Gryzor

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The defensive forces of the earth are infiltrated... Planet Suna and its habitants, the Durrs, are now the new greatest threat for humanity. The Durrs have set up a stronghold in an uncharted region of our planet and assembled an atmosphere processing plant (APP) which gives them the ability to control the planet's weather conditions. Their plan is to bring about another ice age and thereby take over Earth and all its resources. You are Lance Gryzor, a member of the defense federation and your mission is to discover Durrs' evil intentions and infiltrate their stronghold...! You control a soldier who battles waves of enemies including humanoids, machines, mutants and giant aliens until he reaches his ultimate goal. Better weapons can be obtained by destroying weapon stores. But you need to move and jump simultaneously while firing in order to survive! Much of the game's popularity came from its two-player co-op gameplay, which was an uncommon feature by the time Gryzor (Contra) was released on the arcades. Also, the gameplay varies in perspective from 2D side-scrolling (the outdoor stages like the jungle) to pseudo-3D (maze stages in which you destroy targets on the back wall)! While successful on the arcade version, the game became and remained widely popular when was converted to the 8bits computers and 16bits consoles. It's really a nice shooter with loads of action and good presentation but its high difficulty makes it almost impossible to progress further to the next stage.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Spectrum version has good graphics considering its hardware capabilities, with good character animation in all eight directions, but the color-clash problem makes the game even harder! It is way too difficult to see the enemy fire when each area is "loaded" with details! Other than that (which is not a small thing actually...) the gameplay is fast and the enemy sprites move remarkably smooth for a Spectrum game. As with the CPC version, the game is played in flip-screen mode. Gryzor runs on 48k and 128k machines; the 128k version offers an excellent intro tune and a nice in-game tune along with a few catchy sound effects. The 48k version offers sound effects only.