PEG's video: Contra Force NES - Full Run with No Deaths

Full Run / 1 Credit Clear with no deaths of Contra Force for the NES! This was played on a real NES (Famicom AV actually) with the real cart. No cheats or emulators were used. Stage Listing: 00:00 - Stage 1 04:32 - Stage 2 09:00 - Stage 3 14:30 - Stage 4 23:33 - Stage 5 26:07 - Final Boss + Ending It's been a while since I've done a NES video and you will notice there have been a few upgrades. First, I finally got around to finishing the RGB mod on my Famicom AV, so bye bye crappy composite video. Second, I have rigged a separate camera to show my setup and me actually playing the game. Probably need to get a separate mic as well since it's hard to hear me although I'm not really saying much since I know the mic sucks. Let me know what you think of this new setup and if it's better or worse than just the gameplay. Anyway, so what about Contra Force? It seems everyone knows this wasn't meant to be a real Contra game when it was developed, in fact it was advertised as Arc Hound in magazines before it was released. I think Konami realized this game was going to be a dud so they tried to rebrand it as a Contra game. Did it work? Um, not really. It flopped hard and they even canceled the Japanese release altogether. The biggest and instantly obvious flaw of the game is the massive and unrelenting amount of slowdown. Everything in this game runs at a snails pace. The game basically runs in slow motion for the full 5 levels, so if you can't get over that you're probably going to hate this game. Even the in-between level cutscenes are slow and tedious, and to make things even worse, they are UNSKIPPABLE! This is just unforgivable. Now if you can get beyond this massive flaw, is there something worth playing in this game? Well, maybe. There are definitely some interesting ideas and thought put into Contra Force but unfortunately the implementation and limitations of the NES hardware really hold it back. Why wasn't this developed for the SNES or Genesis, I mean it was released in late 1992, which incredibly is even AFTER Contra III. You get to play as 4 different characters, each of which has slightly different attributes (Burns can jump higher for instance) and weapons. And the best part is you can switch between them at will. It's kind of like the first NES Ninja Turtles game. Unfortunately, none of this is really necessary, as it turns out Burns and his high jump are all you really need. To power up your character you collect briefcases from destructible environment objects. I believe every fifth thing you destroy with drop a briefcase. The powerup system is similar to Gradius, you have to activate the upgrade you want after collecting a certain number of briefcases. Each character has 2 different weapons, and then upgrades that increase the number of shots that can be on screen and finally the ultimate upgrade that renders you (mostly) invincible while you jump. This is actually an extremely overpowered ability and basically renders the final boss fight a joke. Finally, you have the ability to call on other members of your team to show up to assist you for a brief amount of time. This can be done as frequently as you want, so take advantage of it. I really only used Smith (homing rockets) and Irons (turbo fire rockets) to assist in a few situations. Again, you don't even really need to use this at all but it does help in a few situations. There are several different "AI" routines you can assign to the helper but honestly they don't even seem to matter much. So the gameplay is slow and plodding, an d while the graphics look great, the game has some of the worst flickering I've ever seen on the NES, especially on the side scrolling levels when you summon a friend. Thankfully, the sound track is actually quite good, and I found several tracks very catchy and noticed myself humming along at times. So it's not all terrible. So do I recommend this 'fake' Contra game? I can't say I completely hated it although I did hate that the cutscences were unskippable. That alone almost has me giving it the thumbs down but I still think it's worth at least a few playthroughs if you can get over the constant slowdown.