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As you probably know, Contra was originally made in Japan for the Family Computer, or Famicom, for short. Because Nintendo of Japan permitted third party game designers to add their own mappers to their games, whereas Nintendo of America did not, you'll find a few things that we missed out on.

First off, there were cut scenes in between levels. I have no idea what any of this crap says, but probably something about how he's got to keep going & not to give up on your dreams.

There was also a map that showed your position at the start of each level. As you can see, this is a very detailed map that recreates 27th century New Zealand's landscape almost perfectly.

Extra animation was also available in the Japanese version, thanks to the additional mappers, & it's pretty awesome. Here's a couple of movies I made to show you.

• Level 1: Swaying palm trees, me shooting a bunch of guys
• Level 5: Snow, swaying evergreen trees, me killing a bunch of guys
• Level 8: Pulsating floor, pulsating walls, me killing a bunch of alien boobs

In Europe, Contra was called Probotector, & everything that looked even remotely human in the game was changed to a robot.

This is because Europe has this thing about shooting people. So to compromise, they turned all the people to robots because, hey, it's ok to shoot a robot, right? I don't buy that crap. I've seen Short Circuit 2 enough times to know that robots are people, too.

Written by MikeFireball.