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The big mistake
You can’t undo up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A
By Sean Quast
I had left the real “Contra” long ago and only now popped back in to verbally abuse it when it didn’t treat me right by giving me the limitless pleasures that its bathroom wall sister did.
There was a point when cheating in video games was harmless. The Konami code was a great tool to have to beat the ever-impossible “Contra” and its too-many-bullets-flying-at-you-so-have-no-chance-of-dodging-them-all levels.
I was never really good at “Contra;” all of my friends were better than I ever was. Most of them are still likely now. I guess one could say that I started late in the game as far as Contra went. My parents steered me more toward the sword-and-dagger type games rather than those of bullets and grenades. I was a dork at heart and always loved dragons and spells. They were also something that my parents could get my sisters to play, so it didn’t look like they were just buying games that I wanted.
By the time I was really starting to play “Contra,” the game’s popularity had already died down. I found a used copy at a garage sale and bought it with change that I had scrounged up from the couch.
I immediately popped it in my Nintendo and tried it out. No sooner than I had started, I had I eaten my fair share of bullets. Those stupid cliff guns got me every time. Damn you cliff guns! Damn you!
So I called up one of my friends for help and he shared with me that great little code “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A” which would give me all the power my sweaty little hands would need.
I used it every time I started that game up, but you know what that did? I made me a sad little weak player that could barely make it to the halfway point of the first level with one life left. I really had no clue how to play the game without having unlimited lives.
When I did finally play with friends, I would constantly get made fun of for being the worst “Contra” player in town, possibly in the whole of small towns around the Madison area.
There is nothing like being tormented by your friends to teach you a valuable lesson about cheating. I did truly love playing “Contra” and I did truly want to get better at it. But I really didn’t know “Contra.” I new its ugly twin sister that would let you play all you wanted at little or no cost. It wasn’t the real “Contra.” I had left the real “Contra” long ago and only now popped back in to verbally abuse it when it didn’t treat me right by giving me the limitless pleasures that its bathroom wall sister did.
I stopped using the Konami Code and started treating “Contra” right, but it wasn’t the same. I had tasted what else was out there. “Contra” and I had grown apart; our relationship was distant and sporadic at best. After a while “Contra” had became another dust covered gray cartridge on the shelf and I had moved on. But to this day, I hold a special place in my heart for the game. It was the one that got away—to be very cheesy, the game I truly could have loved and would still have been playing. But I screwed it up and now that will never happen.
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