Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Konami's 1992 run-and-gun shooter for the Super Nintendo, Contra III: The Alien Wars.

It is the year 2636, and Red Falcon's invasion force has returned to Earth to carry out another of its genocidal campaigns. Jimbo and Sully - descendants of Bill and Lance - now stand poised to take on the renewed alien threat.

Contra III takes the elements that defined the first two Contra titles and polishes them to a blinding finish. The action is now split between side-scrolling, top-down, and auto-scrolling segments spanning six stages, and each features a non-stop barrage of impressive set-pieces and boss fights. The pacing gives it the feel of an action movie more than a game: you'll rarely go more than a few screens without encountering some sort of unique challenge to break up the flow of the action, and there's a huge amount of variety between them.

The presentation has been similarly amped up. The massive boss monsters make use of fancy Mode 7 rotation and scaling effects, explosions and enemy sprites regularly flood the screen without much slowdown or flicker (until you set off a bomb, at least), and the synth-heavy soundtrack does a nice job of setting a driving tone that suits the action well.

The controls are responsive and make good use of the SNES pad's extra buttons, and though you only see the proper ending by beating it on hard, the difficulty settings are well-balanced to accommodate players of all skill levels.

Contra III: The Alien Wars was a pitch-perfect 16-bit update to one of the NES's most beloved franchises, and despite being such an early release for the SNES, it's still looked upon as one of the system's best titles. In this era of gaming, Konami, it seemed, could truly do no wrong.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

[JuraIbis]

This is the best one. That feeling when you L+R dual flamethrowers and jump is insane as a kid.

[Engorged_Snake]

The first 2 levels of this game really made my elementary school afternoons a joy to experience.

[NinjaxShadowXx]

The ending credits hit so hard what an epic feeling

[susanfit]

Contra III was developed by Konami with a team led by Nobuya Nakazato. Although this was Nakazato's third year at Konami, Contra III is the first Contra game he worked on, having only previously done informal playtesting for Super C (1990). He believed the original arcade version of Contra (1987) was difficult to play because of its vertical screen, but he did enjoy the Famicom port. Nakazato's team worked in Konami's new offices in Tokyo, seated next to the arcade team that had developed Contra. Nakazato shared progress on Contra III with the arcade team and received positive feedback. In early coverage, the game was known as Contra IV. Nintendo Power reported the name change to Contra III: The Alien Wars in its coverage of Winter CES in 1992.

Nakazato believed Contra had a low-budget movie theme.  To emphasize this, he asked the sound team to change the music as the stages progressed to give a cinematic style. He also believed the action in earlier Contra games is too realistic, so for Contra III he wanted to include more comical elements. He was concerned the change may upset series fans, but believed it would be more entertaining.  One scene added to accomplish this is a sequence where the player hangs from flying missiles. This strains the Super NES's sprite capabilities, so the team used background tiles to draw the helicopter and missiles in the scene. Making the graphics appear to move like sprites in the foreground required clever programming tricks. The Super NES allowed for "raster scrolling", which allowed the programmers to change the graphics for each scanline. The programmers shifted the vertical sync and cut off the sprites at the scanline. The restriction is that graphics can only move horizontally along the scanline to achieve the illusion that they are actually sprites in the foreground.

Nakazato was concerned the traditional pattern of weak enemies followed by a boss fight was becoming mundane and did not want players to feel "in for the long haul" every play session. To combat this, he established a key concept for something interesting to happen every three screen scrolls. This made the game content feel more dense and gave it a "boss rush" type feel. Nakazato believed Contra III's fast-paced action was going against the trend of home console games shifting to slow-paced strategy and role-playing games, and is good for quick-starting stress relief.

Contra III was released in Japan on February 28, 1992, and North America on March 26 of that year.

[RealBlackEssence]

First of all, NintendoComplete, I've been a fan of you for several years now, and I get so positively, in a GOOD way, mad with you over how good you are when gaming. You absolutely killed this playthrough of Contra 3, which is beloved to me and my siblings. I end up fussin' at the TV of how good you are and that means you're doing something right! LOL! Keep up with the amazing gaming! You, the late Saikyomog, and XRavenXP are one of the best in retro gaming! Love and lovingly hate you-BlackEssence🤣

[cherokeefit]

I love this gem. I play if often. People say they have favourite games but do they really? I never grow tired of this game despite being 12 when this game came out. Glad I have my two carts of this game. Gotta preserve video games at all cost.

[IgnotusPerIgnotium]

One of the first games I got for my snes, back then Konami was untouchable.

[campbellsoup]

I love the Contra games on both the SNES and Genesis. They are both action-packed and very hard. Glad I get to play these on my PS4, but boy are they HARD!

[blukmagetypeR]

0:40 (Japanese version _(Contra Spirits)_ translated into English)

*Now, the greatest battle of Contra **_(the Soul Army)_** begins.*

[Bill»] "They... are unforgivable."
[Lance»] "Let's greet them in a flashy way!!"

[Coolpro]

I all ways loved this contra series I remember watching my brother and his friends play it and I still like the contra series

[rcblazer]

This was the very first game I owned on the Super Nintendo!

[GarthTheDestroyer]

And if you liked that opening, I'd just like to point out that this game predates the Independence Day movie by about four years.

[saloriumtoledo]

Never finished it, was too hard for me. Especially last levels. How do I know? Because later, with internet, I suddenly recognized I died on the last bosses. So technically I almost finished this game.
Still prefer Contra Hard Corps. Thank you for great walkthrough as usual!

[Erinski]

That epic opening, with the city being razed, and the alien head in the sky, with the eerie whine is still seared in my brain. I remember watching "Independence Day" in the theater, with the scene of the same thing happening to the White House; being scandalized, and loudly blurting out "They stole that from Contra 3!"

[pandareemy]

One of my favorite games as a kid, even though I couldn't get past the third level!

[yusakug]

This is such an over the top tribute to 80s masculinity that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was clinically proven that it could cause early puberty just by playing it.

[bryany]

One of brother and ours favorites! Ordered it blind in the mail from those old funco mail order lists!

[OMAR]

Still to this day, one of the best displays of sound, music and audio playback from the SNES… What a game

[TheFatBastid]

I think it was legally required of every player to strike that pose at 3:28

[coomtothebroom]

Hard as nails game but man is it fun. Holy crud, you did great on the final boss! 😦