Masters's Contra Anniversary Collection review

Hard Corps > All the things.

It amuses me endlessly that they tried to pass Probotector and Super Probotector off as different games. I mean, I kind of get the original because they are different games, even if the differences are minor. But the EU/NA swap just had different marketing names for, i dunno, reasons. Game was the same.

Really good review of the difficult compilation project. Good work.

Thanks dude. Everyone hates writing compilations, but I generally don't mind them. That said, I don't want to see another one for awhile.

Incidentally, do you also think that Bloodlines > everything else Castlevania? Does your Sega love run that deep?

Compilation reviews are a mixed bag for me. I liked doing my Kingdom Hearts compilation because I was able to condense my feelings on each game into, at most, a paragraph; but if I struggle doing that, they are a bear to get through.

I did like this one, even if it made this compilation look like a lazily put together dog, with how it just gives you the same few games over and over again while ignoring a lot of the series. Hell, I wouldn't touch it simply because I have some familiarity with about everything here except the Game Boy one in some form, while all the ones I don't know very well are the ones that aren't here, as I don't think I've played a Contra game at all from after the 16-bit era.

There are a bunch that aren't here, which makes me confident we'll see a volume two. The PS1 titles were made by Appaloosa and were pretty much universally panned, but the PS2 pair were decent. I think Shattered Soldier was one of them. More importantly though: Contra ReBirth and Contra 4 were great games by all accounts.

On a related note, this is the new Contra game coming out NEXT MONTH:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInYDl8HsQU

Can't. Tell. If. Serious.

Neo Contra was a pretty wacky game, too, but that turned out to be my favorite of the modern-day Contras, so I'm keeping an open mind. It's being directed by the guy who also did Contra III, Hard Corps, and Shattered Soldier, so hopefully it'll be on the quality of those first two games; I wasn't the biggest fan of Shattered Soldier.