I AM VERY BAD AT THIS.
Konami recently released three collections of their old games. Like the others, the Contra Anniversary Collection is made by the masters over at M2. I am terrible at these games, but that doesn’t mean the collection isn’t fantastic.
PLATFORMS: SWITCH, XB1, PS4, PC
MSRP: $19.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $19.99
The Contra Collection has a total of seven unique titles, with other titles being various regional releases. It’s weird to see how different the visuals are on the original Contra on NES compared to the more dynamic environments in the Famicom version. The PAL Probotector titles run slower by default making them a bit easier to play. The biggest difference by far is the Japanese version of Contra: Hard Corps being much easier to play in comparison to the extremely difficult American and European releases.
The selection is also extremely good as it excludes the bad to mediocre PS1 titles. No games in this collection, including the original arcade Contra titles, are bad. The only titles missing are the original Probotector titles for the NES, which is an odd exclusion for something so complete.
All the games play extremely well and have plenty of visual options. The stand out is the GameBoy title Operation C. The pea green filter looks stunning on a large screen display and makes me want more GameBoy titles playable in this manner. The least impressive is the arcade titles because of the original games having a vertical monitor. There’s no option to make the arcade titles fill the screen vertically without stretching the image so wide that nothing is visible. I can rotate my monitor in the options, but since I am on a TV that is not going to happen and I can only see that being used by Switch and PC owners.
Other than feeling bad about my lack of skill with the Contra series, I love this collection. I have zero nostalgia for any of these titles and they are still fantastic (if not incredibly hard). With the update that added the Japanese versions of the games I think this is a crazy bundle to pass up. Co-op, seven unique games, and plenty of challenge wrapped up into one collection. Do not skip.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
