Hellrider

The Hellrider (ヘルライダース Heruraidāsu^?) is a recurring enemy in the Contra series. They are enemy soldiers that ride on hoverbikes and attack either by shooting a barrage of bullets from the mounted miniguns on their vehicles or by throwing explosives at the player.

Description[]

Alien robot soldiers that ride on hoverbikes and attack either by shooting from the mounted minigun on their vehicles or by throwing grenades at the player.

Appearances[]

Contra III: The Alien Wars[]

A troop of 25 Hellriders (24 attacking units plus their leader) are the first enemies encountered in the initial tunnel section of the Air Battle stage. The fight commences with their leader (clad in black armor) catching up as Bill and Lance are riding their own hoverbikes through a highway's tunnel, and instructs his squad to attack. The troop then proceed to accelerate and take positions in front of the heroes (none of the enemies can be harmed while they accelerate forward); each soldier then lowers their speed and slowly moves toward the rear, passing above the heroes into the fray.

The troops with a slightly tilted hoverbike will fire their mounted minigun diagonally downward toward the road. Since their fire mainly covers the right side of the screen, it is advisable to remain on the left side during the whole encounter.
The troops that fly their hoverbike straight will instead toss an incendiary grenade straight down at the heroes when they are directly above them. The grenade itself is harmless to the touch, only its produced flame is lethal. Likewise, the Hellriders themselves are also harmless to the touch, so the player can focus on jumping over the exploding grenades without having to worry on bumping into one of these enemies above. When a grenade is falling over the player, it is advisable to jump to the right to avoid the explosion.

Each enemy hoverbike is somewhat resilient and it will usually take more than one shot of concentrated fire to put it down. Using a weapon that has a wider range of attack, such as the Homing Gun or the Spread Gun, may be a better choice for fighting these enemies (although weak weapons like the Homing Gun greatly lose effectiveness on higher Difficulty settings). Each Hellrider has 8 HP and is worth 7,030 points, easily granting a player a few extra lives if many of them are eliminated (or more, if a Continue is used and many Hellriders are eliminated again). This is easier to do on the Easy and Normal Difficulty settings, as each Hellrider can be put down with just a couple of shots from most weapons, but can be difficult to do on Hard, as they become much more resilient and it is not uncommon only being able to destroy a couple of them during the whole attack with concentrated fire from a powerful weapon (like the Crush Gun). In any case, once all 24 red Hellriders have taken their turn, the next section of the level will start, regardless of how many were eliminated (if any). As for the black-armored leader, the enemy's fate is unknown as the soldier is never fought directly outside of its only appearance (although a similarly looking soldier is encountered a bit further down the road).

Contra 4[]

Called the Robot Bike Unit in this game, they are a variation of the Reaper troops. They only appear during the Crustacean Cruiser boss fight to escort and support this carrier beast during its charge through the ruins of a city. They attack either by shooting their firearms upward (blue units) or by lobbing grenades (red units) at the player. Fortunately, the player can use these enemies to their advantage, as each time a soldier is shot down, he will leave his hoverbike behind for the player to ride on it, and thus have a better shot at the Crustacean Cruiser's head.

Notes[]

This enemy does not appear in the Game Boy port, Contra: The Alien Wars.
This enemy also appears in Contra Advance: The Alien Wars EX.
Contra 4 categorizes these enemies as robots, although they are instead a slight variation of Reapers.