Arcade Archives CONTRA - (Bill, Normal Difficulty, U.S. Version)

Contra was developed by Konami and released in 1987. It was also released in Europe under the title Gryzor, and also under the name Probotector for the Nintendo Entertainment System for the PAL region. Whether you can call that a loose form of censorship, is anyone's guess - because usually it was all the rage to call video games different titles by region, which was a trend that technically still carries on even today. Contra is a run-and-gun shooter game, which was one my personal favorites as a kid - I owned the NES version which I played nearly every day, and it took me months to master beating it. Funnily enough, I bought the copy from a guy off the street for rather cheap at that time, but it was worth it. I remember for some reason, the cartridge had a small hole punched through the plastic, but that didn't matter since most NES games ROM circuitry was mostly located at the bottom edge of the cart. Anyway, despite being a side-scrolling shooter, Contra introduced something refreshing which included differing perspectives, aside from going left to right, and a 3D-ish view where you move toward the background while shooting at enemies and trying to destroy gates by blowing up specific glowing modules allowing you to progress, all the while avoiding enemy fire. I thought this was pretty cool and different at the time. Contra is a two-player game, where we have two commandos named Bill Rizer and Lance Bean (who suspiciously resemble Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone respectively - eh, I'm sure its just a coincidence, right? ... right?!). Although there's no difference in playstyle aside from actual physical appearance. The controls consist of an eight-way direction for the joystick and a simple scheme of two buttons, one for shooting and the other for jumping - the eight-way allows for being able to aim and shoot upwards, horizontally, downwards (while jumping), and diagonally. You can also jump up on ledges or down from them. You can also hold down on the joystick to go prone, allowing you to shoot low and avoid enemy gunfire. There are various weapons, aside from the default rifle, that you can pick up from flying capsules or stationary pill boxes. There's a shotgun with a five bullet spread, a laser that fires a powerful beam, a fireball gun that fires in circular pattern, and a rapid-fire machine gun. Keeping these special guns can give you a big advantage, but since you die in one hit, they're just as easily lost, and the enemy and their fire count is constant on-screen. So what's the story? Contra takes place in the year of 2633 A.D. (surprisingly, not 199X like a lot of future plot-driven games and media liked to use, especially in the late 80s and early 90s). In fictional Galuga archipelago in New Zealand, a group called the Red Falcon Organization has set up a base there. They're plotting to eliminate humanity (let's be honest here, anything involving the color red is usually a sign of anti-humanity conspiring plots, thrown in an animal mascot and it completes the picture). So who better to send in to stop this evil farce? Bill and Lance, Earth's best of the best marines! They both head to the island to stop the alien creature that's behind the whole plot. Contra was the first in the series to give birth to a long-lasting line of future Contra games, each being known to be difficult in their own right, notable titles such as Contra: Hard Corps on Sega Genesis/Megadrive, and Contra III: The Alien Wars on Super Nintendo/Famicom. But the original, despite being short, will always be an old-school classic to me. So, I'm back on the Arcade Archives, finally. I wanted to get back to it before the end of October. I've just been busy in real life so I haven't had as much time to plan ahead. Hopefully things won't be as sporadic as they were for the past several months. Good news, I figured out what was causing the annoying milky white screen on past videos, it was the HDR setting on PS5. I had to turn it off to revert everything back to normal. Wish I knew that months ago! Anyway, see you next game.