Debunking the Difficulty - Contra (NES) 

The most dangerous enemy in Contra is Player 2 during the Waterfall stage, jumping too early and offscreening your ass.

The real difficulty of Contra is playing with a friend. You won't be friends by the end 😂

It is important to keep in mind that while the game is way way easier with the Spread Shot, if you ever lose it, none of the things shown in this video are even close to being as quick and easy without it. So anyone playing this for the first time might benefit from knowing what to do without the Spread Shot.

I feel immortal today. My 8 year old watched me beat it without dying. She was amazed, but she said no one would believe her at school that dad beat contra without dying.

Contra is very easy as long as you have the spreadshot. Die in the wrong place and it's a different story. Still very doable, but a lot more difficult.

This new series you're doing is awesome.

"It's so easy your grandma could beat it." Funny you should say that. I used to play this co-op with my grandma when I was a little kid! Good memories. ✌

I recommend running through a few times with the 30 lives code. At first you may even need to use a continue, but as you memorize the locations of the enemies and powerups and get into the groove of things you'll be beating it with lives to spare. Then you can take the training wheels off and play for real.

My Uncle beat this game in the late 80's along with many others( kid Icarus. r-type, metroid, total recall) . He was not a genius but definitely gifted. One thing he always told me is that most games usually have a few tricks that you have to use to your advantage.

I’ve discovered your channel due to this series this week, I’m really enjoying your content!

Man, Ryu ran through this one like it was nothing! Yeah, the spread shot always is the way to go in Contra as it rips through everything. I think some of sequels introduced the homing shot which I found to be a good alternative as well. I didn't realize some of the bosses in this game were that pathetic. Must be like a Konami tradition? 😅

contra's perfect because it's challenging but also totally fair

I completed this game with infinite lives just to see how this game looks and boy I wanna do it legit someday so thanks for the video

Excellent editing. That was what this series needed. Primo! 👍

I'd love to see you debunk the difficulty of Contra 3: The Alien Wars on SNES, which personally I think is much harder.

Love your channel man. Love this series too! I started watching you on Shorts doing the hard Mario maker levels. Now I'm following you here. Great content!!!!

Contra is an absolute gem, most definitely my favorite NES game of all time.

Love this series, Ryu. Thanks for making these beloved classics feel more accessible to everyone. 💜 Would love to see a part 2 someday where you play the game as many times as you can!

love this game. played it many times over the years. its challenging, yet fun!

Man a tear fall from my eye once i saw the notification of the video It's just incredible how long the time passes since we were kids

I love this new series you're doing and I LOVE Contra, been playing since I was four. Now do Super C!

Another great video. Thank you. Really looking forward to you doing Castlevania. That's one I've been progressing on for a while.

I once beat this game without losing a single life...that's how much I played it

I like how this series shows the best route to beat the games. So maybe a spin-off to show the more "casual" routes would be fun too (if you die, if you lose items, etc)

Thank you, Ryu! I asked for this last week and you play it 6 days later!

I'm forever thankful for this series. I've been grinding Contra lately, and I used to always need to use the Konami code. I now can finish Contra with only 3 deaths. Working on doing it without dying still, though. Getting there!

You are so amazing! I've learned how to properly say Ryu from Street Fighter because of you, and now I'm learning how to beat impossible games. Thank you!

the best debunking yet! this game introduced me to the konami code as a child, and i still only just managed to beat it with 30 lives, and ryu just one-shot blasted through it like it was a little timmy endless easy stage. i had no idea you could cheese so much of this game like that! some of those jumps are still anxiety inducing, and you are *definitely* screwed if you ever do die and lose your spread shot at a crucial time, but this game looks a lot more doable now. (i also didn't know that the R power-ups stacked? all these years, and not until today did anyone bother telling me such a valuable piece of information...)

I've actually made it through this game once without any deaths. Played it so much I knew where everything was and where the enemy was coming from

I used to have this game and Life Force memorized front to back. I played Life Force again recently and got destroyed on the fire level haha. Those damn fire bursts come out of nowhere! Great video

I love this game, I always think of it along side with Bionic Commando, that should probably a good one to debunk! Great channel man!

You SOB! haha! I remember playing this as a kid and how it just kicked my butt over and over again and you just casually go through it. All seriousness though, love the play through and the help! Keep up the great work!

I really love this series! I remember a game that was very difficult from my childhood. It was called Wrath of the Black Manta for the NES. You should definitely give it a shot.

This was one of the games that I got with the NES back then. With the code I got though it rather easily. It was also something I would keep pulling out regularly until I realized I knew the game well enough that I was not dieing at all. Wish I could still do that.

I've been playing Contra recently so this was a nice surprise! Your look at the camera is the perfect "See? Pathetic" face.

One of my new favorite channels. Keep up the great work brother! 🙏💯👍

I think you're a good guy, Ryu.

Love this episode, thanks Ryu! I remember playing this with my college roommate . We beat it many times no death. Awesome game!

Danggit Ryu...every time I watch one of these videos it makes me want to drop all of the games I'm in the middle of and go back to beat an old hard game! This one I actually have beaten, without the code, but it was 2 player. It's probably time to finally try to do it solo :)

Wow. I never seen a run through the game play for Contra. Thank for the upload.

I remember going to the video rental store and renting this game when it was released, I think I was 8 years old then and I was hooked, addicted to this game. Good times.

one of my favorite series only normal i drop a like and a comment ryu playing one of the first games ive ever played thumbs up man.

Awesome series man! I love them! I beat Probotector yesterday thanks to your video😀 I know, PAL is much slower, but still😊 You should make a video about Journey To Silius. Good game and good music, but also hard.

I’m having such a blast with this series! And if you’d be up for it, I’d love to see you tackle a Debunking the Difficulty episode for DuckTales!

Bro some nostalgia just hit me! I played this game when it first came out when I was little. It was so much fun!

Excellent series, love the retro game content Ryu! 🥚

Debunking the Difficulty of Contra III: The Alien Wars would be more difficult than unifying general relativity with quantum mechanics.

debunking the diff got me to sub to u, good call. good series. good beard.

I've only beat this with 30 lives. You flew through it!

I love contra. My buddy and i once didnt turn off my snes with gradius 3 like 10 years ago, if you beat the game, it starts over with more enemies(like a few per screen), we ended up beating it 10-11 times and it started getting nuts on each restart

Just discovered you and this series. Fantastic content. Do more of these! Ghost and goblins nes next

This series gets me pumped up.

My favorite way to play is not just winning on one life, but to collect every power-up, even if it downgrades your weapon. It's a little trickier than it sounds, as one missed power-up is a fail. The same challenge applies to the sequel, Super C, but in that game it's even trickier because power-ups de-spawn in a short time. Also some power-ups later in the game can be rather tricky to collect (or even impossible if they are initially hit in the wrong spots.) I demonstrate the challenge in a couple vids, along with the rules in the descriptions.

Thanks for this video! Strangely, I've always sucked at video games but I mastered Contra pretty quickly. Maybe it was because it was one of the small amount of games I had as a kid lol.

Cool! You accepted my challenge to do Contra without the 30 man code!

As someone who has beaten every Contra game and considers it one of their favorite games ever, this video is excellent! I do want to point out that the Laser power-up is often a good backup due to it shooting through multiple enemies at once, allowing for more safe strategies, but overall this video does a great job showing that anyone can beat Contra, something I've been saying for so long... As for a recommendation, try one of the Mega Man games. People keep overexaggerating that game's difficulty and a video like that for a Mega Man game would be great.

My brother and I played this game back in the day. All I remember is the first and second levels. That might say something about my abilities or both of our abilities. It was so long ago so thanks for the pointers. 16 minutes to beat Contra, pretty bad ass how you never die. That is a short game but it's definitely sweet.

Great series Ryu, digging the videos

I appreciate this series. Thank you!

"Now, this is the first hard boss. This guys is legit difficult." Ryu: Destroys him in 8s. LOL

@Ryu really loving the content!! I've been a fan since AGDQ 2019, you're my fav RU-vidr. Can't wait to see you play Sekiro, in my eyes the hardest of the SoulsBorne franchise. Keep up the good vids!

Been loving this series

honestly i didnt remember if i did beat it, but i remember that last boss so i guess i did! thanks for the nostalgy!

Keep this series going! I fucking love it!!!

I never thought this game was all that difficult, seeing as I got to where I could beat it without dying as a kid. Life Force was way harder to beat without using the Konami code (though that just comes to level memorization). Actually, I think this was one of Konami's easier games on the NES from the ones I recall.

I would like to see either Bubble Bobble or Adventures of Lolo 3.

extra tips: do not stand directly underneath the arms in stage 3. if you don't kill the arms fast enough they will try to reach you, which they can't, but a projectile can fire while that happens which can definitely kill you. the shields that block the weak points in the POV stage can be broken even in ducking position so it's even more important to duck. for the final boss it can be cheesed even easier - kill the bottom two pods and then run against the boss and shoot+hold diagonal and you can't die, and all your spread shots will always connect

Cool video! Very informative

One of my all time favs, my mate and me played this so much back in the day

Enjoying your vids but one question tho. What does the R stand for according to the contra booklet?

Wait this isn't the video I was waiting for on a Saturday.

Loving this video series :)

Dude, this series is seriously dope!

I think the biggest thing is the laser beams in the odd stages. If you press up at all you get zapped. Also, one of the draws of this game is its two player mode. Your partner can get you killed more than anything else by moving too fast or by lagging behind. There is also the danger of an enemy jumping at you from underneath even if they look like they can't.

I remember playing this with my cousins as a kid. I would troll my younger cousins and leave them behind during the Waterfall stage. lol If you keep climbing up that stage, you end up leaving them do their death. Despite this game being difficult, the thing that I remember about this game was the awesome 8-bit soundtrack was so memorable. My favorite were the Energy Zone and Alien's Lair theme. Of course, we can't also forget the awesome run n gun 2D platforming gameplay! You basically felt like a badass one man army taking on an entire legion and alien horde armed with your gun. The Konami code is also the most memorable thing about this game which gives 30 lives.

Not gonna lie. Been waiting for this for a Long time. I crushed this game long before the internet and the code. Just started it and I'm stoked

i played this game a ton back in the days before the internet and when i started hearing that it's a difficult game i couldn't believe it because i'd casually beat the game without even dying once so i never understood where the difficulity is

Contra is one of my favorite games of all time. I got it the same day I got my NES. Back then, I relied on the Konami code to get me through but after enough practice learning enemy patterns and hazard spawns, the game is a breeze now. I will say though, as this run demonstrated, the Spread gun kind of breaks the game and makes it *significantly* easier. Trying to beat it with any of the other weapons is a much greater challenge. Some of the bosses and mini bosses take a lot more time and finesse to defeat. Still, an absolutely fantastic game that I've continued to play and enjoy for over 30 years. What a masterpiece!

I'm also gonna add that you utilize the diagonal down shooting. I didn't see much of it used in this video. It's a huge help.

Are you playing on original hardware? If so, is the OpenGL smoothing being applied in post or is it part of your capture setup in hardware? Is your monitoring setup CRT or HDMI while you are playing? I am wondering why my display is has rough patterns (tiles and sprites), if it is just a poor AV-HDMI adapter, a bad PPU, or issues with my Everdrive and how it is representing the CHR segment.

I don’t have to beat these old games, I just watch you do it and that’s entertainment enough for me, LOL 😂 👍🏻🎮🕹🔫😎

Never found this game that difficult. Challenging but very fair.

Duck Tales and Bucky O'Hare are some super fun games you should do videos on :D

SOOO!!! entertaining watching a real pro play hard ol' skool games.

aww, no tagline this time. Aw well. Nice job, Ryu, as always. A game that a lot of people find very hard, but I think you could absolutely tear through if you know what you're doing is Zelda 2, sticking with NES for a little longer.

Awesome series. I would like to see you playing Jackal on NES, in which you drive a Jeep on a guerrilla warfare rescuing soldiers.

8:41 The dudes come out of nowhere. From the from and from the back. You can get split roasted!🤣

Important note: spread shot has a bullets on screen limit. If you want to get full width spread, hold fire for a moment to let bullets leave the screen. On the other hand, keeping up a stream is generally better for directing fire in the critical forward and backward directions, so it's almost always better to keep up a consistent stream so you will have at least one bullet available

I went back into time.thanks for the memories

little thing about the spread shot: when you fire it quickly, the pellets have a tighter grouping

Keep doing this series, I love someone explain how to finish a game because the gameplays only shows how they speedrun and I'm not interested in that. Keep doing it I love it (Waiting for Battletoads Nes video)

This game like any other old school games is all about muscle memory and memorization. Love it!

Love this series!

New to the channel I sub just because of this series

Save and load state were also smashed that day

You are correct about the R not working for the laser. I'm assuming it doesn't work for it because it already travels fast. My fastest clear time for this a few years ago was 13 minutes. never realized how short the game actually was until I decided to do a deathless run for it that time. 😋

Can you share what emu you are using with what settings? thank you!

People are always confused about the "R"/"Rapid" item. It doesn't speed up your rate of fire, it makes the projectiles from your current weapons move more quickly across the screen. That way, you don't run into the sprite limit as often, and you can just keep firing with no "blank" rounds. Most noticeable with the spread shot. And if you get a different weapon, the speed resets and you'll need another "R".

New the channel, this series just randomly came up in my feed. Loving it so far! Not sure how well it'd fit with the series, but I suggest Zelda 1 for a future Debunking video :)

Another video in this series. Looking forward to the next one.