Alien Sac

The Alien Sac (unofficial name) is an enemy in Super Contra. It is a floating alien amniotic sac containing an embryo that homes toward the player.

Description

A floating amniotic sac with small tendrils around it and with a translucent membrane that allows to see an alien embryo forming inside it (it somewhat resembles an advanced variant of the more common Poisonous Insect Gel). It attacks by homing toward the player.

Arcade

These enemies are only encountered at the beginning of Alien 1. They unexpectedly come in triads from the background and then slowly float and spread around the screen, trying to both circle and bump into the player at the same time.

NES

In the NES conversion of the game, Super C, these enemies are also encountered in the same counterpart stage, Alien Area 3. Their appearance has been simplified (possibly due to hardware limitations), having lost their tendrils and now resembling more simple floating bubbles. Like in the arcade game, the first ones are found at the beginning of the level, this time each entering the screen from fixed positions instead of coming from the background, and no longer attacking in triads.

They are next encountered midway through the level, where they play a more prominent hazardous role and keep appearing almost until the end, throughout the entire section with the dropping ceiling. Each time the ceiling moves back to the top, six of these sacs will materialize out of thin air in a semi-straight line near the top of the screen and then home toward the player. It is advisable to deal with them as soon as possible, while the ceiling it still up and there's more space to shoot, as if the ceiling drops down, it will block the player's fire and shield the sacs as they approach, leaving the player with a very compromised area left to fend them off. Alternatively, the player can instead make haste and try to outrun them, making them exit the screen and remove them as a threat as they do so.

Gallery

Screenshots

Sprites

Trivia

The Alien Sac behaves and attacks almost identically as the Bundle in the rest of the games from the series. On the other hand, the Bundle in Super Contra cannot levitate and instead behaves just like a worm, so the Alien Sac may replace its role in this game.
A similar enemy called Evil Core later appeared in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (also by Konami). The enemy is essentially the same, a flying amniotic sac containing an embryo that homes toward the player, with the main difference being that it is demonic in nature rather than alien.