Dinky Dana's Contra World Record

Two weeks ago I was watching Youtube videos and I ran into Jugghead82's video for a Contra Challenge. Contra is often regarded as one of the hardest games of all time to complete without using the famous Konami Code. IGN even placed it as #1 most difficult, which is horrible because we all know Battletoads is the hardest game of all time. The challenge was to record yourself playing Contra to show how far you could get in the game without using any continues. I decided to give it a try and I was able to complete the entire game without using any continues fairly easily. I actually made it to level 7 before I died for the first time so I got irritated and knew I could complete the entire game in just a single life. I decided to give this a try and within 2 hours I had done it! Both of those videos are now up to watch on my youtube channel if you are interested in watching them. http://www.youtube.com/Dlnkydana

For some reason, doing both of these challenges wasn't difficult for me at all. I obviously played Contra too much as a child along with many other NES games that have become ingrained into my brain. I then remembered the website www.twingalaxies.com which is the main scorekeeping website for video game world records. I looked up Contra and found that the world's fastest completion time is only 10 minutes and 51 seconds. It would take some serious time and dedication to rival this record, but there was another record for the points category which I figured would be a simple challenge. You are obviously unable to use codes or continues, and need to reach the score of 6,553,500 points (which is the highest score obtainable). Each time you complete the game you get to watch the credits and once the credits complete it starts you back on level 1 with your score and life total intact. So in order to reach this maximum score, you need to complete the game 9 times!

I figured this challenge wouldn't be all that difficult because after I completed the game once with no deaths I had accumulated 11 lives which I would be able to use for the second play through. My life total would just continue to grow each time I completed the game and that would be it. So I sat down and began playing. I played through the first completion with ease and died twice. Now I had 9 lives to complete the second completion. I also did this with ease. So this continued until I hit the fourth play through when I realized there were way more enemies on the screen than on the first play through. I began to pay more attention and came to the conclusion that each time you complete the game you run into more and more enemies on each level! (excluding base levels)

At this point, I had accumulated around 25 lives and was still going strong. I continued to play and on the sixth play through I saw my life total begin to drop. I was still only dying 2-5 times per play through but my total continued to decrease. I soon realized that after the fourth completion you no longer got extra lives every 25,000 points! This was a huge problem. I was playing pretty recklessly because I had assumed I'd continue to get extra lives as my point total grew. I soon ran out of lives and was actually relieved that this challenge wasn't quite as simple as I had expected. It is for a world record and all!

I took a small break and took a look at the notes my friend was keeping for me as I wrote him online during my first attempt. I saw where I had begun dying more, when the extra lives stopped, how many points I got per play through, etc. I realized that since I stopped gaining extra lives after my fourth play through, I had to accumulate as many as I could before the fifth.

After a short break, I decided to give it another shot. Each time I completed the game it took me approximately 15 minutes. The first attempt took around an hour and a half of constant game play. I knew that if I was going to complete this challenge it would take me 9 completions and over 2 hours of straight game play! I ran through the game a few times and easily made it to the fifth play through with 32 lives accumulated. This meant I could die approximately 6 times per play through. This seemed feasible, but I had never seen the difficulty after the sixth play through.

I held up pretty well until the eighth play through. I was making my way through level 6 when I got shot jumping over a pit. The bullet hit me and the screen stopped moving forward as I fell into this pit. I then spawned in 3-4 times and had to inch the screen forward so that I could finally not insta-death fall into the pit. I got pretty nervous that I would be stuck here and lose all my lives but I finally passed it. (Thank goodness!)

So I continued my way through the eighth play through and began on the ninth. As I played through the first level this time, I had never seen the Nintendo Entertainment System struggle so much with a game. The screen was lagging for nearly 50% of the stage and there were 20+ enemies on the screen most of the time. Comparing this final play through difficulty to the first play through was immensely more challenging. If you thought Contra was hard before, just wait until you play through for the ninth time! I'll show the comparison between the first levels in the video at the top of this page. While the game was incredibly difficult now, the basic patterns and enemy layout was the same. I was a bit nervous at this point because I didn't want to get stuck in another insta-spawn trap like I had on the eighth play through. I finally made it to the last stage on the ninth play through and was inching my way forward to make sure I didn't run into any stupid deaths. I managed to take out the level without dying at all and had completed the game for the ninth time in a row! I watched the credits and hoped that my calculations were correct and I'd have the world record score. After the long minute or so the credits ran, I saw that my score had totaled 6,553,500! I had done itÂ…and with 18 lives remaining! I reached the world record points total and had recorded it all properly on a VHS tape using the only VCR we still had in our household.

All that was left was to fill out the form on www.TwinGalaxies.com, print it out, and send it in with my VHS recording. I sent that in about a week ago and was recorded as a world record holder within a few days. I emailed Walter Day to see if he could send me two certificates: one with my real name and also one with Dinky Dana. He was incredibly friendly and said he would be honored to send me both, the Dinky Dana one being a personal gift. I really appreciated this since I use the name Dinky Dana for most all of my game related identification.

So that is the story of how I obtained a world record for Contra. I honestly was quite surprised that I only had to sink about 6 hours of effort into this challenge (or lack of). My next goal is to obtain this same point total following tournament settings which only allows 5 deaths total! This one will be more of a challenge and will probably not be attempted for quite a while. Now that I know the world records are out there, I am positive I will be able to obtain more and hope to complete some more of these challenges in the future.