Shades of Resonance: Fond Reminiscence - Memory Log #10

Contra

Even by early 1988, I still wasn't convinced that I needed to own an NES. "If I have access to the console everywhere I go," I continued to think, "then why should I bother getting one of my own?"

That was my logic.

Though, I couldn't deny that the NES had a couple of games whose allure was so powerful that I couldn't play them and not think to myself, "I need to look more deeply into this console and consider finding a way to get personal access to it!"

Standing way atop that list of games, with its manly chest puffed out far beyond those of its flabby-pectoral-having companions, was Contra, one of the most amazingly fun, utterly replayable action games I'd ever played.

I was formally introduced to Contra by my friend Mike (I say "formally" because I might have briefly played it or seen it in action at some previous point in time), who lived over on 73rd Street, across the street from my aunt and grandmother. Mike, in contrast to my other friends, had only a modest collection of NES games and one that was comprised mostly of the types of middle-tier titles I was predisposed to overlook.

But then he also had a big one: Contra, a recently released multiplayer run-and-gun shooting game made by Konami, which was currently one of gaming's top developers. I was instantly enamored with it.

Everything Contra showed me in its opening minute was impressive, yes, but I knew that it was something truly special the moment we came to its first bridge--one of two that started to explode the instant you attempted to traverse upon it. And I'm telling you, man: Watching that bridge explode spectacularly made me feel as though I was the star of an action movie! It was truly one of the most immersive sequences I'd ever seen in a game!

Mike and I agreed that Contra's action made us feel like action stars. That's why we started pretending that we were actually Arnold and Sly taking down the invading enemy force! (And this was before we even knew that those two cats were the inspiration for the game's heroes--or at least their box-art depictions!)

I had a great time that day. What occurred was one of the best first experiences I'd ever had with a game. Contra was simply awesome!

Now, because Mike's mother preferred that her son not bring friends into the house, lest lowly rabble like me would go about spreading my awful people germs all over her luxurious middle-class abode, he and I didn't play Contra together very often. The vast majority of the time, rather, I played it with my best friend, Dominick, and with my cousins, all of whom purchased the game around the same point in time. And for the longest while, it was our chief go-to game--one that trumped all of our other NES favorites. Whenever we'd gather for a game-related get-together, we'd always make sure to kick off the activities by playing through Contra at least once.

One of the first things those guys taught me about Contra was its 30-life "Konami Code," without which, they assured me, we wouldn't survive long. And, really, they were right; whenever we'd play Contra without using the code, we'd be lucky to make it to the third stage. We needed that code. The game was too difficult otherwise. In fact, we considered it to be one the hardest NES games in existence!

"Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A then Start."

That code would forever be burned into my memory. We must have used it a million times. And sometimes, because we were hyperactive kids, we'd compete to see who could input the code the fastest, though we'd usually screw it up and have to reset. In those moments, all you'd hear was a spasmodic-sounding "Upupdowndownleftrightleftlaryrarhlrarr-raralahhhaaraaa--FRACK!"

So yeah--we had all kinds of fun with Contra.

I'm sad to say, though, that I simply don't have many other Contra-related stories to share. That's the problem that I run into whenever I try to write about my history with the game. I just can't find much to say. And, really, that just feels wrong. I mean, considering how much time my friends and I spent with Contra and the great number of play-throughs in which we engaged, there should be more standout memories, right?

Well, there simply aren't, and about all I can come up with is "very often we had great fun with one of the best action games around." And that just doesn't seem good enough--not for Contra, a game that was so very important to us.

If only I had more to say.

In thinking about it, though, I start to wonder if maybe the nonstories are the real story. Maybe it's that Contra was such a thoroughly entertaining game and so utterly engrossing on every level that it rendered every other activity comparably insignificant. The gameplay experience was all that mattered. The totality of our experiences was everything. So I could get away with saying that the most important "story" was the one in which Contra, for five great years, continued to bring us together, provide us joyful playing experiences, and make our lives a whole lot better.

Maybe that's how it was.

What I can say for certain is that is that our every play-through of Contra was intense, highly engaging, and fun in the best possible way an action game could be. And each time, we'd come away wanting more of what it offered. So we'd play it again and again. And no matter how times we'd played, its action would never get old. That's how it remained.

Even years later, when technologically advanced games took over the world, Contra continued to have its place. In such a world, Contra was the "old reliable" to which we could turn to experience the type of quickly delivered, satisfying action that newer games just didn't care to offer. And it would always provide us exactly what we were looking for.

That, reader, is how you define value.

The ways with which we interacted with Contra were pretty typical: We loved the Spread Gun, of course, and disliked all of the other weapons--so much so that we'd go out of our way to avoid picking any of them up. In particular, we hated the Laser Gun, which was plagued with shortcomings like the inability to fire more than one shot at a time and a limitation that would cause a fired laser to disappear if you pressed the shoot button while it was active.

Also, we couldn't help but accidentally scroll each other off the screen in the Waterfall stage, and when we were in the Energy Zone, we could never figure out how to time our jumps to avoid making contact with the vertically spewing flames.

And when one of us would respawn at the screen's edge and right in front of a death pit, the other would freak out and, in trying to remedy the situation, make things worse by scrolling the screen forward and causing the spawn point to move directly over the death pit. As a result, naturally, the respawning player would repeatedly fall into the pit and consequently lose all of his lives!

You've all been there, I'm sure.

About the only thing unique to our Contra experiences was my strange fixation with the Energy Zone's interconnected pipes. Every time I'd see them, I'd turn to my friends and say, "I'm almost sure that there's a way to fire a bullet up into one of these pipes and have it fire down through one of the interconnected pipe openings on the other side of the screen!" Unfortunately there wasn't, and my firing bullets up into the pipes never produced the desired effect.

That would have been cool, though, right? To be able to tactically take out enemies by shooting bullets into the pipes that connect to the ones that said enemies are standing directly beneath?

I say that it's a missed opportunity on the designer's part!

The weird thing is that I never actually owned a copy of Contra. It was certainly one of the games that was on my mind when I asked my parents to buy me an NES, yes, though, for whatever reason, I just didn't give the thought of owning it any consideration in following; I never requested it as a gift or went out to look for a copy.

In thinking about it, my making the decision not to own Contra was likely the result of my original reasoning winning out: Since all of my friends and cousins owned Contra, I probably still thought, I didn't need to; through them, I already had easy access to the game. So it wasn't necessary for me to waste a birthday or Christmas request on it. I'd probably decided that my not owning Contra was no obstacle to my deriving maximum value from it. And for that reason, I never felt bad about not purchasing it.

My only regret is that I missed out on the original arcade version of Contra. It wasn't a case in which I saw it in arcades and chose to avoid it, no; rather, it was a matter of my never having seen it. It just never appeared in any of the arcades I went to. I'm telling you, though: Had there been some Contra arcade machines around, my friends and I surely would have pumped endless amounts of quarters into them!

It's true that arcade Contra pales in comparison to the NES version, yeah, but, still, we probably wouldn't have cared about that. We'd still have played it on the regular. Hell--we would have been blown away by just the idea of it: "A technologically advanced version of one of our favorite NES games?!" we'd have turned to each each and said the moment we laid eyes on a Contra machine. "From which heavenly realm did this emerge?!"

This might sound strange, but Contra's being such a great multiplayer game was a part of the reason why I continued to convince myself that owning it was a bad idea. "If I own a copy," I thought, "I'll then feel pressure to play the game alone, and I really don't want to do that."

As a single-player game, Contra just wasn't as fun, I felt. Single-player Contra action just didn't have the same energy to it. Also, the lack of a party-like atmosphere made the experience feel kinda empty; the fact was that I needed friends by my side to enjoy Contra.

The other reason I didn't want to play Contra alone was that I perceived it to be a ridiculously difficult game. I mean, it was tough enough in multiplayer mode, in which you had double the firepower and 60-plus lives to burn. "So when it's played in single-player mode," I'd say to myself, "it has to be impossible!"

For most of my life, that was my mindset: "It's probably unbeatable, so there's no point in even trying."

And after my friends and I went our separate ways, I really never returned to Contra. I didn't feel that I had reason to. Even years later, when I'd load it up in an emulator, I'd only play it for a few minutes--until I realized that something important was missing. At that point, I'd close the ROM and quickly move on to something else. It just wasn't the same.

Oh, I've certainly returned to Contra since then. I've played through a couple dozen times. I've had fun with it. And I've learned that it's actually a great single-player game (my younger self would have realized as much had he given its single-player mode a fair chance)! And, really, its single-player mode is nowhere near as difficult as I thought; in truth, it's actually much easier when you play it alone. That's what I've been doing for a couple of years now. And I've gotta tell you: I'm pretty damn good! I can reliably take this sucker down in one life!

Yet, even though playing it alone has its rewards, I'd still take multiplayer Contra over single-player Contra any day. Contra is, at its heart, a multiplayer game and one that's best enjoyed with friends. And, really, there's no experience quite like the one you have when you team up with your buddies to plow through the Red Falcon army and take down the gruesome alien leaders. And who knows: Maybe one day I'll get the chance to do that again.

So that's my "story" with Contra. It was an amazingly fun action game that brought a lot of joy into the lives of me and all of my wacky friends. We really loved this game.

You might think it odd, then, that I never got into the series as a whole.

Well, I certainly tried to. I played most of the 8- and 16-bit Contra games. Though, I just didn't much care for any of them. They weren't as fun or as engaging as the original, I felt, and none of them were able to match or surpass it in terms of level design and music (I consider Contra's to be an all-time-great soundtrack).

To them I posed a question: "How do you improve upon something that's already perfect?"

And their answer was this: "You don't. Contra is just too damn good."

And sometimes you just can't beat the classics.