Timeline | 1988: Contra

Contra was an amazing game on the NES and still shines even today.

Contra was released for the NES in North America in February 1988. Contra had been a very popular arcade game for Konami and they handled the NES port in house (as opposed to other ports to the COmmodore 64 and other home PCs at the time which were done by Ocean Software).

A screenshot of the NES version of the game.

The majority of the gameplay in Contra is a side-scrolling shooter/action-platformer, but there are also levels with a pseudo-3D feel (shooting and moving forward and left/right) and a top down portion where the player moved up the screen shooting up.

A screenshot from the Arcade version, note the more detailed Pallet and the different character sprites for Bill and Lance.

The NES was not nearly as powerful as Arcade machines of the time, but Konami did a great job stripping out what they could and making a very nice port of the game on the home console.

Some intersting notes about the game from wikipedia:

"Contra was one of the early NES games to feature the Konami Code. Inputting the code at the title screen starts the player with thirty lives instead of the usual three. The cheat will be in effect as well when the player runs out of lives and uses a continue to retry a stage.

When the NES version of Contra was localized for the North American market, certain details of the game's background story were altered. The year of the setting was changed from 2633 to 1987 (the year of the arcade version's release) and the location was moved from the Galuga Islands to the Amazons. Bill and Lance were also given the codenames of Mad Dog and Scorpion."

Contra was well received both critical acclaim and financial success and two sequels (Super Contra or Super C as it was known in North America and Contra Force) that also came to the NES along with the Gameboy Operation Contra. Later console games like the SNES Contra III: The Alien Wars and Genesis Contra: Hard Corps continued the burgoning franchise. Contra would wax and wane in popularity but is now one of Konami's most well known franchises and has seen 15 installments.

Further Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_(video_game)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_(video_game_series)