/vr/ - Retro Games

anyone ever beat it without doing the "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start" cheat?

>enemy bullets are extremely tiny and hard to see and look identical to your own
>enemies just infinitely spawn out of thin air on both sides of the screen
>level design is trial and error memorization bullshit with random shit popping up at a split second notice
>literally scroll the screen one centimeter and a turret enemy pop up right in front of your face already shooting
>the powerups are basically worthless
>can't lock in your weapon so when you have the shotgun you have to actively avoid all weapons, especially the laser which is hot garbage and significantly worse than even the starting gun
>bosses are extremely simple with very basic patterns and can be shredded in seconds
>actively get fucked over for auto-fire so you have to either adjust it slower or mash like a spastic
Why does this game have such a legacy? It's held up so much worse than something like Super Mario Bros, Kirby's Adventure, Mega Man, or Castlevania

Why did this get such a reputation for being brutally difficult? It's literally easier than like 50% of the NES library. The only ""hard"" part of it is the limited continues but most people just used Konami Code anyways.

Never got the appeal of one-hit games.

It wasn't actually good.

Here's a CONTRAVERSIAL opinion: Contra, Super Contra, The Alien Wars, and Hard Corps are all great games!

Is this the most overrated game on the NES? It's all memorization, the enemies come in off the edge of the screen too fast and their projectiles are unavoidable unless you know where they're going to come from beforehand. As an example Ninja Gaiden is hard as fuck but you can actually avoid getting hit with skill instead of just being forced to die over and over until you remember patterns.

Why is it socially acceptable to cheat in Contra, but not in other games?

Contra is really fun. Anyone agree ?

The level design is so fucking empty. Play a real game like Rolling Thunder instead.