Contra vs Smash TV. Which was the better shoot em up?

Both classic run and gun shooters from way back. I loved both games and it's pretty sad to see Smash TV is a forgotten game. It's like no on knows it even though it was very popular back then. Anyway for those that do, Contra is an amazing side scolling shoot em up, where as Smash TV is more a birds eye view shoot em up. Contra had an official sequel called Super Contra, while Smash TV had I guess a spiritual successor called Total Carnage made by some of the same devs I believe. Both sequels were amazing as well. So Which was the better shoot em up?

Oh and mind you, Contra came out a few years before Smash TV.

@girlusocrazy: Ah you make valid points, especially about comparing them, and I do agree. I guess secretly I just wanted to get people talking about Smash TV :) ... Glad I'm not the only one that remembers it.

Contra, though Smash TV was great.

Haha some of us remember. Played a lot of Smash TV in arcades, a lot of Contra on the NES and Gameboy.

In my opinion the answer to that is Contra. Smash TV was ok but nowhere near the level of Contra, Super C, or Contra III, which are some of the side scrolling Goat's.

They aren't the same genre so they are difficult to compare head to head, but I'll take a classic side scrolling shooter over an overhead wave based game. That said, Super C did have 2 levels kind of like that (which are my least favorite levels in the game).

Speaking of Contra for those that didn't already know here you can input the Konami code on the homepage of this website (Gamespot.com) and watch what happens :)

For those that don't know the code. Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start

to input that code use your arrow keys and for start press enter. (make sure you do the input rather quickly)

Ah I see... Thnx for this info. I had no idea about the remake. Shame it got canned :(

This warms my heart :)

I enjoyed Smash TV more.

Contra was ok but by the time I played it, I had played a bunch of games just like it already so it didn't hit my quite as hard.

I'm going with Contra.

If you like shoot them ups with a birds eye view you could check out for example the Halo spartan assault spin off or Xeno Crisis which is a relatively new game but it looks a lot like a 16 bit game. Xeno Crisis was on Xbox Game Pass for a while.

And there was another game a lot like Contra / Probotector on Game pass too which was titled Blazing Chrome. Very old school gameplay i think you could say,a nd also pixel graphics.

I might have tried Smash TV once but i do not think i played it a lot. But i know about it. It was one of the slightly less known but still pretty solid SNES games which might not be considered a classic but still was a quality game then i guess.

Contra III /Super Probotector on the other hand reached a status of a classic game i think. Games from Konami might have an easier time getting the classic status, the Konami logo helps. But Konami also produced and developed a lot of high quality games for 8-bit and 16-bit consoles so it is not just the Konami name.