Contra is one of the most classic franchises in retro gaming, even if it has never quite found its footing since video games made the jump to 3D. We did not have it growing up, so I came to it later than most, but it has held up surprisingly well.

I played the arcade version about six or seven years ago at the Carolina Arcade Museum in Forest City, North Carolina. The arcade version is technically the better game visually, but I actually find the NES graphics more appealing. They are more colorful and, to my eye, just more satisfying to look at.

What made Contra stand out is that it got a few fundamentals right that a lot of other games of the era struggled with. The NES was the console of my childhood, but it had real limitations, and plenty of otherwise great games, Castlevania included, could feel stiff and punishing to play. Konami nailed the controls on Contra. The movement, the ducking, the jumping, all of it feels responsive and natural even given the hardware constraints of the time.

The sections that shifted the camera from side scrolling to a front-facing perspective were less appealing to me personally, giving the game a kind of faux 3D quality that I did not enjoy as much. I imagine that reaction is not universal, and I would not be surprised if some players genuinely prefer those stages.

Overall, though, Contra does not crack my list of absolute favorite retro games, primarily because it is brutally difficult even when you have the legendary Konami code in your back pocket. That difficulty was intentional for the era, designed to prevent players from finishing the game in a single rental or burning through four quarters at the arcade. I would genuinely love to see a modern Contra that preserved the feel of the originals but offered some kind of adjustable difficulty so it did not wall off most players. Mega Man 11 is a good example of how to do that right.