The player can store more than one hyper shell at a time and the count is carried over between overhead stages. The game consists of five stages, which are set in a military base, a jungle and the alien's lair. Stages 1, 3 and 4 are played from the standard side-scrolling perspective, while Stages 2 and 5 employ the top-down perspective. Throughout each stage, the player must fight their way through the enemy's line of defense (including a few mid-bosses) until they reach the final target waiting at the end.Īfter running out of lives, the player is not allowed to continue up to five times before the game is entirely over this depends on the DIP switch settings. Unlike the predecessor, each player can now continue at any time, with no need to wait until the other player runs out of lives. Two versions of the Super Contra arcade game were produced: an English version (which was distributed not just in North America, but also in Europe, where the game retained its original title, in contrast to the Gryzor variant of the first arcade game) and a Japanese version. The two versions of the game are almost identical aside from the language of the text shown during the intro sequence. However, the English version ends the game after the player has cleared the final stage, whereas the Japanese version restarts the game from the first stage after the end credits are shown. On the second loop, the player's score, lives and weapons (including hyper shells) will be carried over from the previous playthrough and the game's difficulty will be set to its highest level (regardless of the machine's actual setting), but the continuation feature will cease to be available.