I wanted to revisit this favorite of mine because just last week my good friend Martin Alessi gave me the Japanese Famicom cart of Contra for a birthday gift. He also gave me a cart converter to allow me to play this on my US top loader NES, which has an HDMI mod called "Hi-Def NES".
I was pleasantly surprised to find out the Hi-Def NES mod has special modes to allow for the special chips that enhance the graphics and sound on certain Famicom games like this one.
The Japanese version of the game features many visual upgrades over the NES counterpart, here are the ones I noticed: animated fire effect at the title screen, palm trees sway back and forth in the first level, the waterfall at the start of level 3 has greater detail, the snowfield has actual snow effects, the alien spawn in the final level pulsate and even get faster as you get further into the alien base near the heart (I thought this looked awesome!), and of course the between level maps and cut scenes.
This run is meant to show all these differences while also showing a no death/no miss/Unkillable playthrough of the 1st loop of the game. Like the US version, the game loops after you complete it at a higher difficulty with your score intact.
Played on a US top loader NES with the Hi-def HDMI mod, captured at 1080p/60fps. No cheats, turbo buttons, ect were used.
Thank you again to Martin for this great gift - I dedicate this run to you!
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