How do you ppl experience the whole contra/gryzor game atmosphere?

(A) Vietnam atmosphere/cold war atmosphere (e.g. Rambo etc.)

(B) futuristic hi-tec atmosphere, far future, approaching sd-snatcher/mg2

It's more like Vietnam if you ask me.

Come to think of it... Contra/Gryzor plays partly in the jungle.. so does Metal Gear Solid 3... any link here? (nah, Kojima wasn't involved with Gryzor, rite?)

It's Contra not Gryzor, damnit ^^;

I always thought the player of Contra was Solid Snake with a bad headache

Seriously tho, the setting feels alien to me. As in, on a different planet.

It's indeed Contra and not Gryzor... Who the hell came up with that stupid name anyway? I think the game does take place on earth in a time it's being invaded by aliens (very narrow timespan isn't it? Since there are UFO sightings on a regular basis. I do wonder why it's in the USA most of the time).

afaik Gryzor is the name of the game on other platforms. Not sure. Eitherway, everyone knows what game wolf (and I) are talking about. Let's focus on wolf's question and not just the name of the game.

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It's more like Vietnam if you ask me. Come to think of it... Contra/Gryzor plays partly in the jungle.. so does Metal Gear Solid 3... any link here? (nah, Kojima wasn't involved with Gryzor, rite?)

Kojima was not involved as far as I know. But I do remember the game mistakenly being called "Metal Gear 2" for a while in the Netherlands, some magazine(MSX Gids?) came up with that wrong idea iirc...

About the name, look here...:

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=G&game_id=8018

Looks an awful lot like the game we're talking about now imho. Someone has any idea what the kanji's of the opening screen say?

Ontopic: I never had an alien feeling when playing this game...

The kanji's on the MSX opening screen say CONTRA, just like SALAMANDER.

BTW, the US and Japan version of the original arcade game are called CONTRA. Gryzor is apparently the european title and I believe the C64 version was called that too.

This is funny, as the NES and Gameboy versions of this game have been adapted to be all about robots. Apparently the germans are very anti-violence and shooting people was 'not done'. So Contra became Probotector in europe.

I remember playing the ARCADE version called Gryzor indeed!!
(yup, spend too many bugs on finishing that game)

Btw, why this question Wolf??

Some time ago I started the translation of the Contra manual (indeed, the MSX version is just Contra, not Gryzor) in order to put it online in the Defender Online section of my website Samanet. The setting of the game actually is on earth, on an alien base located in the neighbourhood of New Zealand. I didn´t complete the translation because I was too lazy (the translated manual was translated including the original Japanese lay-out) and partly because I suspected Konami wouldn´t appreciate it if I put such a manual online, but if you´re interested, I might complete it after all.

That'd rule, Rikusu

why the question ..?

Well, imagine that someone arranges the music, what direction would be the best?

Rambo style (Jerry Goldsmith), orchestral, acoustic guitars, asian instruments.

or

Hi-tec style .. synths, drumloops, industrial noises, soundscapes, electric guitars etc.

ppl usually experience the classic American wars as romantic, heroic, epic etc. For that reason you'll hear classical music (Adagio for Strings, by Barber) acting as filmmusic for Platoon, and adagios for The Thin Red Line (Hans Zimmer). For that same reason, you'll hear the orchestral sound of J.G. for Rambo. Now, Metal Gear 1 would (imo) definitly be the Rambo style, MG2 too I think, since parts of the music of MG2 are actually based on Goldsmith's score for Rambo.

But I never got the grips on Contra .. you see a Rambo-style player (muscle-arms etc.) running in a hi-tec enviroment (the underpasses etc.). Parts of the gfx remind of the cold war, but for the rest, it's all a mixed bag of styles.

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It's hard to believe now, but Konami's Contra series was once controversial. In the late 1980s, the name alone rankled lefties, who somehow thought that the game promoted Ronald Reagan's foreign policy in Nicaragua...

http://www.thelost80s.com/games/arcade/c/main.shtml

There was a version of Strider "political" arcade game on MSX?

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The kanji's on the MSX opening screen say CONTRA, just like SALAMANDER.

A little offtopic: I really never knew that is is possible to write out roman/western words in Kanji...
And I really wonder why Kanji is used where kana would suffice? Maybe someone can shed a light on this?

Kana is the japanese way, Kanji is the chinese way.
All chinese names (even western ones) are 3 or 4 kanji big, the kanji's are an approximation of the original pronunciation.
Since kanji's have several pronunciations (the Japanese use two readings, while AFAIK the chinese have more) you can play with them a bit. IIRC the title of Salamander has the kanji for snake in it.

So actually they're just using Kanji's for words that sound like western words? It seems I was looking for a way more complicated explanantion for it