Contra

aka: Probotector
Moby ID: 98429
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The Famicom/NES versions of Contra are an expanded port of the arcade version, developed in-house. The biggest difference is that the levels are restructured and significantly longer, with stages 5 through 8 being derived from and expanded from areas in the arcade version's final stage. The plot is altered as well, being set in the year 1987 in the Amazon, rather than 2633 in the Galuga archipelago. Weapons are slightly different in function and frequency, and the Konami Code makes a famous appearance. The Famicom version has additional graphical effects and between-mission cut-scenes not seen in the NES version.

Spellings

  • コントラ - Japanese spelling (alternate)
  • 魂斗羅 - Japanese spelling

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Credits (NES version)

17 People (14 developers, 3 thanks)

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 27 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 145 ratings with 5 reviews)

Congratulations! You've designed the best run-and-gun platformer in the universe. Consider yourselves heroes.

The Good
To understand the epic levels of perfection this game reaches in control, pacing, graphics, challenge, level and sound design, etc., you can read the rest of the review, or just watch the following video. It distills the incredible polish of Contra, in all its aspects, into an appropriately cheesy and ass-kicking nine minutes.

Here.

Now to business. What is the key feature for lasting enjoyment and immersion in any action game? Control. Being able to attack in eight directions, keeping character transitions quick and seamless, and maintaining pitch-perfect finesse during a jump are all -essential- qualities in a action-packed run-and-gun platformer. If such a game doesn't have these, it will be slow, unfair, and/or tedious. Contra exemplifies these qualities--Mad Dog and Scorpion are instantly responsive and have the abilities to meet any in-game threat. Almost every death will result from the player's mistakes, not the limitations of the controls. Mind you, this is all from two buttons and a D-pad! Nothing crucial is left out, everything works as you expect it to, and the motions -feel- brilliant and intuitive. What more can you ask?

Well, for starters, you can ask for super-fast pacing--pacing so fast that its g-forces alone could rip your face off. While you can trudge through the game cautiously, picking off enemies as they appear, the level design and general feel of the game always encourage a more reckless approach. There is rarely a good reason to stop running, jumping or shooting, ever. You're playing as a shirtless, buffed-out Schwarzenegger/Stallone clone! A one-man army with ridiculously overpowered weapons, facing off against legions of alien stooges! Allowing your bullets-per-second count or mean velocity to drop under these conditions is unforgivable! To play Contra as it is meant to be played is to play it fast and hard--the beauty of the game's level design and challenges is best seen under these circumstances, and the tight controls allow for such a fast pace without ever becoming overly frustrating. One big contributor to this is the death mechanic--when you die, you don't restart the level, but respawn where you met your demise, flipping down from the top of the screen. Puts you right back into it!

The level design is completely brilliant in encouraging this pacing. Enemies are all over the screen, bullets are flying everywhere, and if you stop moving for too long to line up your shots, odds are you'll catch one yourself. Enemies spawn ahead of you, behind you, above you, below you, etc. In so many shoot 'em ups, platform or otherwise, this degree of pacing and enemy density is simply unfair and requires extreme pattern memorization of the player. Not so in Contra--if you're playing the game as it is meant to be played, your furious barrage of bullets is already filling dangerous areas of the screen, and any areas filled with enemy crossfire should have long ago been vacated by your avatar--who preferably is tucked into a somersault jump and spraying spread-gun fire at all points of the compass. Despite the huge number of challenges thrown at you, there is always an elegant, high-speed, and visually -awesome- way to get through them. Platforms are obvious, obstacles are obvious, and the set-pieces for boss encounters are varied and imaginative. In many areas, there are both high and low approaches available, and both work well, if differently--this maximizes the appeal of the versatile controls, along with one other aspect:

Challenge! How can this game be an enduring classic when its total content can be breezed through in around fifteen minutes? Because it's -hard-. One shot kills you dead, and you have three lives. This is only fair--Red Falcon footsoldiers are thrown ten feet and explode after taking a single round to the face, so why shouldn't you? Long before Counterstrike, one-shot death from gunfire was epitomized in Contra! Bullets move at exactly the right speed--if you get trapped in an avoidable crossfire, it's because you screwed up badly, not because the game is unfair. When you get into the groove of the game, nimbly dodging dozens of projectiles and enemy baddies, the feel is just supremely satisfying. Even though the game is incredibly short, that feeling will have you coming back again and again.

Speaking of the feeling of this game, let's talk about music, sound and graphics. They all push action movie cliches to their highest points of pure cheesy fun. Konami had a long reputation as masters of NES sound programming, and Contra doesn't disappoint--fast-paced, bombastic and always somehow ascending higher and higher in drum-pounding splendor, the themes here are all completely brilliant. The sounds are naturally no slouch either--explosion effects and the sounds of gunfire pump up the effect of the furious action. The sound that plays during player death is even somehow enjoyable! The graphics are very simple, but appropriate and appealing. Animations rarely rise above two frames, but it doesn't matter. The pacing is well-served by the simplicity, and knowing where you're jumping and what you're avoiding is a necessity--in later games of this type with busier graphics, it's sometimes difficult to see the little bullets flying about. Not so with Contra, and that's crucial when one hit means death.

The Bad
The familiar complaint of weapons balance must be noted. As in Ghosts 'n' Goblins or Castlevania, there are some weapons you simply do -not- want at all, such as the flame-gun, and others that rule so completely there's no reason to abandon them, such as the spread-gun!



The Bottom Line
All these elements combine to provide a wall-to-wall brilliant experience. Even the shooting gallery feel of the pseudo-3d base levels never leads to tedium. The high difficulty works with the pacing and elegant controls to provide a unique feeling of accomplishment to the player, even in dealing with the basic enemies of the game. Too often in modern action games this is lost, as the player can absorb too many bullets, the challenge is low, and the requisite skill is usually just sitting in one's chair long enough to slog through the cutscenes and QTEs.

When there -are- interesting controls and mechanics, skillful use of such is rarely required of the player by the actual -game-, whose level design and difficulty level more closely resembles a playground than a battlefield. This precludes the player from feeling the most intense satisfaction from increasing skill with the controls, and the motivation for having such skill is deferred to multiplayer or is the result of meta-challenges the player invents for herself. Witness the permadeath playthroughs of Far Cry 2, etc.

This is why Contra, despite being utterly linear and -extremely- short, has in the end more replayability for me than long, drawn-out, less linear affairs in the action genre. You can -always- pop this sucker in and have a great time with it. The feeling of surmounting challenges through skillful use of the fine-tuned controls is fantastic, and this is, in the end, is the game's timeless legacy.

NES · by J. P. Gray (115) · 2009

Contra, No Iran

The Good
While Iran-Contra scandal was unfolding in Washington D.C., kids across the nation were involving themselves in quite a different sort of Contra, 8-bit style. Despite the subsequent advances in gaming technology, Contra remains the definitive fast paced, side-scrolling, shoot 'em up, sci-fi platformer. The difficulty level is sufficient to provide hours of exciting game play, without seeming cheap or unfair. The game's graphics, music and sound effects all demonstrate what can be done on the 8-bit Nintendo, when software developers care enough, and the game is still as fun to play alone, or with a friend, as it ever was.

The Bad
Contra (1988) on the Nintendo Entertainment System may not dazzle younger, contemporary gamers. The game's difficulty level is often heighten, sometimes to a fault, due to the instant death policy and the ability to lose your important weapon's upgrades. As was often the case, the game's storyline was revised for release outside of Japan, with the original Japanese storyline being superior.

The Bottom Line
Contra (1988) for the Nintendo Entertainment System is a required stop on anyone's tour of retro gaming. It offers some of the best, early 8-bit graphics, music and sound effects coupled with a fast paced, sci-fi storyline. Most importantly, the game is truely fun to play, especially with a friend. So, grab you laser gun, a friend, and be prepared to save humanity from armed terrorists and vile space aliens!

NES · by ETJB (428) · 2010

If you haven't played this game yet, I feel sorry for you.

The Good
The gameplay is ridiculously responsive and it doesn't slow down even in multiplayer mode. It's a good thing too because you'll need that dexterity to beat all 8 stages. This is one challenging game. I'd say it's almost as difficult as 'Battletoads' but much more enjoyable because the level-designers have thrown in a generous number of items to help you out instead of just adding more and more things to kill you. For example, in the first stage there are 2 'S' power-ups(the best weapon around).

The 2nd and 4th stages are a little strange, but no less fun than the others. They use a single-point perspective that you will instantly recognize from old-school adventure games, but they keep the same gameplay. So basically you just run back and forth with lots of jumping and ducking until everything is destroyed and then you move on to the next fixed screen. It's too bad the hardware didn't exist at the time to support more interesting innovation.

If you run out of lives when you die--and you will die, my friend, you will-- you'll be pleased to find that you can take your buddy's extra lives just as if they were your own! If that seems underhanded you can always try to earn more beforehand by scoring more points, but there's no guarantee that your partner won't steal YOUR lives after you worked hard to get them. Either way, make good use of them. They're in short supply.

The Bad
Rather than bickering over extra lives, your time is better spent fighting the real enemies in the game. No, i'm not talking about the guerrillas in the bush or even those scorpion-looking aliens. I'm talking about the 'F' items. They masquerade as power-ups but be careful not to collect them unless you enjoy being 'F'ed over by a weapon that moves at the break-neck speed of glacier-melt. I get the feeling they only left this one in the final version to make the other weapons look better by comparison.

The Bottom Line
All in all, this is one of the best games made for the NES so go pick it up, pick up a friend, and pick up those controllers already!

NES · by Jeff Koerner (27) · 2006

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Cheat code

Contra's infamous code for 30 lives (see Tips & Tricks), has become a minor part of video game geek culture, appearing on T-shirts and referred to in movies and television shows, and being mentioned as one of the greatest gaming moments of all time by the magazine Game Informer.

European version

The game's European NES release was censored, changing the main character and other human-looking enemies to robots. Characters remained human in other European releases.

Removed content

There are a large amount of content that was cut between the original Japanese Famicom release and subsequent international NES releases. There is an opening sequence that explains the story, as well as a map screen between stages much like in Ghosts 'N Goblins. These sequences were both cut, along with the music that plays during them. Many stages featured additional visual effects, such as blowing trees on the first stage, falling snow on the fifth stage, and literally the entire level pulsating on the eighth stage. The original version also features a slightly longer ending sequence with an added scene. There is also even a hidden stage select menu.

Despite this, the game itself plays identically, as no changes were made that affect gameplay. The large amount of content removed reduced the game's data from 2 megabits to 1, suggesting this was done to save on manufacturing costs due to using a smaller ROM size.

Story

The original Contra and its sequel, Super Contra, were set in the distant future, during the 27th century (in 2633 and 2634 respectively). The Famicom (Japanese NES) port even had an introduction sequence detailing the plot. However, when the NES version was localized, the cut-scenes were removed due to the fact that Konami was forced use a standard Nintendo-made mapper instead of the proprietary VRC4 mapper they used for the Japanese version (Nintendo had made no such restriction in Japan regarding the use of custom chips and cartridges, thus third-party companies were allowed to take such liberties if they wanted).

Since the US NES version had no in-game storyline, the author of the US manual took the liberty of placing the game's plot in the present. Moreover, the setting was changed from the fictional Galuga archipelago to the Amazons and the nicknames "Mad Dog" and "Scorpian" were given to the main characters, Bill and Lance (who also lost their surnames in the process).

When the series made it's appearance on the SNES in the form of Contra III: The Alien Wars, the intro made it clear that the game was set in the future (2636). Since there was no way cover their previous mistakes, the author of the manual this time declared that the main characters in Contra III were not Bill and Lance, but their apparent descendants, Jimbo and Sully.

Ironically enough, the censored Probotector games released for the European NES had manuals that were more faithful to their Japanese counterparts than the American versions.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • 1989 Buyer's Guide - Best Action Game (NES version)
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #45 (Best 100 Games of All Time) (NES version)

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  • MobyGames ID: 98429
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by The cranky hermit.

Arcade added by Alaka.

Additional contributors: Foxhack, Alaka, lights out party.

Game added December 10, 2017. Last modified March 26, 2024.