One of the games I remember most fondly from my childhood is Contra for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  One of the first great shooters on the NES, it's a game that is a must for anyone's collection. 

A friend of mine was having trouble with his NES cutting off during the middle of game play and I suggested he purchase a 72 pin connector and offered to install it for him.  After completing minor surgery on his system the other night, I put in a copy of Contra to test it out.  I figured a full run would be long enough to ensure that the pins were install correctly and that my friend's issue with his system was corrected.  I consider myself a pretty good Contra player and typically never use the code unless playing with a friend (or on the rare occasion, my wife).  Anyway, I ran through the game with ease the first time and began a second run with 5 men.  I quickly finished the 2nd run and again, had more men than I started with (I estimate 8 or 9) and a score somewhere just over 1 million.

[img width=400 height=350]http://lvls.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/contrafinal.jpg[/img]

I started thinking.....how high does this game score and is it possible to roll it over?  Well, after a quick Google search, I discovered an article on a guy who scored 6,553,500 points.  Hmmm.... After two quick runs and what seemed to be no increase in difficulty, I thought that surely I could beat this score if I put the time in.  My next move was to take it to the source and check Twin Galaxies.  Wouldn't you know it, there are 15 other people with the same score.....  With the impossibility of 15 people reaching an endgame with the same score, I figure that the game's score is cut off at this amount.

Though disappointed, I figure why not still give it a shot.  Hopefully, I'll be posting this score soon, stay tuned. 

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