Rope-avania! Also, glad I'm not the only one who doesn't fawn over CV Legends.
Also, who hates the overhead levels of Contra III? I thought they're fun enough, never had much of a problem with them.
Besides the fact that they're a tacked on gimmick which wrecks the pace of the game, they didn't put much effort into designing them and the graphics are too generic and repetitive, but then when you add in superfluous rotation, it's becomes all the more disorientating. It's like a zoomed in maze game with enemies/bullets that appear on screen too quickly. If nothing else it should have used assets half the size to make the viewing area play-friendly.
The original Contra's alternate stages weren't such a jarring change in gameplay, pacing and feel. The Mode 7 stages in Alien Wars take you out of the game and you're just kind of working to get past them and then all of a sudden you're dropped back into a Contra game which you have to get the hang of again.
It would be a much better game if you could opt out of the overhead stages.