I love that game its so much fun and it's crazy hard. I'd say it's probably as hard as most of the contra games, you have a life bar but most of the time it does you no good cuz there's constant spikes and holes and other obstacles and enemies that can kill you in 1 hit. The bosses take so many hits that it really doesn't help you in most of the boss fights either. I wish the show would have lasted longer I used to watch it all the time growing up and have all the vhs tapes of it still buried in all my storage.