What? Ahhh Contra. The great old NES game where you’re some dude with a bandana and a huge gun and your mission is to run left and right and shoot what I think are aliens. They look like aliens. Wait…they may be robots. Nonetheless, you shoot them and they go bye bye.

It sounds so simple and stupid, but those two things it is not. Contra is a beautiful game that, despite its age, stands up as a gem amongst the crop of new games out there. It’s challenging, well crafted, and best of all, it controls really well. I seem to remember a lot of NES games having very clunky controls where if you hit the direction pad up you’d go down and usually that would mean shark infested waters and death. Not with Contra.

Why? Consider this Readers Advisory for video gamers.   A lot of gaming programming in libraries tends to be centered on modern day games.  Why not branch out and offer some old school games for your users to play?  They’ll get an idea about how far gaming has come and hopefully in the process start to enjoy some other games.

Who? Like most old school games, Contra is pretty easy to pick up.  You run left and right, shoot things, fight a boss at the end of every stage and move onto the next.   It sounds tedious, but the non stop action this game offers will give 2 players a heck of a time.

If you can’t pick up the original Contra, I highly suggest Contra: Rebirth for the Nintendo Wii.  It is avaliable as a downloadable game through Wii Shop Channel.

In the end….Contra rules. Track it down, any way you can, and have some fun. But let me give you a little hint first.

Press Start after this, and you’ve got the famous Konami Code. Type in this code before the title screen fully loads up and you’ll get 30 lives. You’ll need them unless you’re some kind of mega Contra genius.