Contra: eight stages, one hit, thirty lives
Contra arrived on the NES in 1988 as a port of Konami’s arcade game and became the definition of the run-and-gun: two commandos, a jungle full of soldiers, and a rule that one bullet kills you. What made it a classic was not cruelty but rhythm. Enemies arrive in patterns you can learn, the spread gun turns the screen into a fan of bullets, and the eight stages — jungle, two bases seen from behind, a waterfall, snowfield, energy zone, hangar and the alien lair — each play differently. It is also the game that made the Konami code famous, because thirty lives is exactly what a first run needs.
This page runs the NES version in an emulator inside your browser, with the game data served from contra.ee. Nothing installs; press Play and the title screen appears in a few seconds. There is a save-state button under the game if you want to keep a stage, and a second player can join on the same keyboard or with a gamepad.
Controls & Mechanics
| Action | Control | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Move / aim | Arrow keys | Up shoots upward; Down lies flat; diagonals while moving |
| Fire / jump | X / Z | Down + Z drops through a platform |
| Start / Select | Enter / V | Konami code on the title screen: ↑↑↓↓←→←→ X Z Enter |
Reaching the alien lair
- Take the spread gun and keep it: The S capsule is the best weapon in the game. Once you have it, play carefully; dying loses it and the last three stages are much harder with the rifle.
- Keep moving in the base stages: The 3D-view bases are timed: the wall generators open after the soldiers are cleared. Stand to one side and shoot the cores; the middle is where the shots land.
- Learn the waterfall climb: Stage three’s platforms fall in a fixed order. Jump when the platform you are on starts to shake, not before.
Key Features
- Two-player co-op: Player two joins at the title screen — the way the game was meant to be played.
- Save states: Freeze a stage and reload it; the buttons sit under the game. A stage-eight save is not cheating, it is respect.
- Served from this site: The game data and the emulator load from contra.ee and its CDN, not from an ad-gated third party.
