

Call me biased, but you need to play this one.Remember the secret code: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A to get extra lives? After a 30-year hiatus, the Contra you know and love is back! Developed by famous Japanese game company KONAMI and world-leading game developer TIMI, Contra Returns aims to bring the classic Contra experience to mobile platforms. This is personally one of my favorites, and the length never stopped me from wanting to run through it again and again. Contra is not a particularly long game, but it’s a challenge. Contra plays fast with a non-stop action feel, but timing is vital, as one hit can kill you. The characters can also fire their weapons in 8 different directions, meaning no enemy is safe.

You start with your standard weapon, but finding power-ups can change your weapon to Rapid Fire, Laser, Spread Gun, and more. Playing alone or in tandem with someone else, you take on an endless onslaught of enemies. Contra has over a dozen games in its franchise and is one of Konami’s most successful series.Ī terrorist group plans to take over the world with the help of some aliens, and the two Contra soldiers are sent to stop them. In the initial version of the game, the setting is the Galuga Archipelago in the year 2633, and the two Contra soldiers’ names are Bill Rizer and Lance Bean. The main characters also got badass code names, Mad Dog and Scorpion. The NES version was released in 1988, and several changes were made to make it more compatible with NES hardware.Ī few notable changes are that the year it took place was changed to 1987, and the setting was changed to the Amazon. It was released in arcades and on ZX Spectrum and Amstrad PC to start with.

Contra is a run-and-gun style platformer developed by Konami and published by Erbe Software in 1987.
