Contra: Operation Galuga - Arcade Hard - No Death Clear (Bill Rizer / No Perks)

Following my previous Operation Galuga video with another Arcade Hard clear with Bill this time, who's essentially the default Contra character. His weapon set is a bit different from Browny's; most notably, he doesn't have the super powerful homing lasers that take care of almost everything before it poses any threat (though his missiles aren't bad). And that's a good thing, because it means you have to learn the levels more thoroughly and play more carefully, which makes the game more fun to play. He still has some strong weapons though. The classic spread shot that everyone knows and loves is great as an all-around weapon, so I stick with it for the entire game. There are points where I think it would be better to switch it out for the homing missiles, but I didn't want to really test it all out. This works perfectly fine. And the crush gun is the perfect secondary weapon, as it not only deals massive damage at close range, but once it's powered up, it shoots black holes that absorb enemy bullets as well. It's incredibly useful.

For me, the three main difficulty spikes are the stage 6 midboss, and both bosses on stage 8. For the stage 6 midboss, the Gradius dragon he summons can be hard to dodge if he does it in the middle of the screen, or something. He usually goes all the way to one side though, and just going to thee opposite end and moving along the wall works pretty well to dodge it.
The first stage 8 boss is still the hardest part of the game imo. The electric balls he summons can really limit your evasion options, and you have to be careful to not hit him when he starts parrying. The parry seems to come in intervals - I've never seen him use it multiple times in a row, and he usually takes some time to go for it, so you should be free to unload on him in between the parries. His shurikens can also be dangerous, but you should always be able to dodge them with a dash and jump if you're positioned right. I try to keep a lot of space behind me at all times, so whenever he jumps at me, I try to switch sides. That didn't work out for me here, because a big electric ball was blocking the safe spot...
Then there's the last boss. His last phase can be very dangerous. I didn't destroy his second eye here until he used an attack that gave me enough time to switch hands. That might not be necessary, you might just able to shoot his other eye out without having to move from whichever hand you start on, but I haven't tried that to be honest. I think it'd take a while with the spread shot, anyway. But after that, just keep that block hole on his third eye to block the bullet spam, and be sure to move back to the safe(?) area (back towards his thumb) when he starts his regular attacks. Getting smacked from behind by a worm really sucks.

Next, I'll try out the other characters and figure out if I want to do more Arcade Hard runs with them, or just play Extreme and Extreme Ultra. I'll probably just use Browny for those runs (at least at first), so maybe it'll be more fun to experiment with the rest of the cast for a bit. I dunno.

I'm still enjoying this game a lot by the way. I just wish they would cut both of the autoscroll stages in half. Oh well.

0:00 Intro
0:42 Stage 1
3:17 Stage 2
9:06 Stage 3
13:45 Stage 4
18:56 Stage 5
26:01 Stage 6
32:50 Stage 7
37:40 Stage 8

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