Not as good as Operation C, but still an impressive port. A lot of bosses had to be cut as well as the bike stage (which I'm actually okay with- there was just way too much RNG involved on anything past normal), leaving us with just five total stages this time. The awkward overhead stages are also back, but they're not nearly as awkward this time around since there's no scaling nor rotation since the gameboy lacked shoulder buttons.
It's also worth noting that, at least in my playthrough on normal, fire seems to be the go-to weapon here when it comes to DPS. Pretty interesting considering the best weapon in the SNES game was hot-swapping between two crushers.
This version does do one thing better than Contra 3 on the SNES in my opinion- it gives you an actual ending for playing on normal. One of my biggest gripes with the SNES version is that it forces you to play on hard in order to get anything other than a wall of text. I always thought this was incredibly stupid and pretentious (and I await your hate replies with open arms for saying it, lol).
It's also worth noting that, at least in my playthrough on normal, fire seems to be the go-to weapon here when it comes to DPS. Pretty interesting considering the best weapon in the SNES game was hot-swapping between two crushers.
This version does do one thing better than Contra 3 on the SNES in my opinion- it gives you an actual ending for playing on normal. One of my biggest gripes with the SNES version is that it forces you to play on hard in order to get anything other than a wall of text. I always thought this was incredibly stupid and pretentious (and I await your hate replies with open arms for saying it, lol).