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One of the top action games on the Game Boy, hands down.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The original Contra on the NES arrived to great fanfare back in 1988. Its sequel (Super C, or Super Contra in the arcades) was arguably every bit as good and infinitely more playable, but some folks felt it was uglier and the music not quite as memorable. Operation C is essentially Super C in handheld form, but with a few significant changes.

The game might not seem at first to actually be Super C, given that the first stage bears little resemblance at all to that of Super C and the music is the classic Contra theme (an awesome remix, at that). This is pretty much overwhelmingly positive. This harbor, water-themed level is sweet, acclimatizing the player to the game and mixing up the original for players familiar with the NES game.

The rest of the levels follow the NES game rather well, up to the end where it once again shakes things up. If you were a fan of the original Contra's behind-the-back isometric levels, don't get your hopes up - the top-down (still isometric) shooting levels of Super C have been retained, and arguably work much better on the very small greenish screen of the Game Boy.

Graphics and music are simply awesome. This is straight out of the era of Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge and Gradius: Interstellar Assault; all of these games share a similar, somewhat ornate (given the screen) artwork style. Though the characters on screen are smaller than they had been on the NES, somehow they don't feel cut down or even more primitive than those of the NES game. Musically the game is a fun listen.

Gameplay is, of course, very well balanced; my only worries are that the character jumps a shorter distance horizontally than he appears to be able at first, though the first level serves as a good tutorial in this. Everything else works perfectly. If you've got an item capsule that you didn't want, for example, and it blocks your path, the time it takes for it to disappear isn't terribly long. That said, all the weapons - even the flamethrower, to some extent - are usable here. No button mashing is required - you can hold down the fire button and spray away while jumping.

There's plenty of challenge here, but it's challenge strictly by the rules, with very few cheap deaths (the jungle stage for one has the obligatory jumping section, but somehow it seems more negotiable than that of the original Contra). Note that the game was re-released in Japan and Europe in 1999 and 2000 respectively for the Game Boy Color as part of a four-game compilation cartridge out of a four-cartridge game rerelease, though the colorization is on par with what you might get with a Super Game Boy (i.e. not exceptionally great, though not horrible). All action gamers should find this classic title appealing handheld fare - it's that good.

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