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The Crush Gun (C), also known simply as Crush or Crash, is a recurring weapon featured in the Contra series. It is a gun that shoots small missiles straightforward which detonate after traveling a moderate distance, producing small but powerful explosions.

General description[]

The Crush Gun is a short range missile type weapon capable of exploding (either at its intended target or in mid-flight), producing small explosions at the missile's impact point. This weapon is known for being capable of inflicting massive damage to many large scale stationery enemies and bosses due to the powerful explosions it produces. The missiles fired are generally blue in color.

Game specific information[]

Contra III: The Alien Wars[]

First appearance of the Crush Gun in the series. In top-down stages, the missiles take on a brighter red color, similar to the Homing Gun missiles. Here, only three missiles may be fired onscreen at a time, but this restriction only applies to a single gun, meaning a second Crush Gun can fire an additional three missiles, totaling six onscreen at once for one player.

If a missile hits a surface or enemy, that missile cannot be refired until the explosions dissipate. This can become a drawback if the player fires all the missiles and has to wait for a few seconds until firing again, leaving the player vulnerable and open to enemy attacks. It is recommended to fire carefully and plan evasive maneuvers, as sometimes this gun's high firepower is worth the risk it comes with.

This gun also appears in the two handheld ports, Contra: The Alien Wars and Contra Advance: The Alien Wars EX, where it is virtually identical to its Contra III counterpart. Due to limitations in the former, the bullets appear as Rifle rounds.

Contra: Hard Corps[]

The Crash gun appears as Ray Poward's B special weapon. Here, the weapon's appearance is different. Instead of blue missiles, the bullets fired are spinning red and silver tiny capsules. The weapon's behavior is still identical. Explosions are not tied to the surface they hit and will instead move along as the screen scrolls.

Sheena Etranzi also has a variant of the Crash gun, called Shower Crash, which is also her B special weapon. The key differences for her variant are that the capsules are blue and silver (instead of red); also, her Shower Crash comes with a sort of "gravity" effect; this means the capsule bullets always arc downward toward the ground, no matter which direction they are fired at. While this can prove somewhat useful in certain situations, it takes practice to understand how Sheena's Shower Crash works. The bullets do not dissipate on their own until they detonate on a surface or target, making Sheena's variant somewhat more mid-long range compared to Ray's. The explosions follow a similar scrolling behavior as Ray's variant, but unlike those, up to five capsules can be onscreen at one time. This variant would later return in Hard Corps: Uprising, this time launching small missiles but still retaining their gravity effect and dealing heavy damage to targets.

Contra: Shattered Soldier[]

The Diver Mine is one of three default selectable weapons to choose from in combat. This gun closely resembles Sheena's Shower Crash in terms of gameplay, but the mines do not explode if they hit a surface and instead travel along the ground or wall for a few seconds before detonating. The direction of the travel by wall varies by range. The direction of ground travels varies by which direction the player is facing when a shot is fired. If this gun is selected and the rifle is charged, the player will fire Homing Missiles.

Contra 4[]

The Crush Gun reappears in Contra 4. It is roughly identical to its Contra III counterpart. If the gun is upgraded, the bullets become almost twice as large and can fire long range similar to almost all other weapons, increasing its potency.

Although not directly stated, the Crush Gun is necessary to complete a certain Low Ammo challenge in Challenge Mode.

Hard Corps: Uprising[]

Named the Crash Gun, the weapon fires thick missile-like projectiles that explode once they hit a surface. Firing speed is rather slow, resulting in low rapid-fire capabilities. When firing the gun, the bullets are affected by gravity and behave much like the Shower Crash projectiles from Contra: Hard Corps.

Contra: Operation Galuga[]

Called Crush Bombs in this game. Its assigned color is violet.
The warheads fired are now silver with additional fins, but otherwise behaves similar to previous variants. When upgraded to Level 2, the warhead's explosion changes into a gravity well - while still dealing lingering splash damage as previously, it now also attracts and removes enemy projectiles that come into its range. Its Overload is the "Barrage", which releases a volley of ten rockets that have slight homing properties and targets nearby enemies.

Instead of the Crush Bombs, Ariana and Fang utilizes the Crush Grenades when a C power-up is collected. This variation behaves similarly to classic Sheena's Shower Crash from Contra: Hard Corps. When upgraded to Level 2, the grenades create three shrapnel pieces on detonation; in this case, one-piece falls in the center from the grenade explosion while the other two pieces fall to the left and right of it. Its Overload is the "Vortex", which creates a large vortex at the top of the screen for around six seconds, attracting enemy projectiles upwards into it and removing them - similarly to the Level 2 Crush Bomb's gravity wells.

When Sheena collects the C power-up, she equips the Crush Grenades and uses the "Barrage" Overload, while Browny equips the Crush Bombs and uses the "Vortex" Overload.

Gallery[]

Screenshots[]

Icons[]

Audio[]

Sound Location
Contra III: The Alien Wars

Trivia[]

  • Although the Crush Gun makes no appearance in Contra ReBirth, a sprite for a C power-up exists within the games files. This suggests the Crush Gun was initially planned to make an appearance during development before being scrapped.
  • In an earlier version of Contra 4, the Level 2 Crush Gun instead used small silver Vic Viper ships as projectiles, which traveled farther range than the level 1 Crush Gun missiles. In the final game, these ships were replaced by larger silver missiles and the ships were repurposed as homing projectiles for the Prototype Weapon.
  • In pre-release screenshots and footage of Contra: Operation Galuga, the Crush Bomb's explosion used to appear as one large lingering explosion. This may have been changed, as explosions upon defeating enemies look similar to the pre-release Crush Bomb explosion.
  • The Crush Bombs Level 2 in Operation Galuga, seem to be a reference to Falchion β's weapon from Gradius Gaiden.

See also[]

References[]

  1. Contra: Operation Galuga
  2. @ContraSoldier (Contra Official(魂斗羅公式)) at X (February 13, 2024).
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