farlaff said:
@italics: love it @bold: to this day, I still think this is the best action/shooter ever made. I played it so, so much I could go on hard any time and beat it without dying, even with the excruciating difficulty. But then one night, on a Saturday in 92 or 93 (probably the latter), my folks were travelling and I had three friends come home for a full night of gaming (one of them a dear cousin that sadly passed away a few years ago). We played lots of Street Fighter, Top Gear and other multiplayer games, rotating the four according to wins (only two controllers could be used by then, for those who did not live those times), but at one time one of the other friends said: why don't we try to beat Contra III in two player hard mode? (way harder than in single, since the actions of one player affect the moving of the screen and can screw the other's movement, which usually renders lots of friendly kills). He used to play pretty much as well as I did, and I said: "but the guys will be left out of the rotation". The two other ones said we should go for it, as it was very late at night and they were already tired. I remember we played the first three stages very, very well, even without previous co-op training between us. Then came the air battle and things really started to heat! We managed to clear that and the 5th stage, going very confidently into the Final Boss. IIRC, the first form went, ahm, ok, I guess, but we started getting destroyed by the two final forms. We died. A LOT! That pesky sound/noise of losing a life being more constant and getting to our nerves! But no continue was allowed in our "rules". Two much adrenaline was on it that we did not know who lost the most lives, but we kept going, pushing, shooting, and trying to avoid the incoming attacks. We ended up doing it, in our first try, and could not believe our eyes. Probably Midnight and a bunch of 15-16 year olds were screaming like crazy, so the neighbors probably felt that was weird. I remember it vividly and it's one of the best memories of my (long) gaming life, ever. It was a blast lol. |
