Contra Force (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Konami's 1992 run-and-gun shooter for the NES, Contra Force.

Showing up fairly late in the system’s life, Contra Force is the third and final Contra game for the NES. It came out six months after the SNES game Contra III: The Alien Wars landed on store shelves, and it was the one of the series' two US-exclusive releases (the other being C: The Contra Adventure, released in 1998 for the PlayStation.)

Contra Force began life as Ark Hound (アークハウンド), a game that bore no direct ties to any existing Konami franchises. It was shown off a fair bit by both the Japanese and American gaming media before it was rebranded - I seem to recall even Nintendo Power previewing it as Ark Hound at one point.

As you might expect, Contra Force has a markedly different feel from the other games in the series. It dispenses with the futuristic sci-fi shtick that Contra was known for, so don't expect to see any pink facehuggers or walls made of pulsating viscera.

Contra Force plops us into the shoes of a band of mercenaries (the "C-Force") that are fighting to bring down a terrorist organization in Neo City sometime in 1992.

The fight to reclaim Neo City covers five different run-and-gun stages that alternate between side-scrolling and top-down viewpoints like we saw in Super C, but in terms of gameplay, Contra Force is a very different beast.

At the outset you pick which C-Force member you'd like to play as. The choices include Burns, the machine gun-toting leader; Smith, a sniper with access to homing missiles; Beans, an explosives expert; and Iron, an ace with incendiaries.

Each commando has unique abilities and upgrades that can be activated through a Gradius-style power-up system: picking up a case will move the cursor on the icon bar one notch, and you can activate the highlighted option with a tap of the select button. These run the gamut from typical (faster rate of fire, heat seeking shells, etc.) to absurd and hilariously game-breaking (that invincible jump, wow!).

From the sub-screen, you can swap your character out for another, you can bring a second player in mid-game, or you can temporarily enlist the help of a CPU-controlled sidekick. Even though they will only remain active for five seconds at a time, you can call CPU players in to help as often as you like, and you can dictate the role you'd like them to play with the "battle plan" options.

But for as novel as the idea was to have the computer fill in for a buddy, when put into practice, it works about as well as the rest of the game does. That is to say, it doesn't.

Konami's late-gen NES games are notorious for their performance issues (remember Parodius?), but Contra Force is on a whole different level. The character sprites are large, nicely drawn, and some of them are impressively fluid in motion, but it quickly becomes clear that Contra Force pushes the console way too hard. It desperately wants to be a 16-bit game, but the no-compromises approach to presentation ends up seriously compromising the entire package.

In the single-player mode, the game runs significantly worse than the two-player modes in Contra and Super C did. The game's speed and frame-rate bog down whenever *anything* but the player sprite moves. If an enemy runs on to the screen, if a barrel explodes, or if there's a moving platform - any one of these things can cause severe slowdown.

And if you have a CPU controlled partner or a second player on the screen, expect to play most of the game at 60-70% its intended speed. It often borders on being unplayable.

If you'd like to know what the NES looks like in the throes of a heart attack, the last boss fight (28:08) offers a convincing example.

It is super easy, though, if you want to tough it out. You'll rarely see more than two enemies on screen at once, power-up icons are plentiful and easy to grind, and the invincible jump power makes dying virtually impossible. If you hold A down, you'll automatically jump again the instant you touch the ground, so you're only vulnerable *if* you take your finger off the A button. You can even bounce off of enemy bullets like this!

Contra Force‘s only saving grace is its soundtrack, and credit where credit is due: it's fantastic. The music is some of Konami's best on the NES.

The janky mechanics and the crippling performance issues bury the game, though. It didn't do any favors for the Contra and Konami brands, that's for sure.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

[NintendoComplete]

Contra Force has an absolutely phenomenal soundtrack. But then there's the game... 😞

[accountantmarcpasserbaroe]

i play this game again and again, and still amazed with the gameplay and the game story..

[cloudskipa]

Always liked this game, the slowdown hurts it but a small o/c in an emu does wonders for it.

[Ahmanish]

Actually for me, this game is very good, and music, this is amazing

[TKDBoy]

I remember picking this up once as a kid at the rental store, brining it home, and thinking "This isn't Contra..."

I wasn't even aware of the slowdown at the time. Back then I simply could not get past the title. As an adult I can move past that, but now I cannot get over that slowdown.

[krystalfan]

mainline canon (and fan accepted) contra may have the iconic team of bill and lance but force has the REAL duo
Beans and Burns

[eveningandrewgunko]

This isn't game, this is my childhood🥰 thank you for this. Also never understood how slow it actually goes:)

[Theryo]

this is the exact reason why i love nes games
a sniper riffle with a bullet of bazooka.

[tobee_gamer]

I’m here after the Angry video game nerd episode

[mariusamber]

I kinda liked it back in the day, but of course, it's not the original Contra or Super C. It could use some performance hacks for sure. It's also quite easy all things considered from what I recall.

[fame.ovuakp]

What a Nostalgia....Played this game 25 years ago cant wait to get my hands on Operation Galuga..

[LPetal]

This should have been released on the SNES, not the NES. My goodness... At least the soundtrack was pretty nice!

[conta]

Quando eu era criança eu tinha esse jogo em um clone de NES, mas lá ele tinha um bug que deixava a tela piscando, e isso me incomodava bastante, agora eu pretendo dar uma chance a esse game um dia 😃

[Krbyfan]

Imagine having a character in your game named Beans and the game turns out as absolute beans

[miroslavzima]

Oh god, we played this with my brother and cousin every summer break at my grandma´s house!
We always thought Iron is non-stop drunk! xD

[DTSP]

Music, gameplay immediately takes our brain back to where we were. Time travel is real 💀💀💀

[thecunninlynguist]

how coincidental...AVGN took a look at this yesterday too.

[razorchance]

as interesting of a history this game have *even to the point where it was mentioned in the anniversary collection* I feel like konami could've re released this in an improved state in the collection *even if M2 needs to make massive improvements for the performance, considering the collections are on more powerful hardware, but hey, maybe it's just a pipe dream, would've been nice to have this in the collection, whereas castlevania got kid Dracula on nes nearly 30 years after its original release.

[NelsonWin]

"Hi, It's me, Fox"
"Is that you Burns"
"AH yes, Can I order a Pizza please?"

[aniketsawant]

That's one badass vest Burns is wearing