Super C (NES Review)
October 25, 2024 6 Comments
Super C
aka Probotector II: Return of the Evil Forces
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released February 2, 1990
Developed by Konami
Included in Contra Anniversary Collection
Like most of Super C for the NES, this isn’t from the coin-op. And thank God for it.
And you thought Contra on the NES was a major leap over the arcade game. That’s NOTHING compared to the gigantic leap Super C made. A leap so high that the letters O-N-T-R-A didn’t make it! At least in the United States, and can you blame them? They had to jump over an ocean to get here. An ocean! Not “Ocean” though as in the game publisher that’s like “why does everyone hate LJN? Did you like any game made by us?” But, I digress. The bad news with Super C is that the top-down stuff from the arcade is here too. The good news is the top-down stuff plays better on the NES. It’s not amazing, and it still makes Contra as a franchise feel like an also-ran. Even mixing it with the side-scrolling genre doesn’t make it stand out in what is an exceptionally crowded field. It really doesn’t help that, for a brief window, Super C has ghastly visibility issues. I tried using a CRT filter, which works on some NES games with noisy backgrounds. It didn’t help with Super C at all. Hey, I love the effort to make an otherwise average game design stand out as a viable set piece. But, I prize being able to see what’s going on more than I do the facade of a new area. But, as much as I miss the third person bases, the two top-down levels don’t suck. Besides visibility issues, they ain’t too bad at all. They work better with the bigger playfield of the NES.
Can you see that I’m about to die?
The other good news is that Super C is so fun that, if not for those top-down levels, I think we’d be talking about whether or not it’s better than the original. It’s insane that they took a mediocre coin-op and turned it into THIS, because Super C is fantastic! They added several levels and set-pieces, and almost all of the additional content is of the side-scrolling variety. In other words, they added more of the stuff that would make people want a sequel to Contra in the first place! Everything wrong with the coin-op’s concept is fixed here, and everything that didn’t work there works here. Things I didn’t expect. For example, everything wrong with the jungle stage in arcades had nothing at all to do with the logical flaw of dumping the third-person areas. It was just a lazily designed stage that relies on foreground objects blocking your view for challenge, then dumps straight into what is the 7th boss in the NES game.
The section with earthquakes manages to be both fair and thrilling without any “gotchas.” This is such an impressive sequel.
In Super C, the jungle level is fine. While it still lacks platforms for the actual jungle part of the jungle level, the pacing of when and where enemies are utilized is smarter. No foreground to block your view, either. Then, they added a memorable mini-boss and a better finale. Instead of a jarring hard cut to the alien base, you run through the earthquake section pictured above. With it comes the first truly tricky platforming section in home Contra history. It’s almost like Konami had the same observations I had: why even have a platform game without edge-of-your-seat jumps? The historically awesome, effective jumping physics are copied exactly from the original NES game, so why not be equal parts platforming AND bullet dodging? The first NES Contra did that, and last I checked, it was pretty sweet. The coin-op doesn’t have a viable jump at all. You can’t even clear a gun with your jump. If a gun you don’t want lands in front of you, you have to wait for it to vanish. If it is possible to jump over it, I never accomplished it.
Super C leans hard into the platforming side of the game multiple times, something I really don’t think the original ever did. In this segment, the ceiling raises and lowers. It’s genuinely thrilling, and there’s multiple jumps that saw me holding my breath. What a wonderful game!
In retrospect, that might be the one thing missing from the original NES Contra. There, the platforming isn’t amazing. There’s hardly any thrilling jumps. I can’t and won’t hold it against that game, because platforming isn’t the point. It’s a means to an end for Contra’s defensive game. Even when it feels like a traditional platformer in stages like the Hanger or Energy Zone, it’s actually more timing-based than accuracy-based. That’s certainly not the case with the sequel, which elegantly steers into a platforming focus on multiple occasions. In the arcade, levels felt like straight 2D lines with only the illusion of platforming. On the NES, Super C is a run & gun with a heavy emphasis on platforming, and it’s remarkable how transformative that is. On the NES, the jungle might still be the weakest side-scrolling stage between the two real Contra games (Contra Force is coming up NEXT at IGC, even if it’s not next sequentially), and it still rises to the level of better-than-decent. It proves within the first third of the game that NES Super C is no half-assed effort. There’s new mini-bosses. There’s new full-sized bosses. They kept all the weapons from before except the flamethrower. Oh, there’s still a flamethrower, but it’s different this time. I don’t feel like a complete tool using it, because now, it looks like this:
It doesn’t look great in screenshots, but it’s awesome. Instead of bullets doing ridiculous corkscrews, the flamethrower now shoots the biggest bullets in Contra, which explode with splash damage upon impact. This was in the coin-op too, but it was made to look like a grenade launcher. I like shooting fireballs better!
Super C uses the same engine as the first game, and much like the first game, it’s not a lives code that trivializes the difficulty. Autofire and the spread gun will do it. Hell, even the flamethrower is now overpowered with autofire. So, I decided to use the same test I created for Contra: beat the game, without autofire, the lives code, or emulation-based shenanigans. First, I cheesed the game a few times with autofire (including a co-op game). The third game, I had a no-death, no-cheating run. I’ve played Super C significantly less than Contra, so that gives you an idea of just how much autofire and the spreader annihilates the challenge of the NES Contra games. It’s not like I’m a professional gamer over here, but with autofire, both Contra and Super C are some of the breeziest side-scrolling run & guns I’ve played. Hell, I think I would have run the table the first time around, but I messed-up several jumps along the way. Jumps I, if not clocked, learned to pace-myself and wait for during co-op. The real challenge came when I disabled autofire entirely and fired up the Japanese ROM. I made it to the second boss before I died, and I genuinely believe if I had never swapped the spread gun for the laser (which, in two previous solo sessions, I’d barely seen and hadn’t used), I would have gone a lot further without dying.
Death #1. Oh, and this time the electrodes and laser kill you.
Like with Contra, playing Super C straight-up, on its terms, mostly made me focus on the item drops. This time, I learned how unevenly-distributed the guns are. It became pretty clean early into the game that Super C sometimes becomes more stingy with the weapons. It really started after the second level. At the start of the third stage, the first two items it gave me were rapid fire and a screen-clearing bomb. It was quite a distance from the start of the level that I got my first REAL gun, the machine gun. During a one-off set-piece where a cannon fires a series of bombs, I ate death #2 right before I collected the laser. Thankfully it was waiting for me when I came back to life. Death #3 came against the six-legged robot, at which point I learned that I could have stood on top of it, because I landed on it when I respawned. Except, you can’t shoot down at it. The target is underneath it. Death #4. Same f’n mini-boss. I was THIS close to a game over here, but it blew up at the last second. I got a free life too.
I didn’t get my beloved spread gun back until I reached the earthquake section, but I ate death #5 on the base boss, followed by death #6. Game. Over.
Rather than start over, I was curious if I could make it to the end with just the continues it gives me. Nobody expects gaming super heroics from me. Again, I’m certain that I’m capable of brute-forcing most games through repetition to the point that I could ace most games. There’s some that I feel are out of my reach. Like, there’s no way in hell I could do a no-death run through something like Battletoads. But, I think most people, if they chained themselves to one game and one game only, could drill a full ace into muscle memory. That’s not the barometer. Perfection isn’t. The question is “could an average gamer, with a normal non-autofire controller and no access to the 10 lives cheat beat Super C in 1990?” Yep. It’s not that hard. Like Contra or Castlevania, Super C’s difficulty is vastly overstated. And hey, I made it through the entire third level without dying. Not only that but I literally let out a cheer three times in this level alone: for the cannon, the six-legged robot, and the base. I made it to where the vertical section of level four starts before I STUPIDLY threw away a life by starting to climb before the bombs fell. Idiot. And then soon after, I gave up another death. Another change from Contra is there’s a lot more stuff to dodge, and the turrets take more hits to kill.
The stinginess with the items was still in full force as I reached the elevator. When it finally spit out guns, it was only the machine gun and the rapid fire. Little redundant there, but hey, that’s literally how the first Contra starts. I died again and fell to my last life without any guns and without even seeing the 4th boss. Thankfully I shot the right canister to get the spread gun. I just needed to hold on for dear life, but I assumed that, even if I get an extra life, I wasn’t going to make it much further. I was wrong, and Super C totally confirmed to me that the spread gun is the most overpowered gun in the game. I did manage to beat the 4th boss, but no extra life yet. I was only 1,000 points short, and got it right after I started the next stage. In fact, I ran through level 5 without a single death. Spread gun kept. Scored another extra life from the boss. I made it through stage 6 without dying too, and was near the end of stage 7, and then it happened.
I had defeated the egg thing, but it spits the aliens out in unpredictable trajectories, and it caught me. I had one floor left of these things, and the next one ate up every single life I had except one. I did end up getting another extra life, giving me two to fight the 7th boss without any special gun. I did manage to ping it to death, but I lost a life in the process too.
Final level, no lives, no guns, but still on my 2nd continue and..
Yep, that’ll do.
I did it! One continue, no codes, and no cheating of any kind. And honestly, if I went again, I think I could probably make it without a game over at all. Swapping the spread for the laser in level two stupid, especially since this Contra is quite miserly with the guns at times. The next spread gun wasn’t spawned until right before the third boss. Hell, I’m pretty sure the first laser isn’t spawned until the second level. And yet, sometimes the game spits out weapon chances right after you just had one. The pacing is all over the place. Is that why Super C isn’t remembered as fondly as Contra? It can’t be because it’s a sequel. This is video games. Sequels being better is the norm.
My final death, and I was sh*tting myself because it happened early in the fight. But, I discovered that you can lean-up against the front leg of the final boss and aim diagonally for a direct line to the alien crab sponge monster’s weak point. It’s not a cinch after that. The millipede it spits out is invincible so you have to get a feel for its timing. Decent final boss. Sure beats ending the game on a top-down section, like the coin-op did.
Or, what if it’s something dumber? I’m absolutely open to the possibility that the lack of the Konami code is the reason. It’s not an accident that it’s gaming’s most famous cheat code. It’s harmonious. Rolls right off the tongue. But, it’s long enough that it has a secret handshake vibe to it. If you know the code, you’re in the club. The “I take video games at least seriously enough to know how to get 30 lives in Contra without looking it up” club. But, I’ve already talked about that excuse. Think EVEN DUMBER.
Too dumb. Little less.
What if Super C didn’t do as well because it was called “Super C” instead of “Super Contra?” I sure hope that’s not the reason, but you can’t rule it out. I’d like to take it for granted that kids of the 80s/90s knew a sequel when they saw it. Maybe they did. But maybe their parents didn’t. Mom & Dad might know that Junior loves a game called “Contra” but, when browsing games, it might not be self-evident that Super C is Contra. I’m guessing Contra had a lot of casual buys from parents for their kids. Great cover art. Trendy. Looks like the movies Junior likes. Super C has okay cover art, but nowhere near as eye-catching or memorable as the first game. The letter C is the same. That’s it. It’s not exactly McDonald’s-like memorable, especially back then.
Even if you assume the cover is close enough to the original (not even close), that doesn’t mean people not in the know will instantly connect the two. As dumb an excuse as that is, it had to factor in a little bit. It’s called “Super C.” Same engine. Same guns. Same alien invasion. Same platform. But, not the same name. And they did it because the word “contra” was topically hot for non-gaming reasons at the time. Guys, we can’t call it “Contra” because one or two newspapers compared our game to the Iran-Contra Affair! Branding? To hell with branding! Think of the frowny faces! They’ll wag their fingers SO HARD at us!
This boss (no longer the final boss like it was in the arcade game) would later sign a two-game contract with Nintendo, and appear in the game StarTropics as the character “Zoda.” It even got top-billing in the sequel! Then, like so many other 90s bosses, it faded into obscurity. Today, you can meet it at Comic-Con, and for $10 extra get its autograph.
As far as games that slipped through the cracks of history, Super C might be the most inexplicable. It really does feel like a grander version of Contra. On the NES, the bosses are bigger, the challenge is harder, the flamethrower is better, the laser is.. well, actually it’s worse. But the spread gun is god-tier now, and the level design assures that Super C is literally non-stop fun. This is what you want in a sequel. I might not be a huge fan of the top-down levels, but compared to some NES top-down shooters, they’re clearly in an elite class for the platform. I can’t say it’s better than Contra because the pacing and platforms aren’t absolutely flawless this go around. But, it’s not that far behind the original. So, what do *I* think happened? Three words and one number: Super Mario Bros. 3. I think that Contra transcends tastes and genres TODAY, in 2024. I’m guessing it didn’t at the time. But, do you know what franchise absolutely did? Mario. And, in 1990, Super Mario Bros. 3 was the first new release EVENT of the modern gaming era (IE after Atari). A game that was such a moment in the industry’s history that, for the US release, an entire movie was part of the hype. When did Mario 3 come out in the United States? February of 1990. When did Super C come out here? April of 1990. Ouch.
The new set-pieces all work really well too. This feels a LOT more like an alien invasion than the first game.
It’s never just one thing, of course. I’ve come up with four valid reasons that, on their own, would be heartbreaking in their pettiness as reasons why the NES Super C has little-to-no historic clout. Top-down replacing 3rd person? Dumb. No Konami code? Not sure why they did that. Changing the name? Needlessly risky. Launching against what had been the biggest video game in history up to that point? Oof. Yet, none of them account for the complete lack of prestige Super C has to it. Add them all up though, and it’s a perfect storm of bad timing and bad decisions. In reality, Super C isn’t just a good sequel, but it’s a GREAT video game, all on its own. If this had been the first game in the series, I honestly think there’s a chance the conversation around Contra would be mostly unchanged, and the only difference is we’d be talking about Super C and not Contra as a legitimate contender for the Greatest of All-Time. There’s no insurmountable stakes. The action is non-stop, intense, but SO enjoyable. It’s epic, and beautiful, and one of the best co-op releases to grace 8-bits. What more could you ask for? Contra might be the dark horse of the GOAT conversation, but Super C is the clear favorite in the conversation “what is the most underrated NES game?” Hot damn, this franchise is awesome AND interesting, and I love it.
Verdict: YES!
With this YES!, I feel comfortable saying Contra Anniversary Collection is worth $19.99. Hell, it’s worth it for the two NES games alone. That means the 16-bit games are a spectacular end-zone dance.
PART OF THE CONTRA REVIEW SERIES!
Contra
PART OF THE CONTRA REVIEW SERIES!
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