Constant Limit

A fun side-scrolling action shooter, Contra is easily one of best games ever on Nintendo (NES). Who could forget the countless hours spent blasting weird and creepy aliens with your best buds? Defintely what makes Contra so good is the two-player simulatenous feature. Making games competitive it what makes playing them fun. Rushing to get the best powerups for yourself or jumping ahead so your friend falls behind and dies are just a couple of things that make this game so fun.

Here is a Youtube video of Contra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygnSS-sXqo0

I am sure the title screen is familiar to most:

Weapon Arsenal

One of the first things that people like to review are the weapons.

In Contra here are the weapons that you can use:

Fire (F) 

Laser (L) 

Machine Gun (M)

Rapid (R) 

Spreader (S)

As you progress through the stages you will see weapon capsules fly by. Each capsule has a letter on it, corresponding to the type weapon hidden insde. Shooting the capsule will reveal that weapon. Here comes the tricky part. If you shoot a weapon capsule and it releases the weapon into the air, then you will have to perform some arcobatic to retrieve it. Else, the weapon may fall down into a hole or water and you will never be able to get it. Some weapons are stored in little shutters shaped as squares. The best weapon is obvioulsy the spreader because it has a wide range and shoots several bullets at once. The rapid upgrade actually makes your current weapon shoot faster and does not replace it. So always go for the rapid upgrades. The laser is a tricky weapon to use and many seem to have trouble using it properly.

Laser Defense

At this point in time I would like to defend the laser weapon that seems to have received much criticism as the “less-than-ideal” weapon. Although I do acknowledge that the laser is harder to use than the spreader, it is much stronger and allows you play defensively. What I mean by playing defensively is that the laser is a good weapon that requires timing and aiming. You can focus on dodging enemy bullets when the enemy is on the offensive and then attack with the laser when there is an opening or weak point revealed. With the spreader, both you and enemy are showering the screen with bullets, sometimes the screen flickers due to all the animation and you end up getting hit by an enemy bullet. With so many shot being fired it becomes tough to see what is going on and you end up losing a life and your spreader. It is very painful losing a good weapon like the spreader and you just have to trek on waiting for the next weapon. Back to the laser, with the laser you actually just press the attack button once and it will shoot the entire beam out. If you constantly press the attack button then the laser will act like a flamethrower where you have a steady stream of fire right in front of you. For close range enemies the flamethrower tactic works well but for long range ones, aim and fire. So the laser is a good weapon because your shots will not fill up the screen and make it difficult to see everything.

Enemy Base Infiltration: Unique Stages

Another interesting feature of Contra is the use of unique stages that seem specific to Contra. There are a couple stages where you infiltrate enemy bases inside these closed rooms. In order to advance to the next room, you must destroy all of the crystals, which then cause the room to explode, leading you to the next room. Cracking these crystal are no easy task. These rooms are gaunlets where the game throws everything they can at you in such a small confined space. First off, there is an electric field that prevents from moving forward. So can only move and jump left and right in these rooms. If you press Up and hit the electric field, you will get shocked and be momentarily paralyzed so that something else can kill you. There are these bombs that roll on the floor so if you try duck too long to avoid enemy fire you will have to constantly shoot these rolling bombs. Your usually one-hit kill enemies mob these rooms appearing in droves and shooting a million bullets at you. Finally you have wall panels with guns on them that also want to have a chance to shoot you down. With all of these thing targeting you, these room are truly a challenging gaunlet to pass.

The Waterfall Stage: Wait or Race?

The third stage of Contra is very fun. You start the level off at the very bottom of a rocky waterfull and you your partner must reach the top, with as you guessed it, a boss waiting. Everytime some jumps to the next highest platform, the screen scroll up and the bottom-most platforms disappear. If anyone is on those bottom platforms when the screen moves up, they die. I always found this to be funny because those who lag behind need to catchup or else they will die. There are two ways to approach this stage. You can play normally and just wait for both players to make sure that they are on similar platforms, or you can be competitive and see who can reach the top first. Racing to the top of this stage and seeing how many lives you can make the other player lose is definitely something that adds replay value.

Three Lives Not Enough?: The Konami Code Resurfaces

Contra can be a tough game to pass and sometimes you need a little boost to see through it to the end. If you remember, Gradius also uses the Konami Code. So you know the drill, use this code before the title screen appears:

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, start.

If you entered the code properly, you should see 30 lives before the first stage starts.

Ratings 

Here are my ratings for Contra:

Gameplay: 10

The spreader is strong so hold on to it. Playing dodging games with the enemy is always fun to see how good your avoiding skills are.

Graphics: 9

Strange and evil looking aliens make the game errie. These bosses look strange, like the waterfall one.

Sound: 8

I cannot say that Contra has memorable music but again Megaman proved to be too much competition for most games on the NES anyway.

Overall: 9

Contra is fun and the creepy aliens add the weird vibe of the game. The sound is just average but Contra is still good regardless.