Top 10 Run 'N Guns for 8- and 16-bit Consoles

[brunoafh]

A pretty solid list. I know Contra is the original and all that... but I think Hard Corps is the best Contra, and better than most of the games on the list. Thinking back to the early days, when I played these games as they first came out, Contra on the NES was the shit. Hard Corps just stunned me though, the on screen chaos was like nothing my friends and I had ever seen before. Gunstar Heroes can rival it easily in that department, but the fact that just one slip up means your death makes Contra feel far more chaotic. The weapon system, the slide mechanic (not sure if it was introduced here, but I thought it was), the superb level and boss design, fantastic replayability, BRUTAL difficulty, awesome character selection (Fang is badass), nothing quite does it for me like Hard Corps does. But that's just my 2 cents.

[shadobeni]

At first I couldn't get into gunstar heroes but when I tried it again later I did have fun with it although I wonder if it's even possible to beat this game without using some sort of homing weapon. I like being able to throw enemies and bombs. The boss fights are very creative. The only not so great thing about this game is you didn't have access to both free-shot and fixed-shot. You were forced to choose one or the other which I blame on the 3 button controller that genesis had at the time.

I really liked using the invincible slide on Contra Hard Corps. Having multiple, unique characters and multiple paths/endings was great. Although I think I prefer the SNES' Contra III control scheme.

Vectorman games are pretty solid but sometimes I would get kind of bored. Also having no rapid fire tired out my right hand pretty quickly. In general though it has more platforming making it more of a 50/50 balance of platforming and shooting whereas Contra and Gunstar Heroes are definitely heavier on the shooting.