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When I think back to Contra, I'm not just remembering the '80s. I'm remembering that time in the 2000s when I was remembering the '80s. It's a memory that's been photocopied countless times. It's been through many filters and distortions. There's even major holes when I forgot about Contra for a bit. You know what happened to my original cartridge? I sold it. I sold it. Some time after the N64 came out, I took a handful of my games and I brought them over to the local FuncoLand. They offered me 7 bucks for Contra, and I accepted. You know what I did with that 7 bucks? Went over to the deli, and bought a sandwich. To this day, I'll never remember any details of that sandwich. Did it, um, have lettuce? Uh... was it any good? I don't know. Today, if you were to ask me "hey, you remember that sandwich?", I'd say, "I don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about." But Contra... that sticks with me. And even if I had to part with it for a while, sometimes you have to temporarily forget about something, before you fall in love with it again. And when you come back to it... it's the same as it was. Even though everything else has changed. Life has changed. The world has changed. But sealed in that plastic slab, is a time capsule of your youth, fossilized in ROM data on a circuit board. It's read-only memory, the type that doesn't change. As soon as you pop that fucker in your NES, you're back. You're back... to an innocent summer day, with no such thing as Internet. Instead, you and your friends are running around with Nerf guns and Super Soakers, pretending you're the guys from Contra. You're standing on a swing, holding on to its chains, like a ladder of a helicopter. Ya jump off, rolling into the grass, the jungle. If it's not that, you're setting up GI Joe figures in the mud, to stage epic battles. That skill you had, of creating a fantasy land out of nothing, that wild imagination and backyard adventure was fueled by those pixelated military dudes blasting away alien creatures and robots. That's what Contra's all about. And, maybe, you lost touch with those old friends, but when you play that game once more, ya think of them again. And maybe, just maybe, somewhere, in some part of the world... they're remembering it too. Almost as if they're still sitting on the living room floor beside you. And maybe ya had a grandparent, or family member who you lost, and they're still watching ya play. Even as strangers, we can have a shared connection of talking about old games, and... that is nothing to be angry about. That joy in its simplest form comes down to simply asking someone, "hey, remember Contra?" And the answer... is "fuck yeah!"
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