Contra (NES)/Weapons

You initially start with the rifle, a single shot weapon that fires one bullet every time you press B. It's not too bad if you don't have anything else but try to upgrade it as soon as possible. Besides the rifle, there are four different guns you can find by destroying item capsules. You can hold one weapon at a time, so if you pick up a new one, you forfit your current one. If you die you will start again with the rifle, which can easily lead to more dying.

Machine gun
While not the strongest weapon per-shot, fact you can just hold down B and let the bullets fly makes this weapon very useful. The bullets are quite fast as well and have a very fast firing rate which can be improved even more with the Rapid Fire. This is a very common weapon, and the first available in the game, so you should upgrade to it immediately. Use it until you can find the Spread Gun.

Laser
The most powerful weapon per shot, but also the slowest. It is very useful against bosses, vehicles, and artillery since they can take a lot of damage and generally only appear on the screen a few at a time. The slowness of the beam (and the fact that once you fire you'll have to wait for the beam to leave the screen or the new beam will cancel out the previous beam) can cause difficulty against infantry since there are so many on the screen at once. This drawback is mitigated by the fact that if the beam is powerful enough to kill an enemy in one hit, it will not stop, so you can take out an entire line of enemies in one shot.

Fireball
This is not a traditional flamethrower, but instead it shoots out a small fireball the moves forward, making small loops. The fireball that shoots out moves painfully slow, at least in comparison to other weapons, but it’s fairly strong. It also has a wide range as the fireball spins around damaging/killing enemies slightly above and below the level of your gun, so you don't have to duck or jump to aim. Unfortunately the slowness of the bullets and firing rate of the gun make it worse than the rifle.

Spread
This weapon is easily the best weapon in the game, so get it as soon as you can and don't replace it. It fires several bullets at such a wide arc that it can pretty much hit any enemy on the screen without much effort on your part. At close range, you'll hit an enemy with every bullet fired, causing massive amounts of damage per shot. Each bullet is as powerful as a machine gun bullet, and if all bullets hit one enemy, it causes almost as much damage as a laser beam.

Falcon
As soon as you pick it up, it destroys all the enemies on the screen. It does little to no damage to vehicles, artillery, and other machines though. Since it is used as soon as you touch it, you cannot hold it until you need it, and enemies have a tendency to disappear in spots where it is found. There are also only a handful of spots where it appears, so it is not as great as it would seem.

Barrier
Like the Falcon, this powerup doesn't appear very often, but it's more useful than the former. When you grab it, it'll protect you from anything (except falling in pits) for roughly twenty seconds. Any infantry that touches you will be instantly killed, but vehicles and heavy guns will be unaffected.

Rapid Fire
Unlike the other two powerups, this one appears frequently, but unfortunately, it's effect isn’t that noticeable in most weapons. It slightly speeds up the firing rate of certain weapons, specifically the spread gun, the machine gun, and the rifle.