Poll: What’s the Best Counterplay? Rate your collection and help us find out

This week marks the 30th anniversary of Contra III: The Alien Wars (or Super Probotector: Alien Rebels) on the SNES in Europe. It is crazy, right? Despite Konami’s rather lackluster attempt to revitalize the franchise with Contra: Rogue Corps in 2019, we here at Nintendo Life still have a place in our hearts for the run ‘n’ gun shooter franchise.

Starting with the original Contra back in 1986 as a coin-operated arcade title, the franchise has since spawned a significant handful of sequels on Nintendo platforms. As many of these are known by different names in Europe, it can often be a little difficult to know exactly where to start (although Konami’s own Contra Anniversary Collection for Switch goes a long way to rectifying this).

So to help sort out Hard from the Rogue, we’re asking you fine folks to rate your favorite Contra titles below and help us compile a ranking of the best Contra games of all time!

Similar to our other reader-ranked polls, registered NL users can click on the stars below and rate the games out of 10. The resulting ranking, which we will publish over time, is created from these floating NL user ratings and is therefore subject to change , even after publication. If you have previously rated these games in our database, thank you! If not, you can add your score to the game at any time, present or future, and it will still count and potentially affect the order.

So grab Bill and Lance and let’s get going prototype drawing contrary…

Note. Yes, we’ve included the Anniversary Collection for completeness – if you’d rather it wasn’t there, just pretend it isn’t and the ranking around it will be in exactly the same order as it would be otherwise. Easy!

Just so you’re all aware of exactly what you’re reviewing here, we thought we’d list the games that have different names in Europe for your convenience:

• Contra/Probotector (NES)
• Super C / Probotector II: Return of the Evil Forces (NES)
• Operation C / Probotector (Game Boy)
• Contra III: The Alien Wars / Super Probotector: Alien Rebels (SNES)
• Mod: Hard Corps / Probotector (Sega Genesis)

Rate every counter game you’ve played:

Click on the stars below to rate each Contra you’ve played out of 10:

Thanks for rating your favorites and give us a shout if you think something is missing.

We’ll reveal the results soon, but remember: like our platform Top 50s, the list will be fluid, so even if you miss out on voting before the results are revealed, you can still influence the rankings after they’re published.

Further reading: