The characters, weapons and other power-ups that make up Contra

Main Characters

Scorpion
Real Name: Lance

Mad Dog
Real Name: Bill

These 2 are your main characters in the game. You control Scorpion in 1P mode, while in 2P the second player controls Mad Dog. These men are "elite commandos in a special forces team". The military is sending them in to destroy Red Falcon supposedly because they do not want to do a major military strike and thus attract a lot of attention to the situation with Red Falcon, but if you ask me it seems like the military doesn't like Mad Dog and Scorpion and are sending them to thier death before they do a real strike task. 2 people against one army does not sound like a very good plan if you ask me.

Red Falcon

Red Falcon is a gigantic extraterrestrial being that has landed on a remote island on Earth and has been readying itself to wipe out the entire planet, and then the universe. No offense Red Falcon but if you can't take out 2 measily men then I don't see universal domination happening for you. Perhaps you should look into other careers. As the story goes, Red Falcon landed 30 years ago (or, 6 months alien time as they say) and has been building up an intense army to attack with. We never actually see the face of Red Falcon in Contra, or any other Contra game. He is so big the player must go inside of him, and destroy his heart.

Male Cheerleader Cyborg

I like this guy just too much not to put him up here. He works for Red Falcon while saving money to open his own hair-styling center. He will walk around the screen like a pansy and jump up and down, doing splits in the air, while he rolls projectiles at you. He's also the only boss that resembles a person.

Weapons and Other Power-ups

Machine Gun

The machine gun will give you an infinate non-stop line of fire, where you don't have to take your finger off the fire button. It is the second best gun IMO.

Laser Gun

This gun fires a very powerful straight shot. It is the most powerful gun, but is very slow and cannot be fired more than once at a time. Firing twice in a row will cancel out the first shot.

Flame Thrower

The most hated gun by far, I don't see what's so bad about ol' flamie. It fires a slow moving shot that travels in small circles, sort of delaying it from hitting the target on time. Not very good, but you can get used to it.

Spread Gun

Yeah! The best power-up of all time!(some will say the jump n' slash in Ninja Gaiden is better but I don't believe them)This is THE weapon to get and hold on to in Contra. It fires a wall of 5 bullets at a time, that go off in different directions, destroying any enemy in it's path. The player is almost unstoppable with this gun. For many years I called this the "scatter gun" and that's what I still call it, since I think that sounds a lot better than "spread gun".

Rapid Fire

This helper-powerup will make your bullets travel faster. This doesn't affect machine guns, and stops working whenever you change weapons or die. The more of these you get, the faster your bullets travel. Hard to notice at first but after a few of these you can tell that it's working.

Barrier

The barrier gives you invincibility for a period of time. Very useful in some parts such as the end of stage 6.