perfect collection for the classic ultimate side scroller shooter.
The soundtracks are perfect, it'll make you coming back for more.
Too bad the Remote Play feature is not working properly. And there's no Online Play, can only be play locally together.

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.

Full Disclosure i haven't beaten every single game to its fullest. But I feel i got the most out of it so maybe i'll come back later to finish the rest off.
This is a really solid collection of contra games. They all feel good and are inanely addicting to try out. I really just wish there was more variety.
I assume there must be technical reasons the ps1 and 2 games aren't included but the other ones (Contra Force, Contra 4, and rebirth) feel missing from the set.
Because of this your paying for a collection that's really only 5 games and several ports of said games.
You get:
-Contra (and the nes version and the japanese version of the nes version)
- Super contra (and Super C which was the nes version)
- Contra III
-Contra: Hard Corps
- C: The Contra Adventure
and the two probotector games which were the European releases of Contra 3 and hard corp. So reallistically if you want to be technical, most of the collection is the same game but with differences.
All the games are really damn good though except the arcade games fuck those they suck.