Contra Force was developed and published by Konami, programmed by Mitsuo Takemoto with art from Koji Horie and a score by Kenichi Matsubara and Tomoya Tomita, releasing in North America in September 1992 as the third NES entry carrying the Contra name after the original Contra and Super C. Its history is unusual for the series: the game began life in Japan as an unrelated project called Arc Hound, announced in magazines with no connection to Contra at all, before that original release was cancelled and the game was retooled and localized for North America as a Contra spinoff instead. Players choose from four distinct playable soldiers, each with a different weapon type and a unique special ability that can be triggered once per stage, working through side-scrolling military stages against a terrorist organization in a structure that broadly follows the series’ usual run-and-gun formula. Despite a strong soundtrack and the novelty of genuinely differentiated playable characters, the game suffered from noticeable slowdown and sprite flickering that hurt its reception at the time, and it’s generally remembered today as one of the weaker entries carrying the Contra name on NES.