Recalling your childhood - Contra

Without any doubt, Contra is one of those games that have marked our childhood. It presented us a shoot them up with various weapons, enemies, bosses and stages never seen before, and the best thing is that you could play it with a friend.

            The first version of Contra was released in 1987 and was an arcade game developed by Konami, the home version (the one that we played) was released in 1988 for the NES. The plot basically set us in the year 2633, our characters are named Bill and Lance and we are sent on a mission to neutralize a terrorist organization called Red Falcon that is secretly planning to take over the Earth. As you can see, it is not the greatest story ever told, but it gives us a reason to kill terrorists and later, evil aliens.

The game has 8 stages and each stage has a boss at the end, and if you can remember, those bosses could give you a headache, specially the ones from later stages.

Equipment

            The first weapon in the game is a useless rifle, this rifle shoots white dots of pure rubbish and it can kill normal soldiers with a single shot, but if you want to kill mounted soldiers, machines or a boss it will take you a lifetime. Of course this rubbish of weapon can be upgraded. There were 6 upgrades, 4 for our rifle and 2 specials that appeared in flying orbs:

“M” (Machine Gun): This upgrade is almost the same as the standard weapon but slightly faster and powerful. 

“F” (Flame): This upgrade is considered the worst of all, especially because of its circular pattern, its slowness and its lack of power.

“L” (Laser): The most powerful upgrade, it fires a reddish flame colored laser out of the gun which flies in a straight line across the screen, this weapon can kill anything with 2 or 3 hits. The main drawback is that it can be fired once until it disappears.

“S” (Spread): The best weapon in the game, it fires several bullets in a wide arc so you can hit everything on the screen. The best strategy is that if you are close enough of an enemy which takes several hits to destroy, you can easily fire every shot from your weapon, causing a massive damage.

“R” (Rapid): It speeds up the firing rate of all weapons with the exception of the laser rifle, allowing your bullets to reach their targets faster than they normally would. An extremely useful power-up when used in combination with the Machine Gun or Spread.

“B” (Barrier): As the name suggests, it is a barrier that protects you from bullets and if any soldier touches you he will be destroyed.

“Falcon”: When you pick it up, it destroys every single enemy on the screen, the problem is that it appears a few times in the game and it is not very useful.

Starting the game

             You start the game with 3 lives and the stages are quite difficult, even the first one, and considering that we were kids when we played it, it was a real challenge to complete the game. 

Fortunately, like every game developed by Konami, there is a cheat code in order to start the game with 30 lives, which can help you a lot in order to complete the game. Unfortunately when we were kids there was not internet to find any cheat, so we had to complete the game with just 3 lives and 2 continues, but if we played it with a friend it could have been a little bit easier or maybe an inconvenience because if any player lost all of his lives, he could steal lives from the other player, causing, in many cases an argument. 
  

Stages 

Finally, the stages and their bosses. From the very beginning we are attacked from every side, one touch you are dead, if you are good enough you can fight the boss from the stage. Here we can see the stages and their bosses: 

Stage 1 - The Jungle

Boss 1

Stage 2 - Base

Boss 2

Stage 3 – Waterfall 

Boss 3

Stage 4 - Base 2

Boss 4

Stage 5 - The Snowfield

Boss 5

Stage 6 - Energy Zone

Boss 6

Stage 7 – Hanger

Boss 7

Stage 8 - Alien Lair

Boss 8

            As you can remember, it was a great game and really difficult. The final boss was a giant heart which throws you scorpions in order to kill you, after you destroy it you can see the ending:

          If you are crying at this moment remembering all those moments of frustration, you can have your revenge. Here is a link down below if you want to play Contra:

Contra Nes Online