Contra (Japanese title: 魂斗羅) is a 1987 arcade game by Konami. The player is a well-armed and muscled commando.

Overview

The player takes on the role of a commando who must battle waves of enemies, including humans, machines, and even mutants and aliens, to reach his ultimate goal. A number of power-ups become available along the way, increasing the variety and appeal of the game.

Gameplay

The player's character is equipped with a semi-automatic machine gun, and can move and fire in all eight cardinal directions using the directional pad. He can also jump, all the while continuing to be able to move and fire. Coordination of the character's movement relative to the player's controller has always been essential; a single hit from any enemy, bullet or other hazard will instantly kill the player's character, and it is not unusual for the screen to be filled with several enemies and dozens of bullets moving in different directions at any given time. Special power-ups can be collected which might increase the speed, damage or size of the player's shots. This makes for an easier time progressing through the game, but it's not without a caveat - these power-ups are lost every time the player loses a life.

Though they're not all available in every game, the following reflects a good portion of Contra's power-ups:

• Machine Gun: This weapon allows players to hold the fire button to fire repeatedly, rather than pressing the button constantly as the default weapon requires. In Contra 3 and beyond, the default weapon is fully automatic in this way.

• Spread Shot: Firing 5 shots in an arc, this power-up is useful for large groups of enemies. In the NES games, collecting more than one of these allowed more of its bullets to be on the screen at once and therefore allowed the weapon to be effective even when fired quickly.

• Laser: This shoots a long laser that can take out many enemies in a row. However, only one laser can be on the screen at a time (the first will disappear when a new one is fired).

• Crash Bombs: This fires rockets that fly a short distance before exploding. It is first available in Contra 3 though it has a low rate of fire.

• Fire: A weapon with many forms. In the first game, small fireballs fly out in a corkscrew pattern. In Super Contra, it shoots large fireballs that explode on contact. The weapon acts as a flamethrower in later installments.

• Homing: Weak but aggressive, missiles track enemies on the screen. This weapon made its first appearance in Contra 3.

• Barrier: This makes the player invincible for a few seconds, though he can still lose a life by falling into pits.

• Bomb: This destroys every enemy on the screen. In Contra and Super Contra, it is activated as soon as it is picked up. Beyond those games, it can be collected and used manually, but the trade-off is slightly reduced power (though most normal enemies are still killed in one hit).

The Contra games also feature simultaneous two-player cooperative gameplay. With little exception, both players occupy the same screen, and must coordinate their movements. If a player lags behind, the screen will not scroll, which could be fatal if his partner is attempting to complete a jump.

The Contra series' core gameplay has given it a reputation for being exceptionally fast-paced and of ridiculous difficulty. It is thought to take an extremely skilled player to progress through the game using only the 3 lives and continues provided. The Konami Code, made famous in the first NES version of Contra and featured in many of its sequels, added a great deal of extra lives to the player's total. This allowed players of average skill level to coast through the game. Contra 3, by contrast, allowed players to choose the number of lives with which they started the game, as well as difficulty (which modified both the number of enemies and the number of hits they could take).

This series is well known for its frequent battles against large opponents ("bosses"), who often occupy most of the screen, and consist of multiple body parts and/or phases.

Storyline

The original Contra was released at a time when video games were still lacking any in-depth storyline or actual narrative within them. As a result, the companies localized the games in the US would often have a different interpretation of the game's plot than the original Japanese publishers. Konami's US branch was very notorious for this practice, writing their own versions of the games' story, sometimes in a humorous (and arguably condescending) fashion within their instruction manuals.

The original Japanese storyline was set in the 27th century, in which a mysterious meteorite falls into the fictional Galuga archipelago near New Zealand two years prior to the beginning of the game. The player (as Bill Rizer or Lance Bean, members of the elite "Contra" task force) must neutralize a terrorist group known as "Red Falcon" that is staging an alien invasion on the islands.

The premise is more or less the same in the US version of the story, but the setting has been changed from the 27th century to the present, with the location being moved from Galuga to the Mayan temples in South America. The arrival of the meteorite also occurs thirty years earlier (instead of two). The change was presumably a result of the discrepancy between the game's modern guerilla warfare theme and actual setting according to the Japanese plot.

The change of setting caused trouble with the localization of later installments, which were clearly set in futuristic environment. To remedy this, Konami of America explained that the characters in Contra III: The Alien Wars were actually the descendants of Bill and Lance from the previous games. The US continuity has since been discarded and the proper Japanese continuity is now used everywhere.

Ports

The original game was ported to the NES in 1988. This version is famed for its use of the Konami Code, which is sometimes wrongfully credited for having initiated (the NES version of Gradius was the actual originator of the code). The gameplay remained generally unchanged from the Arcade game, but most fans consider the NES version to be superior due to the benefit of a horizontal screen, allowing a wider view of the playing field (the Arcade game used a vertical screen instead).

In Japan, third-party developers of Famicom games were allowed to use their own custom chips for their games in addition to the standard ones given by Nintendo (in contrast to the U.S., in which only Nintendo's first-party mappers were used). Konami took advantage of this situation and developed the VRC (Video Resource Chip) series of mappers for the Famicom. The Famicom version of Contra made use of the VRC2 chip and its added effects are quite noticeable when compared to the American NES version with the presence of animated backgrounds such as palm trees and snowfalls. The Famicom version also included additional cut-scenes between stages, a map displaying the player's progress and extended opening and ending scenes (including a secret message after the closing credits) which serves to narrate the game's storyline to the player (in contrast to the US version, which had no in-game narrative at all).

Konami also released an MSX2 version of the game in Japan, which included new stages, but has been criticized by fans for watered-down gameplay (the game lacked any scrolling and only displayed few enemies on-screen), substandard graphics and lack of 2-Player mode.

Legacy

The arcade version was followed by one sequel, Super Contra, in 1988.

The NES port of Contra was the first of many console based games. Super Contra (also known as Super C), Contra Force, and the SNES based Contra 3: The Alien Wars was one of the most highly acclaimed titles for Nintendo's 16bit console due to its revolutionary graphics (level bosses took up large parts of the screen, never before seen Mode 7-effects). Later the Sega Genesis got its fill of Contra with . The Sony Playstation installments and (which were farmed-out to Hungarian developer, Appaloosa) are generally considered the most disappointing of the whole series, being completely in 3D and sporting awkward controls. However, the PS2 games and Neo Contra (both developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo) were more true to the original contra formula.

Contra also has the most well-known use of the Konami Code, and many incorrectly believe it was the first game to contain the code. However, Gradius was the first Konami game to include the famous code.

In addition, the early console versions of Contra (and sequels to the console versions) were called Probotector in Europe and Australia. Also, the two main characters (and many enemies) were changed to robots, despite the fact that the original Arcade version was released uncensored in those territories under the Gryzor title. One reason might be because people worried about violent games in Europe. But no one knows for sure. Another guessing is that Konami feared Germany's so-called "Bundesprüfstelle", an institution that watches newly released media in general and is allowed to forbid the selling of a game. In the 1980s and 1990s dozens of games in which people have to be killed in order to progress (i.e. Rambo III) were put on an index which meant that these games were not allowed to be advertised or displayed in stores. Only people over 18 years could buy them upon request. Consequently, this meant commercial disaster. So Konami possibly chose to avoid such a scenario.

Famous quotes

"We must attack -- Aggressively!"

External link

• The KLOV entry on this game
• Gaming Vintage » Contra (NES)