NES #22: Contra

For as good as I was at Life Force recently I completely embarrassed myself playing Contra. I used to be so good at this game! I remember beating this game without getting killed back in the day. I didn't think it was a big accomplishment or anything at the time. I just didn't want to lose my good gun and felt that the best way to keep it would be by not getting killed. Of course that was quite a few years ago. Recently I picked the game back up because I thought it would be an easy completion for my blog. I am the king of Contra after all.

I played through this game like someone who had never even played NES before. It probably took me a dozen or so tries before I could even get past the first level. The weakest guys shooting at me from the ground gave me endless trouble. I thought I would still have this game memorized, but I didn't even remember anything after the snow level which I thought was in Super C. I persevered though and eventually got through it. Thankfully the last boss is pretty easy. The victory was actually quite satisfying after all the sweat and toil it took me to get through it again. It's nice when I get that feeling again.

I always hear that this game is one of the hardest out there. I don't really know if I would call it that, but it is a game that you have to play a lot. It's not exactly a trial and error game like Prince of Persia, but you do need to play through it enough to learn what's coming next. After you do that the game becomes much easier. I guess you could use the Konami code to get a bunch of lives, but as we all know the Konami code is for sissies. You really won't need it. This game is really fun and no problem to play levels multiple times.

Hmm, I actually can't think of that much to say about this one. It's always more difficult when it's a good game without many flaws. I really can't think of anything negative to say about this one. Well, the fire gun sucks but it's also pretty easy to avoid. This is just a fun and challenging game that all of you should beat at least once. You might think it's too hard or that you need a code to cheat your way through, but trust me you can do it.