The tiniest change in a game can sometimes impact your entire outlook.
I am someone who can beat Contra for the Nintendo Entertainment System without dying. Note that I stated I can perform this feat, not that I always will pull it off. But it has been done! I have conquered Contra without a single loss, and I have a recording from fifteen years ago to prove it! And why can I achieve such a deed? Because I have been playing Contra since I was five, and I have inadvertently memorized about 80% of the game. I know I have permanently retained everything up through Level 3, as that was where my neighbor and I used to get to when I was in primary school (and then one of us would “scroll” the other to death, and we would have to stop playing so as to punch each other). Anything past Level 3 I learned through a combination of playing Contra infinitely when my brain was still young and growing, and practicing with save states when my brain was otherwise distracted by girls. In the end, I accomplished something that few (probably thousands) people can say: I can beat Contra without getting hit once. I can even continue through a second loop and do it again!
Though that doesn’t mean I think I’m any good at Contra.
Look at any given Contra game (except Contra Force) and you will find a world that is openly hostile to any and all player life (and Contra Force is hostile in different ways). From the first second any given Contra protagonist enters the scene, there are flying bullets, backpacked bullies, and an endless barrage of explosions ready to put Bill and/or Lance into an early grave. This is not some “measured” action universe like Mega Man or Castlevania; no, the average Contra game is much closer to the shoot ‘em up, bullet hell universes of Space Harrier or R-Type. The secret to surviving Contra has always been good reflexes and a constant understanding of literally everything currently appearing on the screen. There’s a soldier: he only shoots straight and at rough diagonals. There’s a mortar cannon: that thing shoots straight up, and then you have to dodge raining debris in a focused area. There’s a flying alien: that sucker tries to grab you and drag you upwards. Account for everything you can see, eliminate the greatest threats first, and you just might get to the beating heart of the matter…
Unfortunately, my brain does not work like that. Or, to be precise, my brain works exactly like that, just not fast enough to do any good. Or perhaps enough good…
Contra: Operation Galuga released on February 21, 2024. Earlier that month, a demo was released. The demo was a mishmash of the first and third levels of the soon-be-released game, and was deliberately evocative of iconic bosses and areas from the first Contra adventure (never to be confused with C: The Contra Adventure). That demo was deliberately meant to tickle the brains of anyone that played the original Contra 2,789,309 times, and it set this rube up to buy Contra: Operation Galuga immediately on release day. I even beat the demo without needing a continue! On the first try! I am going to sweep through C:OG when it comes out like a true Contra (which is apparently a proper noun again)!
But when Contra: Operation Galuga was actually released, it was… demoralizing.
Contra: Operation Galuga is a hard game, y’all! You are constantly under assault, enemies are carefully positioned to snipe your poor Contra at all times, and bosses seem to revel in secondary forms and patterns that pull new attacks out of their asses-that-are-also-heads. Contra: Operation Galuga should be conquerable in a credit for someone with amazing reflexes… But that ain’t me, jack. And, unfortunately, there are a few weird design choices that make the whole thing a little more frustrating than it needs to be. Selectable characters with different moves and skills are great! But give me a warning before I select a new character and have to find out on the fly that she has 66% health. Or if a character switches the “dash forward and avoid danger” button to “stand perfectly still and shoot a grappling hook straight up”. And do not even get me started on at least one specific weapon/character combination transforming their overloads from “the most useful thing ever” to “stand still and inevitably get hit”. Contra: Operation Galuga encourages learning the differences between weapons and characters through experimentation, which is cool for attacking aggressively, but outright upsetting when you are trying to make some progress against the alien hordes. Let me beat the game first! Then I can experiment with the potential Gradius reference!
But that same trial-by-fire was the only reason I finished Contra: Operation Galuga..
Contra: Operation Galuga already throws the player a mercy right at the start: you have a life meter. Like the fair versions of Contra: Hard Corps, this is not a one-hit kill affair (unless you turn that masochistic feature on), and you have room to make a few mistakes before your Contra is face down in a puddle of backpacker blood. But your health is all you have. There are no pickups or med kits or anything else that will restore a lost sliver of wellbeing. You either score an extra life through points/carnage, or nothing. You get smacked by an errant bullet right there at the start of the level, you are carrying that wound straight through to the final boss. No recovery for Contra.
But! There are customizable perks available in Contra: Operation Galuga. Some of the perks are physical abilities (anybody want a higher double jump?), some perks are general bonuses (an extra health point!), and some perks are gameplay rules (always start a level with lasers immediately available). The general idea seems to be that you can customize your Contra to function in a way that best suits your play style, and you can purchase perks that will distinctly benefit your own strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you are practically invincible if you can exploit an aerial dash’s i-frames. Maybe you need a little extra boost at the start of every level with a handy machine gun. And maybe you want to make Contra: Operation Galuga a completely different game with the “Heal on Overload” perk…
Here’s how this one works: you can overload any weapon at any time. An overload will activate a variable special attack that is powerful, but will obliterate the weapon from your inventory. Given you can only carry two unique weapons at a time, and the difference between having “spread” and “nothing” can make a significant difference in how many holes are in your skull, this is important. So, under normal circumstances, you can overload a weapon, and it probably helps, but there is no real guarantee a shield or fire dragon will save you at that immediate moment. Is it worth the risk of being demoted back to your piddling pellet shooter? Not unless you know exactly what is coming next. But with Heal on Overload equipped, you lose your weapon, get your super attack, and heal a whole health point every time you overload. This, without question, transforms the gameplay of Contra: Operation Galuga into something entirely unique. Now every gun powerup is a potential health refill. Now you can focus on one “main gun”, and use every secondary weapon to keep your Contra going. Now boss fights where weapon powerups are plentiful (at least on Normal mode) are infinitely more manageable, because every new gun is free recovery from a potential mistake. Without Heal on Overload, you have a maximum of three hits before you lose a life. With Heal on Overload, you can survive practically any battle while suffering through a hail of bullets. Cyclops death discs be damned, you will be back in action like nothing happened with a simple press of a shoulder button.
Suffice to say, I never needed to choose a different perk ever again.
And the difference that one simple perk did for my enjoyment of Contra: Operation Galuga is immeasurable. Constantly losing lives and having to continue (thus losing additional progress) was demoralizing during my initial run of Story Mode. I would eventually finish every level, but conquering each boss was less an accomplishment, and more of the relief of “now I never have to do that again”. You do not want that attitude when you are fighting through an arcade-style game that encourages multiple playthroughs! But with Heal on Overload, it was considerably more manageable. A mistake at the start of the level did not make me want to reset immediately, because a recovery option was close at hand. A potential level boss that revealed itself to be a midboss no longer felt like a punishment, because I could get my Contra back in fighting shape on the way to the actual final boss. And some of the levels that initially seemed like endurance marathons (aka anything involving a hover bike) were substantially wieldier when I knew I had a little extra gas in the tank. Heal on Overload changed the game in such wonderful ways!
And now that I have played Contra: Operation Galuga enough that I have practically memorized it like my beloved OG Contra, I no longer need Heal on Overload. But does that make me think that perk was worthless? No! I never would have gotten to the point where I could play Contra: Operation Galuga like I do now if I did not have the crutch of Heal on Overload to get my start. There are people with the reflexes to conquer this game out of the gate, and I can only imagine what it would be like to be one of those gods among people. For the rest of us, there is Heal on Overload, which allowed for enough practice wiggle room to “git gud”. I’m ready to show Beowulf how a real hero handles these hordes now, and I only got to that height thanks to one “minor” gameplay change.
So thank you, Heal on Overload. You saved the world, and my own outlook on obliterating tropical islands.
FGC #671 Contra: Operation Galuga
- System: Playstation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Switch was my system of choice, and the game only randomly crashed, like, six times. Don’t worry! It only conked out at save points.
- Number of players: Two simultaneous in Story Mode, four simultaneous in arcade mode. I hope to one day know at least one other person that is decent at Contra, left alone three.
Obliterate Nostalgia: This game is not a remake of Contra (1). That said, it feels a lot like Final Fantasy 7 Remake/Rebirth, as it seems like every boss and set piece from Contra must be featured somewhere. Adapting the fire-pipe area of Contra into ancient ruins for Contra: Operation Galuga is cool. Dogra the Armored Car being part of a speeder-bike chase is appropriate. Wedging Guldaf the Carrier Thingy into a pastoral village is checking off a box.- Favorite Weapon: Homing Missile. I realize it has all the precision of using a rocket launcher to play darts, but the charm point here is that I never have to aim at anything. Other weapons will inevitably get the job done faster, but this one requires the least worrying about gun orientation.
- Regarding the Secondary Weapons: So Lance and Bill define the “base” weapons, and other characters get an alternate version of a weapon or two. But when you play as Brad, who has every alternate weapon, you see they are overwhelmingly situational. And I kind of hate them! I can see you where each of them has their uses (for instance, Charge Spread absolutely wrecks some bullet-based areas/bosses), but when I pick up a Machine Gun, and it fires backwards, I feel like something has gone horribly wrong.
- Favorite Character: Browny has the best of all worlds: air dash, grappling hook, robot-dancing, and triple jump. His health bar is no great shakes, but that doesn’t matter in 1-hit mode, now does it? Brad Fang would win simply on concept if his jump-pounce wasn’t so finicky.
- Cheat Wish List: I would like to modify the standards of this game. You know what I mean? Like see how different characters work with different weapons/skills being available. Or attempt a run through where every single perk is enabled. I acknowledge it would neuter the challenge of this careful balance, but I’d like to experience overload-overload.
- Goodness Gracious: If I had a nickel for every time the first level of a game was a jungle, and, halfway through, the jungle burns down, and you have to fight your way through a jungle that is currently on fire, well, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
- Is this really a Contra game: At no point do you ride a missile straight into a beast’s heart. At least you get to ride helicopters in decidedly unrecommended ways…
Bite-Sized: I enjoy the Challenge Mode challenges. Or, to be precise, I enjoy that the majority of them are distinct challenges with dedicated chunks and variations from the original setup of the game. This could have just been a shooting gallery of “beat level 2 faster”, but no, these are alterations to the original challenges found in the main game. And they’re all like a minute long! That is very helpful!- Just play the gig, man: You have music options! You can attack aggressively while listening to the main soundtrack, some remixed soundtracks, classic soundtracks, Wayforward hits, and even an entire Castlevania replacement track list. Mind you, you have to do things like own the Castlevania Collection to do such a thing, but why wouldn’t you already have that?
- Did you know? Val Verde is a fictional country in South/Central America that was created by producer Steven E. de Souza. It first showed up in Commando (1985 movie), and was distinctly noted in Die Hard 2, Supercarrier (TV show), and Adventure Inc (also a TV show). De Souza claims that Predator took place there, too, but that was only confirmed in 2020’s Predator Hunting Grounds, and other Predator materials have named Guatemala or Colombia. And it is definitely mentioned in this game as the location where Beowulf encountered Lance and Bill somewhere back in the timeline. So anyway, just noting that Contra shares a fictional universe with a show that lost in the ratings to Murder, She Wrote.
- Would I play again: Yes. Obviously. With Heal on Overload in hand, I can do anything.
What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds! Hmph. More high stakes nostalgia. And there will be the undead, of course! So please look forward to it!
