Contra review: two commandos and a joystick that aimed everywhere

Two commandos drop into a jungle. One is blond with a blue bandana, the other shirtless with a red one. Something shoots at you from the trees before you have taken three steps, and the game never really slows down after that.

One stick for your feet and your aim

The controls are an eight-way joystick and two buttons, one to shoot and one to jump. That sounds ordinary until you notice that the joystick controls not only where you run but where you aim. Push up and you fire into the sky. Jump and you can shoot in any of eight directions, including straight down. Pull down and your commando will lie down flat, ducking under fire and hitting the low targets.

That is the whole trick of Contra. Moving and aiming are the same motion, so every dodge is also a decision about where your gun is pointing. Even the jump is a somersault, a tight spinning ball that tells you the designers cared more about feel than realism.

The best controls do two jobs with one hand, and you stop noticing they are doing either.

The gun you are holding when you die

Your default rifle never runs out, but you are always looking for something better: a machine gun, a laser, a fireball gun, or the shotgun that throws five bullets out in a fan. Lose a life and you go back to the default weapon. That rule quietly shapes every stage. The better your gun, the more careful you get, and the more it hurts to lose it.

The game also refuses to stay in one shape. The jungle runs sideways, then you step inside an enemy base and the view turns into a pseudo-3D corridor where you shoot toward the back of the screen. It keeps the eyes busy and the hands honest.

Two people at one cabinet

Up to two people can play at once, and that is where Contra became a memory instead of just a game. In an American arcade you did not wait politely for the machine; you dropped a quarter in next to a stranger and joined his war. It was one of the top four highest-grossing dedicated arcade games of 1987 in the United States, which means that for a while it was the loud cabinet at the mall, the bowling alley and the pizza place.

The American release also played down the science fiction. US promotional materials downplayed the futuristic setting, and later the home manual moved the whole thing to the Amazon, which fit perfectly with the action movies every kid was renting that decade.

Playing it today

It is short, hard and honest. You will die to things you did not see, and then you will see them next time. Play it with two people if you can, and argue about the shotgun. That argument is part of the design.