Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES) - Hard Mode Run with No Deaths

Full no death run of hard mode for Contra III (Contra Spirits, 魂斗羅スピリッツ in Japan) by Konami for the SNES!

This is something I've wanted to do ever since I started this channel and with the recent, renewed interest in my older Contra videos, I finally decided to sit down and actually do it. This was played on a real SNES with real cartridge, no emulation or cheats were used.

Stage Listings (taken from English manual).
00:00 - Intro
01:11 - Stage 1 - The Streets of Neo City
04:04 - Stage 2 - Maria Calderon Highway
06:04 - Stage 3 - The Old Cyber Steel Mill
10:28 - Stage 4 - The Battle of the Blazing Sky
13:55 - Stage 5 - The Mucho Grande Badlands
16:30 - Stage 6 - Red Falcon's Main Base
18:37 - Final Boss
21:04 - True Last Boss + Ending

Contra III represents the pinnacle of this series to me, the graphics, music, stage design, and bosses are all top tier and very memorable. This was Konami in it's absolute prime, cranking out one classic after another.

I know some people may dislike the overhead stages but they do break up the action a bit and require completely different playstyles, which does give the game some variety. Also, I'd like to make a special mention of the shoot em up level in disguise (stage 4 is the only autoscrolling level), which I'd rank as the best stage in the entire history of Contra.

The difficulty has been ramped up considerably from the previous entries in the series, and playing on hard bumps it up even more. I also like that you can only get the true ending if you beat it on hard, not to mention the extra special boss at the end. That was quite a surprise back in the day!

Contra also has great atmosphere and I've always loved its "homage" (or blatant ripoff) to movies like Aliens, Predator, and Rambo (all of which I rank highly as well!). At the end of the day this is not only one of the best Contra games, but one of the best SNES and action games of all time.