Spidersaurs

My first impression booting up Spidersaurs was that someone at WayForward had a very specific itch to scratch after Contra 4 and decided the solution was genetically engineered dino-spider food hybrids. The premise is ridiculous in exactly the right way: INGESTCorp engineers man-eating monstrosities to solve world hunger, said monstrosities escape, and two interns - punk rocker Victoria and officer-in-training Adrian - are sent in with guns to clean up the mess. It's Saturday morning cartoon energy cranked to eleven, complete with an animated intro from Powerhouse Animation and a theme song you will absolutely have stuck in your head. As a run-and-gun it is faithfully, almost aggressively Contra. Characters take three hits before going down, health pickups are sparse, weapon drops fly in from off-screen and vanish on death, and the six stages each feature both a mid-boss and a proper end boss. The two characters share the same moveset but carry character-specific weapons - Victoria gets wall-piercing lasers and a Metal Spread shot, while Adrian packs a flamethrower and a Rebound Breaker that splits on ricochet. Twelve weapons total, and the asymmetry gives you a real reason to try both. Beyond weapons, defeating bosses rewards you with a chunk of boss meat that unlocks new abilities: wall climbing, double jump, forward dash, a ceiling tether. The ability progression is a genuinely clever hook that keeps early stages feeling sparse compared to later ones, though some reviewers have fairly noted the dash arrives late enough that the first half of the game can feel sluggish. Stage variety holds up well - jungle, infested lab, active volcano - and boss fights are the clear highlight, filling the screen and demanding you actually learn their patterns rather than spray and pray. Where Spidersaurs stumbles is scope. It originated as an Apple Arcade mobile title in 2019 and the PC and console port, while expanded with a new stage, a true final boss, and unlockable arcade and speedrun modes, still runs short. A confident player can see credits in roughly two hours. The post-completion modes amount to replaying the campaign with or without your unlocked abilities, which suits speedrunners and score-chasers but will feel thin to anyone hoping for a meatier package. The menus are barebones, controls aren't remappable on PC, and local co-op - while fun - has been noted as buggier than solo play. The mixed Steam score (around 74-75% positive on a small sample) reflects a split between genre fans who get exactly what they came for and players who expected something closer to the scope of WayForward's larger projects like River City Girls. The presentation, though, is genuinely hard to fault. WayForward's hand-drawn art style and character animation are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and the creature design - triceratops-beetle mashups, cockroach-theropod hybrids - is consistently inventive. The composer Harumi Fujita, known for Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers on NES, delivers a soundtrack that fits the retro-cartoon vibe even if individual tracks don't all stick. Voice acting is punchy and the writing is consistently funny without overstaying its welcome. If you play with a friend on the couch, the co-op camaraderie of swapping weapon types mid-fight and covering each other through scrolling sections captures exactly the feel of cramming two players onto a NES controller in 1991. Spidersaurs is a tight, charming run-and-gun that does one thing exceptionally well: it recreates the feel of classic Contra with enough WayForward personality layered on top to feel distinct. The length is a genuine limitation and the lack of online co-op or extra modes is a missed opportunity given the obvious potential of the IP. But on its own terms, as a short-burst arcade experience best enjoyed with a friend and a willingness to retry tough boss patterns, it delivers. Genre outsiders looking for a full-evening game should look elsewhere; Contra devotees and couch co-op fans who want a polished two-hour blast will find it hits its marks cleanly.

Alex · Scout Team

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