When I was 9 years old, I was given the piece of plastic and wires that would largely define the entertainment that I would be growing up with. Nintendo’s family computer is primitive compared to the modern generation of consoles that feature graphics that even CG movies would be proud of. But 16 years ago, to my young and already deteriorating eyes, it was an invention to rival the wheel.
Looking back, I realized that games then were very much different from games now. they still give the basic premise of all video games, but the worlds were less immersive, the colors limited, and the “people” looked more like sticks with guns than anything actually resembling a homo sapiens. And they were harder too.
Contra was a manly man’s game. it consisted of various levels of kicking ass, both terrestrial and extra, by two commandos. In fact, in Contra the story didn’t matter (although it did have a story), what mattered was that you were there, guns blazing, ass-kicking motherfucker trying to reach the big bad alien at the heart of it all… literally. Contra was SO manly, that it didn’t have saves. You need to sleep, go to school? Tough luck. You have to play right from the beginning. Without cheats, you only had a total of three lives. A truly hardcore game if I ever saw one.
