| Contra III: The Alien Wars | |
|---|---|
 North American box art by Tom duBois[1]: 34 | |
| Developer(s) | Konami[a] |
| Publisher(s) | Konami |
| Director(s) | Nobuya Nakazato |
| Producer(s) | Kazumi Kitaue |
| Programmer(s) | Mitsuru Yaida Hideyuki Suganami |
| Artist(s) | Nobuya Nakazato |
| Composer(s) | Miki Higashino Masanori Adachi Tappi Iwase |
| Series | Contra |
| Platform(s) | Super NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Run and gun |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, cooperative |
Contra III: The Alien Wars[b] is a 1992 run and gun video game developed and published by Konami for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is the third home console entry in the Contra series after Contra (1988) and Super C (1990) for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). In PAL regions, it was retitled Super Probotector: Alien Rebels and the player characters were replaced with robots. The player is tasked with fighting off an alien invasion of Earth across six stages. Four stages feature side-scrolling action traditional to the series while two are presented from an overhead perspective. It is the first Contra title to have been directed by Nobuya Nakazato who later directed other games in the series. He designed Contra III to feature more comical elements, a more cinematic soundtrack, and tighter stage design than its predecessors.
Contra III received positive reviews, with critics praising its arcade quality derived from its sound and visual design. It has been called one of the best Contra games in retrospective reviews and is considered one of the greatest video games of all time. It was ported to the Game Boy as Contra: The Alien Wars (1994) by Factor 5 where it received positive reviews for its Super Game Boy enhancements. Konami also released a Game Boy Advance port titled Contra Advance: The Alien Wars EX (2002) which received more critical reviews for removing features in the original. The Super NES version was rereleased several times on Nintendo's online distribution services.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).