Hey everyone!  Hope you all had a Happy Easter.  This week's game, and the final one for Block 2, is going to be Contra.  This one is going to be a low score contest.  Here are the rules:

• Once again, this is a low score contest
• 1 Player only
• Input the Konami Code to get 30 lives (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start)
• Only one playthrough of the game will be allowed
• The score of the player who got furthest in the game takes precedence
• You must take your picture at the beginning of a stage (When we can see your score)
• If two players (or more) took their picture on the same stage, the lowest score takes precedence
• If you beat the game, take your picture at the beginning of the first stage to show your score and how many lives you have left
• If you beat the game, divide your score by the number of lives you have remaining

TIPS FOR TAKING YOUR PICTURE

• Have your camera and username near you while you are playing so you can take a picture quickly
• Take a picture at the beginning of a stage when you only have a few lives remaining (Secure your score)

The contest ends Sunday, 4/15/12 at 10 PM NA time.  Your user name must be in the picture for your score to be valid.  The entire TV screen, or computer monitor if you are playing on an emulator, MUST be in the picture for the score to be valid.  No partial screenshots will be considered or accepted.  Good luck everyone and have fun!

***PLEASE NOTE***

We will be taking a break from 4/15 to 4/22 to prepare for Block 3, so there will be no contest next week.

Hopefully I'll have as good of luck with this one as I did the Double Dragon low score contest. It should be a fun one!

Regarding the 30 man code, is it possible to use a Pirated Contra, whose hack includes the 30 lives by default?  I assume so, in this case.

any advice on what to shoot and what to skip??

It shouldn't be a problem as long as there aren't any other cheat codes programmed into it or if it's easier than Contra on the NES.

let's see how this goes

675300 / 27 = 25011.1...


the first photo is my official, but the score was flashing out, so here's another shot for reference. (resetting the game does not clear the high score).

Something I just thought of after seeing Lincoln's score. If you beat the game, when you divide your score, if the number immediately to the right of the decimal point is 0 through 4, round it down to the nearest whole number. If it's 5 through 9, round your score up to the nearest whole number so we can have even scores. For example, 25,011.1 will be 25,011 and 35,890.7 will be 35,891.

Man, I am a beast at contra. I have no deathed it many many many times.
Low score contest you say?
I remember practicing running through each level killing as little as possible and not getting any weapon upgrades...Who would have thought it would help out for another purpose than prepping for a no death run.
If I only had time to play this week? We will have to see...

Can we do a low score SMB3 Contest... One life, low score, LOL I've made it to 8-1 before with only 250 on my point total.

The annoying part in doing smb low score is waiting for the last seconds on the timer to finish every stages.

You better hop on your NES and play some contra this week man! That's your contest

This is ineed the hard part. jumping with 1 second left

hey these contests are fun. I'd like to see one based on RPG games

Benihana
723700/38=19044

I'd join in, but I'm not a fan of the low score thing (not that I'd get a high score lol), but good luck to everyone

So what is the best strategy? to score a low score or finish with as many lives left to divide it down lower? I finished the game last night around 200,000 points but only had 4 lives left, should i shoot more enemies and preserve lives or run through as stealthy as possible?

Still trying to find out the best "strategy" is. I think beating the game without dieing and not killing anything will produce a very low score.
ALSO: it would be very wise to video the score scene in case your camera does not get the score. Happened to me a couple of times and others too...

i see that flashing score could be a problem. it's like the red falcon is mocking you for your owning his troops

Yeah, it's not hard to see that the optimal strategy is to try to die as little as possible and kill as few enemies as possible.

The problem is that you have to balance everything out according to skill level. For example, I am losing a lot of lives as a result of avoiding killing enemies. I might be better off allowing myself to kill key enemies instead of "going for the gold" every time and having it bite me in the ass.

With the way this contest is set up, it's hard to cheat the system. You pretty much just need to be really good.

And on a side note, I'm very disappointed with my performance so far.

Sounds like the best strategy is indeed to not lose any lives while killing as few enemies possible. There's also a way to keep the final score as low as possible by killing the last enemy just after gaining an extra life, but that's a very meticulous pattern. For myself, I'll try to simply no death it without handicap, and see then if I feel like no death it with a minimalist killing strategy.

Tool-assisted pacifist run, might help you out to study the way he used to avoid enemies. One thing I am unsure off, is since this is a pacifist run, he dies to a tank, to avoid killing it, and the game make him respawn past the tank. Don't know if it would be worth it in a low score run.

Had to Schedule Contra during the Stanley Cup? Will be fun to see how this ends up though. Fun idea i havent tried any kind of pacifist game

This wasn't a good run at all, but at least I got a game in:  723,100/23 = 31,439

Lost a few more lives than i would have liked but not a bad game:

678000 / 17 =39,882

Any idea on the next block of games so i can get a jump on picking up ones i don't have yet????