NES Contra: One Life (1 of 2)

IGN has recently rated the original Contra as being the hardest game to beat. Quote, "Contra is virtually impossible to beat without entering the Konami code".

I've always thought that Contra wasn't that hard of a game, so I was very surprised to hear of people that believe it is "impossible to beat" without using the 30-lives code. It actually started to bother me, and I felt I needed to make this video of myself beating the game with just one life.

This was played on Nestopia with no rapid-fire and no cheats of any kind. This video is not meant to be a speed run, and was made only to show the game is possible to beat on one life without any cheats. Note that the original video runs at 60 fps and YouTube converts videos to run at a lower frame rate. Consequently, you will not be able to see every bullet I fire and the boss of Base2 doesn't show up properly.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• nes
• contra
• one
• life

[Daguigoz]

this is a REALLY cool game, but it isn't that hard... i beat this game easily and have a hard time getting lion king on SNES

[Noztube]

That's the whole point of the video. I wanted to show that it wasn't as hard as IGN says. There are certainly much harder Contra games, and I'm surprised they named the first Contra as the hardest.

[IpromiseViii]

I still remember the secret code for extra life:

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right A, B,and then press start.

[80smetalchild]

im working on completing the game without the 30 life cheat. the 30 life cheat made the game far to easy and i beat it in my first try. but this should give me a good challenge

[Zuckuss79]

The game was easy to beat, especially with spread w/o dying. I used to get so bored and beat it with the laser w/o dying, plus started liking that weapon more than the spread....

[cod4rush]

Yeah ive beaten it with 1 life too :) Not that hard

[wowadictable]

I wonder if its possible to beat this game only using the gun you start with...

[0428733]

we all seem to agree this wasn't that hard of a game (unlike that fucker contra 3)

srsly, my biggest accomplishment ever was beating this game in one life run not switching weapons (spread gun FTW) when I was 8 years old. I wonder if I still can.

[EricSchwin22]

The Konami code is only good for beginners. :)

[Noztube]

@supercrazy6758 At the start of the video it says 3 lives, but it says 4 lives as I started the second stage because I got an extra life at some point in the first level. I'm not sure how many points you need for the first extra life, maybe 20,000 or 25,000. Anyway, by the time I finished the game, I had 12 lives. You can see this by going past the ending credits in part 2.

[Lennis01]

I used to play this all the time, and I regularly beat it on one life.  I don't know where IGN is coming from as there are MUCH harder games than this. Hellfire on the Sega Genesis comes to mind.

[ThePooman101]

i actully thought the last level of contra was hard. but forget that!!! i played the game using the konami code then on the last level i only had 7 lives left, and i thought i would lose, but luckily i was playing on an emulator so i saved it at the begining, (HOORAY FOR BRAINS!) and kept saving it at different parts and didn't even lose a life! I didnt even need the saves! then i realised Contra CAN be played without the konami code - you just need to think about what your doing!