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The Imeotra beast can see you.

Super Cyborg is a retraux-style action game released for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, but inspired by old-school arcade games popular way back in the late 90s.

Taking a page from the classic Run-and-Gun action game, Contra, once again earth is a hellhole taken over by an alien life-form.

An outbreak has occurred in a bio-lab in a top-secret government facility, when experimentation on an alien life-form called the "Xirxul" leads to it escaping confinement and infecting everything in its path. Soon enough, the outbreak had spread beyond control, leading to a massive infestation of assorted hostile alien life. Like Contra before it, you are an elite Super-Soldier (this time also a Cyborg, just because) and you're sent to contain the alien outbreak across seven levels infested with monstrous enemies.

Compare Iron Meat and Blazing Chrome, two other retraux games based on Contra.


Super Cyborg contain examples of:

  • Acid Pool: Present in the sixth level, green pools of acid above walkways that robs you of a life when you fall in.
  • Advertised Extra: Somehow, the Imeotra beast made it to the game's front cover creepily observing your player character. In the game itself it's the first, easy Warm-Up Boss.
  • Airborne Mooks: The Xirxul managed to spawn monsters resembling severed heads, with bat-like wings, which flies around harassing you in several stages.
  • All There in the Manual: Beating the game on Hard Mode will list off the names of all of the bosses and mini-bosses in a manner akin to the credits in Alien Soldier. The Steam Trading Cards also provide the names of some of the more prominent bosses, as well as some additional information about them.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: Xirxul Lifeform turns out to be this, despite effectively being the Big Bad of the game. It remains huddled inside of Niatoid Seeder, which itself sits firmly on the platform and it's only means of attack is spewing slow, easily destroyed spores. The player can stand safely on one spot and dispatch all of the spore organs, ending the fight relatively quickly.
  • Attack on the Heart: The Zeonix Life System itself is a giant heart, pulsating all the way, and naturally you shoot it until it blows.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss: The underground cave level has you fighting the Captured Bedlaah, a gigantic insect monster entangled in a web, which goes down without too much difficulty since it's stuck. But after you kill the Captured Bedlaah, you then discover the monster is the meal of the stage's actual boss, the Akhamafold Octopod, which is far more deadly and angry at you for exploding its lunch.
  • Charged Attack: By holding down fire, you can fire an powered-up, charged shot useful for taking down large numbers of enemies or inflicting more damage on bosses. Combine this with the ever-present Spread Shot and you fire a swirling tornado-like wave of powerful green and red energy balls.
  • Cobweb Jungle: The fourth level is set in a cavern that's coated in assorted cobwebs. And to nobody's surprise, it ends with a boss battle against the Akhamafold Octopod.
  • Combat Tentacles: The Darvograhellix Reprocessing Organism seems to contain an infinite number of these, repeatedly sending tentacles from its mouth on you.
  • Determinator: The Flying Jarmai and Darvograhellix Reprocessing Organism - getting shot until it's just a head on the ground or blown in half, respectively, and those bastards will still keep on attacking.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Niatoid Seeder, the Final Boss, can be seen as soon as you start the first stage flying by in the background and scattering spores.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The entire environment and interiors after the Xirxul outbreak, with each monster looking more grotesque and deformed than the next.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: Oh hell yes.
    • One of the recurring signs of the Xirxul outbreak, is the walls growing eyes. Which observe you from the background while you're fighting monsters left and right.
    • The first boss, the Imeotra beast, is a giant alien head on a stalk bursting from a wall, consisting of just a nose and a mouth. Turns out the eye is growing inside the mouth, when it opens up to launch a Breath Weapon / Eye Beam crossover attack.
    • The Gidoagn Symbiont is an alien monster whose body is a mess of organs, with five visible gigantic eyes on its surface and none on the head.
  • Eye Scream: Inevitably...
    • The Imeotra Beast has a hidden single eye in its mouth /chin area, and you damage it when its eye is revealed. When killed, the eyeball explodes leaving behind a hole.
    • There are Oculothorax monster enemies which are killed by having their eyes shot to bits.
    • The Gidoagn Symbiont has five giant eyes growing on it, and you're required to blow up all to kill it.
    • The Darvograhellix Reprocessing Organism will, in a last-ditch attempt to destroy you, extend its eyeballs on gigantic stalks to launch Eye Beams. You destroy it for good by blowing up both eyes.
  • Giant Crab: The Seamegnon Creature which you fought in the laboratory, complete with gigantic extendable pincers which can shoot projectiles.
  • Giant Foot of Stomping: The Omniard Monster Being doesn't have much to work with, being a tiny, deformed human-alien hybrid, but its legs (which appear to be masses of tendrils merged with rocky outcroppings) are huge. Naturally, it will attempt to stomp on you throughout the fight.
  • Giant Spider: The cavern levels have these enemies appearing everywhere. And it caps with a boss fight against a massive arachnid monster, the Akhamafold Octopod.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: Darvograhellix Reprocessing Organism is another eldritch monster resembling a giant alien head stretched across an elevator platform's exit, taking up the whole upper of the screen. Killing it for the first time splits it lengthwise in two, but then both halves will continue attacking.
  • Human Resources: To a rather disturbing degree. Apart from the obvious monsters and level designs with warped human features, the second to last level shows lots of human bodies being melted down in a pool of purplish sludge. Furthermore, according to its Steam card, the Darvograhellix Reprocessing Organism is essentially a glorified food trough, filled with a green soup composed of processed human biomatter. The Niatoid Seeder can be seen slurping it up intermittently during the boss fight.
  • Indy Escape: Shows up in one level, but instead of being pursued by a boulder you're being chased by a mass of naked human bodies fused into a sphere.
  • Inspiration Nod: From the title screen, the "C" in "Super Cyborg" is designed to resemble the same alphabet from Contra.
  • Killer Rabbit: Xirxul Lifeform is a tiny, cute alien resembling a developing fetus...and is also an Eldritch Abomination responsible for everything that went wrong on the island. It appears to be fragile on it's own, as it has to stay huddled up inside Niatoid Seeder for protection and sustenance. Once the Seeder is destroyed the Lifeform explodes in a shower of green blood, likely due to accumulated damage and being exposed to Earth's atmosphere.
  • Mini-Boss: The Omniard Monster Being, Captured Bedlaah, and Evevva Parasite are all fought before the level's actual boss, and are considerably easier than the succeeding boss fight.
  • Mook Maker:
    • Monster spawners (resembling a gigantic mouth growing from the ground) will repeatedly regurgitate alien life-forms to attack until they're blown to bits.
    • Akhamafold Octopod can lay numerous mooks from its abdomen as one of its attacks.
  • Non-Indicative Name: Despite the "Cyborg" name in the title, the official cover art for the game shows that the titular cyborgs look more closer to an android, due to their completely robotic appearance.
  • Overly-Long Tongue: Taken to the extreme with the Flying Jarmai - its third and last form is just a head, with a long, segmented green tongue that seems to stretch forever in a wave-like pattern towards you. It just keeps on extending said tongue until you destroy it.
  • People Jars: The second stage in a bio-lab has a number of humanoid organisms stored in tanks in the background, presumably subjects of other "Super Cyborg" experiments. There's also an enemy monster in a tank which attacks you when its tank is shot at.
  • Ribcage Ridge: The sixth level in a bio-lab has gigantic ribcages in place of bridges for you to walk in-between platforms. Over their spines.
  • Sand Worm: The Evevva Parasite resembles a deformed, eldritch version of an underground worm monster, which chases you down a narrow corridor as an Advancing Boss of Doom. Furthermore, it's actually fought inside the body of the gargantuan worm that devours the player following the fight against the Akhamafold Octopod.
  • Sequential Boss: Flying Jarmai starts off as a gigantic insectoid monster coated in flesh, who repeatedly flies in and out of the screen as it battles you using organic projectile launchers from its abdomen. Dealing enough damage will blow up Flying Jarmai's back half, only for the front to continue the fight by trying to stab you using its claws. And if you defeat it, reducing Jarmai to a severed insectoid head, the head will continue fighting while planted on flat ground (this time as a Stationary Boss however). Kill it a third time and you complete the level.
  • Spread Shot: Like Contra before it, one of the first power-ups can upgrade your default gun into spreads between three to seven shots in an arc.
  • Stationary Boss:
    • The Imeotra beast is essentially a head tethered to a massive stalk.
    • The laboratory level ends with you fighting the Zeonix Life System, a massive Xirxul heart in the center of a clearing, while tubes around the place dispenses enemies. The heart itself can occasionally spew projectile attacks but it's immobile the entire fight.
    • The third and final form of the Flying Jarmai. Since you destroyed most of its body and its a severed head on the floor (but somehow still capable of defending itself).
    • The Captured Bedlaah couldn't move about due to being entangled in a web. But after destroying the Bedlaah, you then face the web's owner, the Akhamafold Octopod.
    • The Gidoagn Symbiont is a series of intestinal-like organs growing from the walls, so it's appropriately rooted to a spot.
    • The Darvograhellix Reprocessing Organism is a monster clinging to the exit of an elevator shaft, rooted to the top while sending down an insane amount of tentacles to grab you.
    • The Niatoid Seeder, the Final Boss, is encountered growing on a platform, and remains there for the entire duration of its fight.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: Most of the game has you killing aliens from a side-view perspective, just like Contra (its main inspiration), but the sixth level suddenly flips to a top-down perspective similar to Ikari Warriors, before going back to side-view after killing the boss (and remains as such for the remainder of the game).

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