Hello everybody and welcome to the Canaan Rince podcast. It's volume 11, issue 503. And today we're going to be talking about the game Contra Spirits, also known as Contra 3, the Alien Wars, also known as Super Propo-Tecta Alien Rebels, depending on your region.

Joining me, Leon Cox, in this issue are Mikhail Kroda.

Hello.

And welcome back, guest Ben Cartlidge.

Let's attack aggressively.

Of course, we must.

So yes, Contra Spirits, as it was originally known in Japan, is, in essence, a 16-bit side-scrolling and top-down,

2D run-and-gun game and the third distinct title in Konami's Contra series.

Of course, Contra was known as Grizzor in Europe, and the series became known as

Probotecta for reasons of German, potential German censorship. But these days, and for quite a

long time now, Contra is Contra. I think it's also interesting that as we saw with many early Super Famicom and Super Nintendo

titles, they just added Super to the start and it made perfect sense.

It made the game sound super and it tied into the fact that it was on this exciting new

hardware.

I know where you want to go with this, yeah.

Exactly.

They'd already done it.

So in the late 80s, they'd already called a game Supercontra, so they couldn't

really do that with this.

Now, I know that in previews and such, this game was often referred to actually as Super Contra 4.

And of course, Contra 4 wouldn't come out until years and years later on the DS,

courtesy of Way Forward games, I think it was.

...