Contra: Legacy of War (PS1) - Full Run ALL Clear

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Published on September 15, 2021 3:30:14 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGiEDrmXEUo

Game:

Contra: Legacy of War (1996)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 39:02

2,429 views

47

Full Run / 1 Credit Clear of Contra: Legacy of War, developed by Appaloosa Interactive and published by Konami for the Playstation. This was played on a real ps1 with the real disc, no cheats or emulators were used.

Stage Listing:
00:00 - Intro
01:09 - Stage 1 - Urban Warfare
03:48 - Stage 2 - Jungle Conflict
08:21 - Stage 3 - River of Destruction
14:52 - Stage 4 - Mountain Stronghold
22:40 - Stage 5 - Bad Wavelength 1 - Robot
24:27 - Stage 6 - Bad Wavelength 2 - Virtual Zone
28:08 - Stage 7 - Planet LP-426
32:22 - Final Boss + Ending and Credits

So here it is, Contra Legacy of War! Some might be wondering why we are here, why are we playing this version of "Contra"? Truth is I intend to play and beat every Contra game, even the terrible ones, and this game emphatically falls into that category.

Legacy of War is without a doubt the worst Contra game I've ever played. Everyone hates this game, even my video capture hardware hated it, as it often would lose sync between the level transitions and thus a few seconds of the next stage would drop out. Even worse, sometimes it would not regain the signal at all and I'd have to restart my run because of that.

To make matters even worse, this is also the hardest Contra game ever made, as prior to this video, there have been no 1 Credit Clears (1CC) posted on youtube other than blatantly cheated runs with save states. I wanted to change that and perhaps do something a bit unexpected (more on that later).

Believe it or not but Legacy of War is actually a direct sequel to Contra: Hard Corps, as Ray from that game also makes an appearance here as the default character in the game. Despite calling itself a sequel, it was actually not developed by Konami themselves but instead by a Hungarian company called Appaloosa Interactive, famous for Ecco the Dolphin. And boy was that a mistake, as this game is pretty much a massive disaster and all around failure.

You get to select between 4 different characters to play as and although they do have differences in weapons and movement speed, there is really no reason to play as anyone other than Ray, as he has the best weapon in the game (homing laser).

The controls are generally sluggish, with laggy and unresponsive movements becoming a massive hindrance during play. Jumping in particular can sometimes "misfire" and easily get you killed as the jump just won't happen. This would be more forgivable if not for the ridiculous platforming sections in the game such as the end of stage 4.

There are 3 different difficulties to play, easy only features the first 5 levels while normal and hard both have all 7 stages. In normal mode you start with 8 lives, which sounds like a lot but trust me you will run through these very fast as taking random hits is nearly impossible to avoid in several parts of the game.

There are extra lives scattered throughout the stages hidden behind walls but the big drawback is that they will only appear if you have 4 or fewer lives remaining, so you really can't hoard lots of lives even if you are doing well. You are bound to takes hits so in actual practice, you want to get to the end of stage 5 with 5 lives, as that is realistically probably the best you can hope for. You can also find bombs either in plain sight or hidden behind walls. They are really only useful for quick killing the bosses.

What makes the game so hard to clear on 1 credit is that there are no extra lives in the last 3 stages, and stage 5, which is basically just a long boss fight, is ridiculously hard. In many of my previous runs I would go into that stage with 5 lives and lose them all. Determining a strategy for that boss fight and how to reliably dodge the homing lasers is the biggest hurdle in the entire game. The biggest F U to the player is that you CANNOT use the bombs on the stage 5 boss, they simply will not be fired if you try!

If you do pass stage 5, you enter another absurd level with a big floating, laughing face in the middle of the screen obscuring everything. If that wasn't bad enough, there are also platforming sections in the level along snipers firing at you at insane speed and also a chain of boss fights. Pass that and you reach the final stage, which switches things up even more.

In the final stage, which I must say is probably one of the highlights of the game and is quite innovative, you run around a small "planet" and must destroy all the evil tentacles before you fight the final, giant tentacle monster end boss. Then the planet explodes and the heroes fly off into outer space on a chunk of rock. Oh, and there is also one last alien passenger hiding as a secret stow away, just waiting to bring more misery to the player in the form of C: The Contra Adventure.

As a final note, I will probably be uploading a second video with actual commentary for this game. Why? Because I spent a lot of time on this mess and can't let it go to waste!

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