Kahntra. That’s what this is all about. Kah-n-tra.
Plot: Aliens bad. Action heroes good.
Gameplay: Run, jump, gun, die, repeat.
Graphics: Pretty good. Works well on the NES hardware. Nothing spectacular but a very solid entry.
Music: Best part of the game, other than playing it, is hearing it.
How’s that? Short. Simple. Spartan some might say.
That’s exactly how Contra works. It’s about as stripped down as you can get. There’s no extra flashy and fancy stuff. There’s no big deep philosophical meaning or message. Aliens bad. Action heroes good.
Red Faction (dumb name for the aliens) landed, bad stuff happened. Our action heroes go in to stop the aliens.
The game is split up into stages, most are side scrolling platforming shooting. You die in one hit, most enemies do the same other than bosses and the slightly bigger than average enemies.
During the stages power ups will fly in, shoot em down and pick em up and get a weapon upgrade.
Every couple of stages the perspective will shift from the side scrolling to the 3rd person over the shoulder kind of thing where our heroes are running down a hallway dealing with enemies and hazards.
There’s a boss at the end of each stage. Deal with it, move on. Simple.
The graphics are solid enough. This was made to be a fast game with a lot to pay attention to and not really a lot to consider. The graphics reflect that very well. There’s not a lot of detail to anything but it’s pretty clear what everything is supposed to be and what will, and won’t, lead to your untimely demise.
The music is high energy driving rock music and fits the vibes of the game completely. It’s a great soundtrack even though it doesn’t really have a lot of really great tracks. It just works really well with the game.
| Plot | 6/10 |
| Gameplay | 7/10 |
| Graphics | 7/10 |
| Music | 7/10 |
| Overall | 8/10 |