December 22, 2005 - 4:39pm Sean Mitchell

Contra Title ScreenIf you are in your 20’s or 30’s, take yourself back to a day when all that mattered was getting home from school to engage in some sort of 80’s activity, be it watching the A-team or playing your favorite game with your best friend. For me, 3:30pm meant rushing home, dropping all homework and obligations, and barely saying hi to my mom before I was out the door to play Contra for the NES with a close friend.

While the game itself was simple, it had some enduring qualities which many games these days lack. The game was easy enough where one person could move through it fairly unchallenged. It also provided the world with the infamous Konami Code, which was a standard to enter so you could each begin with 30 lives. The game pitted you against an evil race of aliens as you moved through 8 stages to defeat the Vile Red Falcon (and consider yourself a hero).

Contra 2-PlayerThe reason I feel this game changed my life, is that it was the first game I can remember playing with a friend, allowing me to realize that I could gain friends and socialize through gaming. It was much more fun to shoot aliens with not just a “Spread Gun” (using an NES max) and having the “Rapid”, but to also have a friend covering your back with a trusty Machine gun. Konami, I think, knew this. That’s why they even included the ability to “steal” a life from your friend if you ran out of lives. Nothing was more fun than jumping through the waterfall stage too quickly to see your friend helplessly die.

There were many cool NES games back in the day you might say could deliver in the same ways Contra did, and I think it is these types of games which help define the qualities that today’s gamer looks for. Let’s hope that the game developers of tomorrow can learn from the golden game gems of the past.



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