Video Game / Hard Corps: Uprising

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Hard Corps: Uprising is a downloadable entry in the Contra series released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Despite not having the Contra name directly attached to it, the game makes it pretty clear that it is indeed part of the franchise. Developed by Arc System Works — best known for the critically acclaimed Guilty Gear and BlazBlue series of fighters — it's a prequel to the original Contra, the very first installment in the series released on arcades and Famicom/NES, as well as Contra: Hard Corps, the spin-off entry released on the Sega Genesis, hence the title.

The story of Uprising involves the, well, uprising in the far future against the world's current tyrannical dictatorship, the Commonwealth, and its leader Emperor Tiberius. Leading the Union Forces in the fight is ex-Commonwealth soldier Bahamut^note (Who has the same name as) the final boss of Hard Corps, who deserted and switched sides after realizing it was evil. His unit also consists of fellow soldiers Krystal, a young woman with considerable combat skills whose village was destroyed during a Commonwealth attack and joins the fight so nobody else would have to suffer a tragedy like hers; Harley, a boisterous guy with Cool Shades and an awesome pompadour; and female samurai Sayuri, who forgoes the whole shooting thing in favor of a more close up and personal approach to fighting. Of the quartet, only Bahamut and Krystal are initially available as playable characters, with the other two, as well as Tiberius' right hand man Leviathan, available as premium downloadable content.

Gameplay wise, Uprising combines the classic Run-and-Gun Contra formula — wherein you move forward mowing down hooded Mooks and other dangerous opponents, picking up weapon power-ups and dodging hailstorms of bullets — with the style and some of the mechanics of BlazBlue. By default, your character can sprint forward, double jump and dash in midair, which makes evading enemy fire just a tiny bit easier. In addition to the Arcade Mode's challenge of blowing through all eight stages in a single go with limited lives and continues, there's the more manageable "Rising Mode" where you can use upgrades to your characters purchased with your hard-earned points. These range from increasing your maximum amount of starting lives and health, improving your basic mobility, instantly receiving upgraded versions of weapons when you pick up their corresponding capsules, and adding new contextual moves such as dodging during a run (and counterattacking), reflecting certain enemy shots, or busting through barricades and enemy cover.

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Hard Corps: Uprising provides examples of:

• All Just a Dream: Leviathan's story mode is stated in the loading screen texts to be a dream of him experiencing what Bahamut went through in the first seven stages before the Knight Lunata battle in which Leviathan was defeated. Stage 7 mentions that he has no memories beyond the point when he fought Bahamut, and Stage 8 all but confirms that he is actually dead or dying and, having finally realized why Bahamut betrayed the Commonwealth, envisions himself taking down the Emperor before finally succumbing to his injuries.
• Arc Number: 573 is all over the place and probably shows up more than in any other Konami game: the stage 3 midboss and boss are called 573-Tigris and 573-Draconis respectively^note  they are called Kasuga-Tora and Kasuga-Ryu in the Japanese versions, making themselves as Kasuga series, the Rising Mode has an upgrade that gives you 30 lives which costs 57,300,000 points to buy and if you use a variation of Konami Code that allows you to buy it without beating the game first with that character, the main menu reads "CODE 573". Finally, the longer you play the game, the more continues you get: the number starts from 3 and goes steadily up to 20 before finally jumping up to, you guessed it, 573.
• Anime Hair: Harley sports an epic pompadour.
• Art Shift: With Arc Systems at the helm, the game heavily resembles BlazBlue, as in high-res sprites, anime characters, and 3D environments combined.
• Attack Reflector: The Ripple power-up. While its range isn't very good, it can send any projectile fired at it zipping back towards the one who fired it in the first place.

• Badass Biker: Harley. He's seen riding his custom hog in the opening and ending cinematics.
  • Stage 1 lets any of the players be this while fighting the first boss. Twice.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: The first major enemy you fight is one of the game's standard mooks driving a rather bizarre Cool Car that can detach into two halves, and has an arsenal including a huge mining drill and a flamethrower. After you deplete its life meter, the player and the boss go zooming off a cliff together...and the latter promptly gets devoured by a giant robotic sand worm, who fills in for the now-vacant position of stage boss.
  • Subverted when you take out the mecha-worm and move on—at the very end of the stage, when you've gotten back on a motor-bike, the camera cuts to the fallen worm...and the mook-driven Cool Car rips its way out of the mecha-worm's body to continue the fight!!
• Battle Amongst the Flames: Stage 7 has you chase Leviathan as his grenades set the whole Capital Tower Building on fire.
• BFG: The three gun using heroes apply, but Harley's gun is even bigger.

• Bragging Rights Reward: By the time you get the "UPRISING R" upgrade (30 lives), you probably won't need it because at that point, you're probably skilled enough to not need it. Not to mention you probably already bought all the other possible upgrades.
• Bring My Red Jacket: Leviathan.
• Broken Bird: Krystal. Believes her life is irreversibly destroyed and she aims to fight until she dies so that somewhere out there, girls can grow up, go to school, get married and find happiness like normal human beings.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: A notable moment of this happens at the end of Stage 7, where Leviathan grabs what should be a one-hit-point mook and uses him to absorb about ten seconds of concentrated fire from the horrible death guns the protagonists are carrying. Apparently the mooks gain many more hit points when they're about to die horrifically.
• Cosmetically-Advanced Prequel: Hard Corps: Uprising is exactly a prequel to the original Contra, taking place 20 years before. However, the scenes in this game looked advanced compared to the Galuga Archipelago scene in the original.
• Dead All Along: Leviathan, possibly, if you are playing as him. He is the only character to not have an ending cutscene showing his future and all evidence from the loading screens point to Stage 8 being a dream sequence, having finally realized why Bahamut rose up against the Commonwealth before finally dying from his injuries sustained in the Knight Lunata battle. Subverted if one interprets him as a young Lance Bean and actually Not Quite Dead, but then there comes Unexplained Recovery Heel–Face Turn in the events of the original Contra...
• Difficult, but Awesome: Leviathan, more or less. In Arcade mode, playing him means that everything is essentially an One-Hit Kill, but to compensate, gaining access to 2 moves that grant him large amounts of invincibility frames (both of which are superior to the options other characters have since his slide goes farther and lasts longer than Sayuri's palm thrust and each moonsault covers a ridiculous amount of distance and allows you to chuck grenades downwards while performing one) and a permanent moderately strong secondary weapon both mean that he gets hit a lot less often to begin with if played properly.
  • To a lesser extent, Sayuri. Killing bosses with her goes by in less than a minute if you're skilled enough, but that means you have to get within kissing distance of a boss and give yourself significantly less breathing room than if you're using a gun.
  • To an even lesser extent, the Heated Plasma weapon power-up. It's not a rapid-fire weapon like the other guns (at first), and its charged attack takes a few seconds to unleash. But then again, Heated Plasma does a lot of damage, and it can consume small-arms fire before it ever gets near you.
• Doomed by Canon: Bahamut is the Big Bad in Contra: Hard Corps. The producers, however, have stated that he could be someone else entirely (including Bill Rizer as a possibility), only sharing the same name. Doctor Mandrake as well since he also appears as an antagonist and dies in that game, though again, it could be someone else with the same name. However, Mandrake was also mentioned as one of the people responsible for the development of Lucia before the events of Contra: Shattered Soldier. If Leviathan being Lance Bean is an indication, then he is Killed Off for Real as a Tragic Monster during the events of Shattered Soldier.
• Downloadable Content: To the frustration of many, two of the four characters displayed and showed off in the intro, Sayuri and Harley, must be purchased to be used. Afterward, a fifth character, the boss Leviathan, was released.

• Drives Like Crazy: In Stage 4, you have cars trying to run you over. Leads to some funny moments when two cars are trying to do it at once and crash into each other. And then of course there's driving on the ceiling later in the level.
• Dub Name Change: The bosses have different names in Japanese and English versions.
  • Kanechiku^note  鋼竹 becomes Lotus Wyrm.
  • Momobyakuya^note  桃百夜 becomes Knight Persica.
  • Kasuga-Tora^note  春日・寅 becomes 573-Tigris.
  • Kasuga-Ryu^note  春日・流 becomes 573-Draconis.
  • Hakusen^note  白扇 becomes Lux Corona.
  • Kuroyanagi^note  黒柳 becomes Celestial Imperator
  • Asagumo^note  朝蜘蛛 becomes Arachne.
  • Akenoizayoi^note  緋十六夜 becomes Knight Lunata.
  • Hankouki^note  汎甲鬼 becomes Cerberus.
  • Fujibudou^note  富士葡萄 becomes Vitis Engine.
  • Hohogiitsune^note  火々狐 becomes Tiberius Augustus.
  • Ishitengu-Onikurama^note  石天狗鬼鞍馬 becomes Tiberius Invictus.

• Escort Mission: Near the end of Stage 5, Capital Laboratory. Escorting Dr. Mandrake.

• Expy:
  • Sayuri is this to Baiken or gameplay wise, Strider Hiryu. Also a Distaff Counterpart to Getsu Fuma or Genbei "Jaguar" Yagyu.
  • Bahamut is one to Sol Badguy and Bill Rizer, in addition to resembling a gun-toting Hayato Kanzaki.
  • Krystal resembles Millia Rage. She's actually more similar to Samus Aran, at least in looks, and her gun is based on her Power Suit. Krystal even has an alternate color scheme, were she looks exactly like Zero Suit Samus, and also a human equivalent to Lucia or Brownie, or a counterpart to Sheena Etranzi from Contra: Hard Corps.
  • Harley is a combination of Potemkin and Johnny (appearance-wise). He also seems to designed as a fully human version of Brad Fang, from Contra: Hard Corps.
  • Leviathan is Ky Kiske, Chipp Zanuff, and Lance Bean combined. He also resembles Deadeye Joe, from the original Contra: Hard Corps. Both have lower parts of their faces obscured by their masks, both are chased by the player, both have Noble Demon tendencies, and both fight against the player character, personally, and inside a Mecha.
    • He's quite similar to Jin Kisaragi too. Both are sometimes at least a bit crazy, had a deep bond with one of the characters, that was broken(Ragna/Bahamut), and consider themselves kind-off the good guy, at least in the begining, despite being on the definitely wrong side of the conflict. Their faces and hair are also definitely similar.
    • He is also an equivalent of Lance Bean, who was Bill Rizer's former friend in the old Contra titles, and now enemy in Shattered Soldier.
    • Ironically, the Stage 2 and the second-to-last-part of Stage 7 has Bahamut fight Leviathan in a mecha, which references to the middle part of Stage 5 in Shattered Soldier where Bill fights alien-mutated Lance.
  • Appearance-wise Tiberius resembles Colonel from Mega Man X4 (his outfit), and Master Contra from Neo Contra (his facial hair and features). Ironically, he also plays Bahamut's role in the original Contra: Hard Corps, up to the point where Tiberius even resembles Contra: Hard Corps Bahamut visually, for example both having long hair and having a stache, as well as both wearing military uniforms and capes.
  • Bahamut also resembles in design, battles (starts out as a super powered human military leader in full uniform, then goes through multiple monstrous forms) the fight with seeming main antagonist Lance Bean in Contra: Shattered Soldier, especially seeing the fact their final transformations Tiberis Invictus and Emperor Demon Gava, resemble each-other.
  • Some of the enemies too. There's one who resembles a Gigafly (from Contra III: The Alien Wars, Shattered Soldier and Contra 4) that tries to "kidnap" your character by taking them away to the top of the screen.
  • Celestial Imperator, the Stage 5 boss, has attacks based off the Laser Chandelier, the Stage 4 boss in the Famicom/NES version of Super Contra.
  • The Cerberus boss resembles Devil Emperor Gava, who appears in other ''Contra'' titles, but is much more mobile.
  • Both 573-Tigris and 573-Draconis (Kasuga series in the Japanese version) resemble the Magnus Tank series.
  • 573-Draconis from the end of stage 3, seems to be based on the blue battleship/submarine boss from the beginning of the second stage in Contra: Shattered Soldier. It also resembles the TIM Gunboat in Neo Contra.
  • The Lux Corona resembles a combination of Rocket Ninja Sasaki (from Contra ReBirth) and Great Awakening Robo Big Fuzz.
  • Arachne, the transforming black robot from stage 6, looks, and behaves like a combination of Super Power Robot Yokozuna from Contra: Hard Corps and Contra: Shattered Soldier, and the Heli-Robot from the beginning of stage 6 in Shattered Soldier. It also bears uncanny resemblance to Babalu Destructoid Mechanism, the mini-boss in Super Contra and Shattered Soldier.
• Eyepatch of Power: Krystal has one due to injuries suffered during the attack on her village. Doesn't stop her from being sexy, though.

• Fastball Special: Leviathan uses a mook as a Human Shield and then throws him at you.
  • Also, a mid-boss in the Jungle Stage will pick up an alligator and chuck it at you, although it's aim isn't as good.

• Freudian Excuse: It is heavily implied that Sayuri is the daughter of Tiberius, seeking revenge for abandoning her and her mother.
• Futile Hand Reach: Leviathan "invokes" this after his final defeat in Stage 7. Becomes even more significant if you were playing as Bahamut.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Celestial Imperator, the Stage 5 Boss, and Cerebus, the Stage 7 Boss.
  • The Celestial Imperator is not completely from out of nowhere, the pre-mission loading screen does state the level you fight him in is implied to be involved in genetic engineering.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: The helicopter mini-bosses from Level 2 each have a grabber arm... which they will use to throw crocodiles at you!
• Heavy Metal: Lots of Hair Metal and Thrash Metal, courtesy of Daisuke Ishiwatari.

• Helicopter Blender: The helicopter mini-bosses from Level 2 will occasionally land on either side of the screen and throw their blades at you.
• Hostage Spirit-Link: If Dr. Mandrake takes too much damage while you're escorting him, he dies and revives shortly afterwards...using up one of your lives to do so.

• Immune to Bullets: Tiberius between attacks. "I'm here! Shoot me!"
  • And when you respond to his request, he catches every single bullet you fire at him, then extends his arm out and drops the bullets on the ground in front of him.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Sayuri eschews the massive death-dealing rifles of her comrades in favour of a samurai's sword. Considering that, properly-upgraded, it can slice through bosses like straw and can allow for Sword Beams, it's not entirely unjustified.

• Kill the Ones You Love Implied for Sayuri in her ending cinematic, with her crying after Tiberius' death, as for all the horrible things he's done, he was still her father.
• Konami Code: You can use it at the loading screen for Stage 1 to replace the music with a Daisuke Ishiwatari-ified remix of the Stage 1 theme from the first Contra.
  • You can also use another variation of it (replace B and A with LS/L3 and RS/R3 respectively) in the "Press Start" screen to unlock the ability to buy the upgrade that gives you 30 lives with every continue without beating the game first for every character. Notice the word "buy", meaning you still need to get the necessary 57,3 million points to be able to use it.

• Lost in Translation: The achievements "I'll make them pay" (奴ら･･･ゆるさん。) and "Let's do this thing right!" (派手に出迎えてやろうぜ！！) are references to Bill's and Lance's lines in the opening of Contra Spirits. However, the actual translated versions used in Contra III (the game's U.S. version) are "It's time for revenge" and "Let's attack aggressively."
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Sayuri's loading screens reveal that Tiberius is her adoptive father.
• Meaningful Name: Hard Corps. Think about it.
• Meteor Move: Sayuri can use one if you connect with her upward palm strike. Useful if timed correctly since it has plenty of invincibility frames and the victim also kills any other enemies they come in contact with. Amusingly enough, it can also be performed on power-up capsules and otherwise immobile large flowers.
• Money Grinding: There are various methods of doing this to get upgrades but if you do this too long you'll get a Negative Penalty and your score will be locked for the remainder of the stage. Usually happens when you hit a 40x combo multiplier.
• More Dakka: The Machine Gun power-up is the best example of this, as it turns your lead-spitting rifle into a virtual minigun, especially at the max level.
• Nintendo Hard: Well, it is Contra. And it is called "Hard Corps". Not even Rising Mode subverts this.
  • In Arcade Mode, you get 3 continues. There is an achievement for beating the first stage in Arcade Mode. This is much, much, MUCH harder than it sounds (you only get 3 lives to start, and are only able to use the various evasive moves and character-specific special abilities).
    • And then there's the following two achievements: "The definition of a warrior" means going through the game without picking up a special weapon.^note Although it says nothing about actually being alive when the first 7 stages are cleared... "I'll make them pay..." is going through without dying. To say that only God could perform these feats would be the understatement of the century.
    • Another special mention is ''Disposable Warrior'' which you have to stock up to 20 or more lives. The main reason this is so hard is because not only are a lot of the lives littered throughout levels, they can reach Guide Dang It! level of finding them, not to mention some lives are in very... volatile areas. Thankfully, it's made easier because you simply have to get 20 lives, and you don't need to keep them. Keeping the lives while you climb up to 20 is the hard part.
• No Fair Cheating / Anti-Grinding: Attempting to milk a safespot for CP and score will eventually result in a NEGATIVE PENALTY, locking your score for the rest of the stage. That being said, the negative penalty takes a while to activate, meaning that one can theoretically grind for quite some time, die, then go back to the same spot and do it all over again for more points. It also seems to be easily fooled by doing anything except holding the fire button, allowing you to easily get enough points to max out your character several times over before it kicks in if you're bored enough to keep shooting the said respawning enemies manually or park your character on one of the conveyor belts in level 5 so that they're constantly pushed by the boxes coming out of the machine.
• One-Hit Kill: The sole reason Vitus Engine is sometimes referred to as the Sayuri killer. Its last attack consists of it rolling around the rim you stand on, and if it hits you, it deals one HP of damage... and sends you flying off the platform into a pit. The only way to avoid it is to successfully hit it, something that only Sayuri has trouble with due to her limited range, especially since it keeps gaining speed with every hit which eventually makes it so quick that it's extremely difficult for her to hit it even with autofire before it hits her.
  • There's actually an alternate way to defeat it without leaving yourself open to the mercy of the game's collision detection: leaving one of the pillars extending from the ceiling intact and using it to climb up and hang from the ceiling before destroying it allows you to just attack downwards to hit the boss without getting rammed. You still need to take care that the rotation of the rim doesn't cause you to fall down since it moves faster than you do while hanging and thus need to spam airdashes when necessary.
  • Arachne deserves mention here because every one of its attacks will knock you off and kill you. Tiberis Invictus could qualify too. by the same rule of Arachne and Vitis Engine.
    • Snipers can one hit kill players as well, but only in Arcade and early Rising Mode as they're technically doing 4 bars of damage per shot (and you can get more than 4 bars of life in Rising Mode).
    • Robotic alligators in the Jungle (and early Capital Tower) stage. Although getting caught by one of the gators may mean...
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Leviathan starts out this way. He can also only wield one weapon at a time, ala the first two Contra games.

• Optional Stealth: Mission 5 has you sneaking into a laboratory. You can sneak past the Mooks, or just shoot them as normal.

• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Upon defeating Tiberius with Bahamut: "Go to hell, You Monster!!"
• Recurring Boss: Althrough in Hard Corps: Uprising, most bosses are new, the classic Wall / Fortress Gate, makes a return.
  • Leviathan is an in game example, being fought three times during the gameplay.
• Recurring Riff: Like in some other Contra games. The boss themes from Super C are also remixed.
  • Let's not forget the original Contra themes.

• Sand Worm: The boss of the first level, Lotus Wyrm, is a robotic variant. You also fight other smaller robotic ones in the first level, which the boss also spits out.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Dr. Mandrake, as revealed during Harley's briefing text for Mission 5.
• Shout-Out: Boss 4 is ripped straight out of Gradius, complete with ring bullets and core shooting.
  • The Ripple weapon is also fired much like its Gradius and Neo Contra counterpart, albeit with a much shorter range, but it has the benefit of negating and even reflecting enemy shots.
    • And finally, the Mook Makers and the flying drones they spawn from Mission 8 are both straight from Gradius
  • In Mission 5 you can hide in boxes like Metal Gear. The game even has similar alarm sound effects.
  • All the increases to your max number of starting lives in Rising Mode reference previous Contra titles in their names: "Uprising S" = Super Contra, "Uprising III" = Contra III, "Uprising SS" = Shattered Soldier, etc. And then there's the prohibitively expensive "Uprising 30" earned by completing Rising Mode...
  • One of Krystal's alternate colors gives her outfit the same scheme as Noel Vermillion's; combined with the fact that her rifle looks a lot like Noel's "Zero Gun: Fenrir" Distortion Drive, this is most likely not coincidental.
    • Likewise, she has Samus' color scheme, heck even the gun is based from her Power Suit!
  • It wouldn't be from BlazBlue, but the male character has Bang's color scheme. Likewise, Bang has a Hard Corps outfit as well.
  • Might be bit of a stretch, but the first battle against Tiberius has several things in common with the battle against Colonel in Mega Man X4: both involve high-ranked military men with Commissar Caps that use swords as their main form of offense and can block your attacks in a game where enemies rarely do so and both battles take place near a location with flying battleships.
  • Leviathan has a Master Chief and EVA-01 palette.
  • In Stage 5 with Harley at the start he will say "What is this place?" à la the arcade intro to Super Contra.
  • The rocket-hopping part in Stage 7 is more than a passing resemblance to the fourth stage (and boss) of Contra III. Only you don't fight the boss this way, and the rockets are flying upwards, not to one side.

• Spread Shot: Obviously. While it's still invaluable against Mooks due to its wide field of fire (especially when upgraded), it's not nearly as useful against bosses since each projectile does less damage than a normal shot, you need to get close enough to most bosses in order for all the shots to hit and even then it only equals the damage output of most other weapons.

• Theme Naming: Sayuri's sword upgrades, as follows.
  • Kikuichimonji: Named after the 13 Japanese swords that bear the imperial chrysanthemum crest for each month of the year.
  • Raikiri: The name of the sword used by Sengoku samurai Dousetsu Tachibana.
  • Muramasa: The name of a real Japanese swordsmith who, in legends, created swords that were bloodthirsty and evil. This is a commonly used name for swords in fiction.
  • Masamune: Like Muramasa, the name of a very famous Japanese swordsmith. Often used as a name for swords of superior quality in fiction.
  • Amanomurakumo: The sword used by Susano'o to slay Orochi, renamed Kusanagi afterwards.
    • This specific name counts as a minor Genius Bonus because the sword Kusanagi could control the wind, and guess what Sayuri's Charge Attack is?
• This Is the Final Battle: "Now then, can I beat you up? LET'S BEGIN THE FAHNAL BATTHOL."

• Undying Loyalty: Leviathan is Tiberius' most faithful soldier. This is especially evident when you play as him, and find that he's still loyal to Tiberius even after finding out the truth of the Capital Laboratory in stage 5.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: In Stage 4, the boss is a flying 2D homage to Gradius, and Stage 5 starts off as a stealth sequence.
  • Of course, you can skip the stealth altogether and storm the lab with guns-a-blazin', the way the game is meant to be played.

• Wake-Up Call Boss: ARACHNE. A boss who teaches you that health won't protect you from falling.
  • To put this in perspective, imagine you're riding on the top of a train car. Suddenly, you enter a tunnel, and when you come out of it the view has changed to you grabbing on the car for dear life as the camera switches vertically. Then this big mecha comes in, sending out mechanical BEES like his namesake. While it's doing this it's charging up a laser that causes the entire line of cars you're holding onto to explode. You need to dodge both the bees and the lasers while jumping to the set of cars opposite you. Woe to anyone playing Harley at this point.

• We Used to Be Friends: Leviathan and Bahamut. It's especially evident in Leviathan's between-mission briefings, where Leviathan is haunted by Bahamut turning against the Commonwealth.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: The enemy soldier deaths in cutscenes are almost always played for laughs.
  • In Stage 1, a mook gets run over by the first boss. Said boss later gets eaten by a bigger boss. Subverted in that the first boss is piloted by one of the aforementioned mooks, who tears his way out of the bigger boss to continue the fight.
  • In Stage 2, mooks tend to get caught by alligators. Also, while not in a cutscene, if you're not speeding through the level, you'll see a mook land in an alligator's open mouth.
  • In Stage 6, one mook gets left behind by the train and subsequently tackled by the player character.
  • In Stage 7, Leviathan uses a mook as a Human Shield, and then chucks him at you.

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