Contra

""Okay, you lower the difficulty three steps, and I'll raise the final score three steps. Deal?""

As one of the early kings of the sub-genre often titled "run and gun", the NES-port of Contra was to be the starting point of a series of action-paced shoot 'em ups. Believe it or not, but here in Europe where I live, the game we all know as "Contra" was released under the name of "Probotector", and the main characters were not Stallone-esque muscular guys but rather androids or robots sent out to eliminate the enemies. No matter what version you play, the content of the game is the same. For the sake of staying true to the roots, I will use the name Contra here.

Contra borrows heavily from classical action movies such as Rambo and The Predator. While the stages all have different styles, the basic idea of the game is to run and jump through the platform stages while blasting everything in sight, avoiding the opponents and their shots. As with many shooter games, spiced up with the fact that this is also a very old game, Contra comes with almost no background story. What you need to know is that you are the hero, you have a gun, you can run and jump, you need to pick up bonuses, and most important of all: You are to shoot down everything that moves on the levels! The NES-version takes us through eight stages filled with monsters and droids. The battlefields range from deep jungles, snowy plains, well-guarded bases and an alien mutant cave. The levels and the battle missions have a nice range in the variety, and you will get plenty of hardcore battles against huge monsters. You have several different guns in your arsenal, ranging from machine guns, laser rifles, spray guns and flame throwers.

The action bit is where Contra really shines. There is tons of adrenaline-rushing action spiced up with plenty of bullets, explosions and boss monsters. From the start of the game until the finish, you won't rest a single second. All the eight levels have their own horrors, and they also have their own scrollings technique. Most of the levels scroll horizontally, but one of them, where you climb up a waterfall cliff, scroll vertically! There are even two levels which provide you with an early attempt at first-person shooter perspective! While these levels have laughably poor programming, they are a nice touch, and deserve credit for trying their best. The boss battles are even more impressive. Your antagonists range from mutated dragons and ten-foot tall giants to master computers and spaceships. The graphics are nothing extraordinary, but they do their work well, and some of the characters (especially the bosses) are very well-animated. The sound and music are great too, and give a great warlike atmosphere. One of the best ideas in the game is the possibility to play two players at the same time! This is extremely nice, and gives the action game an even bigger party vibe.

However, like many classic shoot 'em ups, Contra doesn't come without an insanely high amount of challenge. Contra must be one of the most difficult games ever. As if it wasn't enough with all the millions of enemies you will have to face, you only carry three lives with you! And what is worse, is that one single hit, no matter if it is a bullet or touching an enemy, takes away one life! Add to that eight levels of pain and tons of dangerous passages, and you can understand what a difficult task this is. Of course games like these need to be hard, but not like this. Even for experienced players, the task is almost hopeless. Konami could have fixed this easily by adding a life meter or a couple of 1-ups on the levels, but no way.

You can of course use the traditional "Konami code". For those of you who never knew of this one, it is the famous combination of up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A and start. This gives you thirty extra lives, and makes the game a whole lot easier. In fact, now the game becomes way too easy. Now even the suckiest player can march through the game, ignoring whatever hits he or she gets, and keep on destroying most of the resistance. If this code had made the game fair in difficulty, it would have been good, but now we get to choose between either "too difficult" or "too easy". So what do we choose? Horrible option 1 or horrible option 2? Hmm...tough choice...

No really, a game shouldn't need a cheat code to get acceptable in the challenge level. Contra is a great game in most aspects with the right type of hardcore action. Only the painfully high challenge level ruins the overall impression. By adding some difficulty options or modes to start with more lives or similar things, this game could have been an eternal classic and a frenzy supersized action party. Now it stays at being just an okay game. For shoot 'em up-nerds with a taste for the hopelessly difficult, it is a feast. For us mortals, we will break down and cry after the first levels. Go ahead and play it. It is a nice effort, but put in that code before your TV-set risks getting thrashed. In fact, if you play it with a buddy, and you use the code, you can have a lot of fun using the game as a mindless action feast. For some honest gaming though, there is not much to collect.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/06