Contra ReBirth (Wii) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
722A playthrough of Konami's 2009 run-and-gun shooter for the Nintendo Wii, Contra Rebirth.
Played through on the normal difficulty setting.
Contra Rebirth was released as part of Konami's ReBirth trilogy, a line of retro-styled "throwback" sequels to the company's most popular franchises from the late 1980s. It was only ever sold as a WiiWare title - there haven't been any ports of it to other systems, and you can no longer buy it from the Wii Shop Channel.
Like Gradius Rebirth and Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth, Contra ReBirth takes its inspiration from classic Konami games of the late 1980s/early 1990s. The graphics and sound are upgraded versions of what we originally saw in the company's 16-bit arcade hardware, and the gameplay takes most of its cues from Contra III: The Alien Wars.
The game has only five stages total, but it is a pretty intense ride while it lasts. The character selection is pretty fun, with Bill Rizer and Yagyu (from NeoContra) taking the lead, and Brownie (Contra Hard Corps) and Plissken (Kurt Russell) cosplaying as a dinosaur, I guess?) becoming selectable after finishing the game on the easy and normal difficulty levels, respectively.
You'll fight through a space station, a (comfortably familiar) ruined cityscape, a parade of military jeeps and robot camels, a volcano, and the alien's lair before it's all done, and there are some wicked set-pieces. My favorite has to be the bit where you hitch a ride on a rocket that's taking off. The gameplay will instantly feel like home to anyone that ever played a classic 2D Contra game - the mechanics have all been translated perfectly, and the ability to anchor your character to the floor while you aim is a true God send. Even better for those than love the older titles is how Contra III's two-gun weapon system makes a return, as do most of the classic Contra armaments, though the awesome flamethrower is lamentably missing in action.
And finally, the presentation is pretty excellent here. Just like the other Rebirth titles, the graphics are all comprised of pseudo 16-bit pixel art, though the smooth rotation and scaling effects, floods of enemies, and massive explosions would've all been far beyond the abilities of the SNES or the Genesis. It *looks* like what you remember, but in reality, it's a pretty huge boost. The music is the same, though instead of going with the SNES-style sample-based playback, Contra ReBirth's remixes of classic tracks go with heavy drum samples that enthusiastically punch through the wicked FM-synth arrangements. The music is not as good as Contra 4, granted, but it still makes for a highly enjoyable, nostalgic listening experience.
While Contra: ReBirth isn't going to upset the pecking order among the top games of the Contra franchise, it's easily one of the best Contra games to be released since Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis, and it effortlessly blows away the PS1 entries. If you're a hardcore Konami or Contra fan, you *need* to find a way to play this.
If you'd like to see Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth, you can check it out here: https://youtu.be/TcSvHRKoSEY
And sorry about the quality of the video and sound for the first bit of the third stage. That specific portion of the video kept triggering a copyright-induced video block, so I had to figure out a way around that. It's only a thirty second patch, so hopefully it doesn't get in the way of your enjoyment *too* too much.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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