Grab your Spread Guns and hoof it through an audio overload of amazing Contra tunes, from its arcade origins to the 16-bit technological marvels.
0:00:00 – Jungle Battle (Contra)
0:17:56 – Maze Fortress 1 (Contra)
0:19:34 – Maze Fortress 3D Boss (Contra)
0:21:00 – Waterfall of Bloodshed (Contra)
0:22:39 – Shivery Beat (Contra)
0:34:52 – Thunder Landing (Super C)
0:36:58 – In a Tight Squeeze (Super C)
0:38:25 – Jungle Juncture (Super C)
0:40:55 – Hotter Than Hell (Super C)
0:55:38 – It’s Time For Revenge (Contra III)
0:57:59 – Battle Runner (Contra III)
1:01:51 – Daredevil (Contra III)
1:18:10 – The Hard Corps (Contra Hard Corps)
1:21:11 – Something Wonderful (Contra Hard Corps)
1:23:41 – GTR Attack! (Contra Hard Corps)
1:35:55 – Another Medley (Contra ReBirth)
oh <strongYES! a new vgmpire! Thanks so much!
Also, WOW you’ve done this many episodes and haven’t done Contra yet?? Dang. Oh Brett, always avoiding the low-hanging fruits!
I never really played in arcades too much, but playing thru the SNK collection recently showed how Genesisy a lot of arcade games sounded, and I think the first arcade Contra had a lot of Genesis sound, too.
Well it had an FM sound. The Genesis used a Yamaha FM synthesis chip, as did most arcade games made between the late 80’s and early 90’s. But yeah, if you weren’t into arcades during that era, you wouldn’t know.
Hot damn another episode and a classic franchise to boot.
Have to say, the uptick in frequency of episodes is pretty exciting too.
Hey Brett and Patrick, another great episode! Gotta say, I loved hearing the arcade versions back to back with the NES versions. If folks here haven’t yet, you all need to go out and listen to the MSX2 version. The game sucks, but the OST is considered by some to be the best. https://vgmrips.net/packs/pack/contra-msx2
I gotta say, I loved Super Contra 3 back in the day but I was not a huge fan of Hard Corp’s music. It’s grown on me, especially the ending track, but even as a Sega nerd, I was all about SC3.
Speaking of which, given the chat at the end of the episode about the Golden Axe episode and Genesis bashing, I went back and checked the comments…..Yup, that was me taking up half the freaking comments section, going to bat for the Genesis. But man, Gilbert and Antista were insufferable dickwads on that episode. That said, it looks like that comments section was the time and place where Patrick turned me on to Sakimoto and Iwata’s work on Gauntlet IV. Patrick, thank you. Here’s my response, 5 years later: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K5mC3CFZHkM
The Hard Corps music has a lot of “Oriental” type music in it, it sounds like it would fit Goemon better than Contra.
Awesome episode, Contra music is bad ass! I love the strong catchy melodies of the NES games, but also the sheer action brutality of Contra 3’s score. It’s very atmospheric. I will say, as a European I actually think we lucked out with the Probotector make overs. In hindsight, the robots were certainly Appleseed knock-offs, but at the time they did look very cool! Our Contra 3 ended up looking like BubbleGum Crisis. 🙂
Always happy to see a surprise VGMpire on wednesday. On a related note if you can’t wait for the next contra game there is a cool game called Blazing Chrome that seems to take a lot of inspiration from contra out now.