It is widely believed that back in the day, boys were the biggest gaming audience, so companies focused their efforts on them. This meant many titles with only a male protagonist, though Nintendo bucked the trend with Metroid, Namco as well with Ms. Pac-Man, and a few others. Girls in the driver’s seat were not widely supported in gaming back then. That has not stopped fans from making a few changes to some classics to change this, one being Contra by Konami.
While Contra was released in North America, the version that was hacked to give girls the power of blasting is the superior Japanese version. I am not 100% sure on why Konami made the changes they did for the North America release, but I believe it was due to custom chips in the Japan release. Nintendo was much more lenient with third parties in Japan than they were in North America.
The Japanese version of Contra features additional animation in the backgrounds, mini cut scenes, various character graphics such as dog tags, and more. All of that was cut from the North American release.
Most of the missing content was moved to the manual. As long as you read that, or got it when borrowing or buying a used copy, then you were not completely left out of the fun.
The core gameplay appears to be unchanged, just the character graphics where needed were edited. The changelog over on ROMHacking.net states everything that was changed. Key points I want to focus on are the character graphics. Mainly the guns, they were edited to fit the female character sprites better.
The character sprites do seem “off” somehow here. They stand out far more than the originals by Konami, probably due to color choices. I am having a hard time pinpointing it but they seem out of place, too clean is the best I can describe it. Not a lot of detail to them as they are wearing little clothing, as is common for girls in games.
If you want to give the girls a chance at saving the world here is your chance. Check it out and let the creator know what you think of their hack.
