Contra

The Contra arcade game is the one the famous home version was cut down from, and playing it explains what the console hardware was forced to give up. The arcade original is faster, louder and considerably less forgiving.

The structure is the one everybody knows: side-scrolling run-and-gun stages where a single hit kills you, and overhead stages where the camera drops behind the player for a pseudo-3D assault on a base. Where the arcade release differs is in the pressure. Enemy fire comes in denser patterns, the weapon pickups are less generous, and the game leans harder on continues because arcade boards are meant to be fed. Two players fight side by side throughout. The arcade board also handles the behind-the-back stages with more elaborate scaling than the Famicom could manage, which is the clearest reason to look at this version at all: it is the same design seen at full resolution, and it is the ancestor of every run-and-gun that followed it.

• ▸One-hit deaths with no health bar at all
• ▸Pseudo-3D behind-the-back base stages in the arcade original
• ▸Two-player simultaneous co-op across the whole campaign
• ▸Weapon pickups that persist only until you die - and you die constantly