Bionic Commando doesn’t have its mobility. Metroid doesn’t have its tight animation or stances. Mega Man doesn’t have its shooting angles. Mechanically speaking, Contra may very well have the most versatile and responsive shooter designs of the early arcades and NES. After Rocket Knight, Nakazato returned to Contra, wielding the same arsenal of tricks plus a bullet belt of imaginative action set pieces. ![]() The result was a clever action platformer that experimented with the well-worn genre’s conventions. In contrast is the Nakazato’s animated film-esque Rocket Knight Adventures, whose essentialist design freed him from the legacy of top-down sequences and forced him to be as creative within the pure side-scrolling template as possible. 1992’s The Alien Wars used the SNES’ processor to create an explosive game with dazzling non-stop visuals, switchable weapons, and intense action, framing the original’s Rambo premise with a cyberpunk aesthetic that looks like The Terminator was assimilated by John Carpenter’s Thing. Contra: Hard Corps distilled Contra III: Alien Wars’ brazen creativity down to its run and gun foundation, creating a single minded epic that is equal parts twitch shooter and blockbuster action flick.įor three games over as many years, Konami gave Nobuya Nakazato freedom to test the limits of 16-bit high action, using their classic arcade franchise as a blueprint. Not only does this succinctly indicate where the game’s tonal priorities are, it’s also the designers giving you some honest advice: charge forward until every enemy is demolished. ![]() Contra: Hard Corps opens to a robotic army assaulting a sprawling future city only to be decimated by a charging tank that ejects your character guns blazing into an active warzone.
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