NES #24: Super C

I thought it would be fun to go back through Super C after playing the original so recently. Super C is, of course, the sequel to the classic Contra. It was innovative in its use of the word "Super" in the title. In a year or two the Super Nintendo would come out, and every game would start to have "super" in its title. It also has an abbreviation in its title. This was right before the big abbreviation boom of the 90s. I think it was still pre-KFC. I don't think I've ever spent so much time talking about the title of a game, but I haven't written about Street Fighter 2010 or Super Castlevania IV yet. Don't think that this is the last time.

So Super C is one of the ultimate sequels on the NES. It is also one of the sequels that is the most like its predecessor. If you play the two games far apart from each other its hard to even tell the difference. About the only thing that I noticed the first time through was that the base levels from the first games are gone and replaced by fun vertical scrolling levels. This time I waited about a month between the two games, so I was much better able to notice the subtle differences.

What I noticed right away was that on Super C you walk much slower. This is very strange for a game series. In almost every case the next game in a series is faster. This annoyed me at first, but I got used to it. Another difference is that the weapons are better. The fire and laser were both pretty much useless in the first game, but in this one I don't always try to avoid them. There were even sections of the game where I wanted to get the fire gun. This is highly unusual. Also I noticed that the levels didn't have titles on this one. I don't know why, but I really missed that.

It also seems to me that Super C is easier than the original, although it is almost impossible to to be unbiased about it. If you've played through one of the games than you will already know the game play, and that should give you an advantage in the second game no matter which one it is. I sure had an easier time getting through it this time around though. I would say it took about a half dozen tries. I didn't even mean to beat it when I was playing it. I was just practicing because I had a little extra time and knew that it was going to be the next game I was going to play. My girlfriend left the room and actually didn't believe me ten minutes later when I told her I had beaten it. It was all so sudden.

Of course this is where it goes back to being unbiased. I just played through the original Contra a couple weeks before this one and was able to get back into the game play. As you already know Contra took me about a million tries and almost made me want to retire from gaming. So I breezed through Super C but does that make it an easier game? It's hard to say.

One thing I will say though is that they are both excellent games. If you look at the whole Contra series you've got one excellent Super Nintendo installment (which oddly leaves the word "Super" out of it's title) and then a baffling number of games that people don't care about much on just about every system. At best these games usually play like poor Gunstar Heroes clones. It was in the old days that this once proud franchise truly shines, and we should all feel lucky that there were two games that played so well released so close together which can still be found for around ten bucks. Of course there is another NES installment that just about ruins the whole narrative, but I'm not ready to talk about that one yet.