Bill Rizer & Lance Bean vs the Galaxy
Contra was released in arcades by Konami in 1987 and on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988. It was designed as a run-and-gun action game supporting two players simultaneously — Bill Rizer and Lance Bean, two commandos battling an alien force on a remote island and eventually inside the alien hive itself.
The game was inspired by the visual aesthetic of 1980s action cinema: Aliens (1986) in particular, and the H.R. Giger-influenced alien designs of the late levels. The title derives from the Nicaraguan Contras of the 1980s, though the game’s plot bears no relation to the conflict.
On NES, Contra became one of the definitive co-operative gaming experiences of the 8-bit era. The shared lives, shared screen, and punishing default difficulty (three lives, one hit to die) created an experience in which the Konami Code’s 30-life extension felt genuinely essential for many players.
Contra (NES, 1988) — North American box art featuring the iconic Stallone/Schwarzenegger-styled commandos.
Arcade to NES: The Port Differences
The arcade version of Contra used dedicated Konami arcade hardware and featured a somewhat different structure from the NES port. The arcade had fewer distinct stage types and a different stage order. The NES port — developed for a 256-kilobyte cartridge on hardware with a fraction of the arcade’s processing power — made several significant design changes:
| Feature | Arcade (1987) | NES (1988) |
|---|---|---|
| Horizontal scrolling stages | Yes | Yes (Stage 1 unique to NES) |
| Base top-down stages | Yes (Stages 2, 4) | Yes (Stages 2, 4, 6, 8) |
| Waterfall stage | No | Yes (Stage 3) |
| Alien lair stages | Final stage | Stages 5, 7 + final boss |
| Players | 2 simultaneous | 2 simultaneous |
| Default lives | 3 | 3 (30 with Konami Code) |
| Konami Code | N/A | ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA = 30 lives |
The NES port added the waterfall stage (Stage 3) and expanded the alien lair sequences significantly. The base top-down stages were also more numerous in the NES version. These additions gave the NES port a longer runtime and greater variety than the arcade original — unusual for ports of the era, which typically reduced content.
The additional content was made possible partly by the NES cartridge’s ROM capacity and the different commercial context: an arcade game needed to be over in minutes; a home cartridge could justify an hour’s play.
Contra arcade (1987) — the original on dedicated Konami arcade hardware, lacking the NES port’s additional waterfall and expanded alien lair stages.
“The NES version of Contra is arguably better than the arcade version. It has more stages, more variety, and the Konami Code changes the difficulty ceiling enough that both novices and veterans can experience the full game.”
— Nintendo Power, Vol. 2, 1988 (paraphrased from contemporary review)
Two Players, One Screen
Contra’s two-player simultaneous mode was its most commercially distinctive feature in 1988. Both players shared the screen, shared a life pool, and could be killed by each other’s weapons — creating both the exhilaration of co-operative play and the comedy of accidental friendly fire.
The shared life pool meant that an inexperienced second player could rapidly exhaust both players’ resources. This created a genuine social dynamic: who gets Player 1, who carries the 30-lives responsibility. The Konami Code’s 30-life grant shifted this balance, giving players enough margin to explore the game’s later stages together without requiring arcade-level precision from both participants.
↑↑↓↓←→←→BA in Contra
The Konami Code had appeared in Gradius (NES, 1986) before Contra, but it was Contra that made it famous. In Gradius, the code granted all power-ups at once — useful, but the game was niche. In Contra, the code granted 30 lives where the default was 3 — the difference between an average player reaching Stage 3 and an average player seeing the final boss.
The code spread through word of mouth, playground culture, and Nintendo Power magazine. By 1990, it had appeared in multiple Konami NES titles and had begun to appear in games from other publishers. By 2000, it was referenced in film, television, and advertising. By 2020, gaming publications used it as an obituary tribute when creator Kazuhisa Hashimoto died.
“The Konami Code is the most democratic thing in gaming: it makes a hard game accessible to everyone without removing the hard game for those who want it. The code is just there, available, if you know it.”
— Retrospective analysis, GameFan magazine
Hidenori Maezawa & Kyouhei Sada
The Contra (NES) soundtrack was composed by Hidenori Maezawa and Kyouhei Sada, working within the constraints of the NES’s 2A03 audio chip: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one noise channel, and one DPCM channel for simple digital samples.
The Stage 1 theme (often called “Jungle”) opens the game with an immediately recognisable driving pulse that has been arranged, remixed, and covered by musicians across genres for over 35 years. It establishes Contra’s sonic identity in under 10 seconds: urgent, military, relentless.
The Snowfield stage music, the Base stages’ electronic march, and the alien lair’s dissonant tension all demonstrate the composers’ ability to shift mood rapidly across 8-bit hardware while maintaining the game’s emotional throughline.
Contra (NES, 1988) — complete soundtrack by Hidenori Maezawa and Kyouhei Sada. Stage 1 “Jungle” theme opens the collection.
“Every NES game from this era was scored under the same hardware constraints. What separated the great soundtracks from the adequate ones was the composer’s ability to make you forget those constraints existed.”
— VGMPF editorial on NES-era game music composition
Full Playthrough
Contra (NES, 1988) — full longplay from Stage 1 through to the alien queen boss. Maezawa/Sada soundtrack throughout. Watch for the Konami Code implementation at the title screen.
“No NES game prepared you for that final alien boss. Eight stages of escalation and then: that. Contra had the courage of its convictions.”
— RetroGamer magazine retrospective, Contra (NES, 1988)