Throw Back Thursdays: Contra NES

As you will come to find out, I am  a HUGE retro gamer. There is nothing I love more then losing a few friendships over a game of Dr. Mario on my NES. I have spent far more money then I would care to admit on my retro gaming collection and of all the cool and rare carts in my various drawers, Contra for the NES continues to be my favorite! I have played this game to the point where I have mentally mapped out every level including which power-ups are where, and where each enemy will spawn. I can now successfully complete the game without punching in the infamous Konami Code. So here goes nothing! A throwback Thursday review of Contra for the Nintendo Entertainment system.

The Good:

Contra really pushed the NES to its limits with sprite counts and even an attempt at three dimensional levels on an 8-bit system. (A rather successful attempt at that for the time.) Some of my favorite things about Contra are the end level bosses. Although some were pretty tough and a few left more to be desired, it was nice to see variety, and nothing can match the sense of accomplishment when you finally figure out the weak spot! It was also great to have a multiplayer platformer that you didn't have to take turns on. I found it more fun to be working together at completing the game instead of seeing ho could rack up the most points. Finally for the good, Contra gave you a decent array of weaponry (at least for the time period of games) the allowed you to look at situations differently depending on which upgrade you currently had.

The Bad:

Alright let's talk about the elephant in the room here. Contra is notoriously difficult, but seriously what retro game isn't? almost all of them are! Even Konami realized this and gave us a little help with their special code! (Lives on the house!) Another issue that isn't quite game breaking but rather irritating (to me at least) is all the sprites that take up the screen. This is great and all, having plety of enemies to blast, but the NES's hardware could only handle so much. When the screen became loaded with enemies bullets and everything else cluttering the screen the sprites would start to rapidly flash. This wasn't all that bad as they flashed fast enough for you to understand where everything still was it was just irritating sometimes.

The Ugly:

I only have one point for the ugly and that is the Red Falcon. *Spoiler Alert* When you've finally blasted your way through all the baddies and found your way to the aggravating Alien's Lair you knew you were close to the end. Expecting an awesome final battle boss, given all the really cool bosses you met along the way, you instead find yourself wasting rounds into a giant heart that barely fights back.  The minions that spawn around the heart every now and then are extremely easy to dodge and kill leaving a lot to be desired at the end of the game, but hey, its the NES after all.


To sum it all up Contra is a fantastic game if your looking for the next cart to put into your collection. Grab a friend for twice the fun and remember up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start