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It’s known as The Code. If you owned the original Nintendo, you knew it. You may not own the game Contra, but you knew The Code. My cousin taught it to me. At first I didn’t believe him. How could a series of buttons during a title sequence affect so much?
But it did.
Once you knew it, you shared it with others. The result was always the same.
“You’re lying.”
“No. Seriously, it works.”
“Prove it.”
“No way. That’s AWESOME!”
I have played Contra only once without using the code. I’ve heard rumors of friends of friends who’ve beaten the game without using the code, but to this day still know of no one personally. The 3 lives just make it seem impossible, but with 30 (which is what the code provides), the game was beatable. You could take that riskier move, take the bolder shot, and really approach the game with a confidence. For the first time in a video game, Nintendo allowed the player to think “when” not simply “if.”
Keep in mind, this was huge at the time. Sure today’s games have multiple player profiles with unlocked levels and progress saved every few moments. Most of the games in the 80’s didn’t have those features. If you wanted to beat Contra, you sat down and played until you defeated Red Falcon and called it a day. A few games perpetuated this lack of a save feature continued longer than they should. I remember a friend of mine playing Jurassic Park the video game for three solid days in college, putting the game on pause for hours at a time while he went to class, until he ultimately finished at 2am one night (I’ll admit I was bummed as I definitely watched hours of playing time, but not the final victory screen). Contra didn’t require this type of time dedication, but the lives were limited and why would you play with only three, when with a few extra button clicks, you could have thirty.
It was the code and it brought us confidence.
The irony is that although I was raised in the code world, few of us actually experience the code in our daily lives. Most of us probably feel like we enter into new opportunities with a deficit rather than an advantage. Many graduating from college this weekend will enter into a volatile job market with huge debt, not a huge savings account. They’ll likely feel the pinch of the economy, the pinch of an entry-level position, and the pinch of doubt.
Many in high school still approach their days as if they are lacking. They are afraid to take on that new challenge, afraid to join that organization or run for that office, afraid of asking out that special person. Quite simply, they worry about how much rejection or failure they can take.
And yet, what if we lived our lives like we had The Code?
In Contra, you still died. You still lost lives, but you always knew that you had another shot–not an infinite amount so you’d be completely reckless, but enough to finish the task.
In these difficult times, let’s make The Code happen again. Let’s not live lives of deficiency, but rather lives of abundance and hope. No, this doesn’t mean we are irresponsible with money or dangerous with our decisions, but it means that live with a certain level of confidence that asks again “when” we will achieve, “when” we will serve, “when” we will lead, rather than “if” we ever can.
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