Contra, a true classic.

lol, I was just about to post the same thing until I saw your post.

Man, this game used to own my ass everyday after school. I loved the characters in this, especially the bosses (like that Giant guy, and of course the Alien).

When you had to shoot the heart, I loved the graphics...the heart rate sped up the more you shot it. There was one problem I had though, I've never been able to destroy the little beacons where the spider-like things come out of. I can get the bottom two, and the top left one...but the one in the corner (top-right) is unreachable. Was there a way to actually destroy this one?

You could shoot the pod in the upper right corner of the final boss screen with the spread shot. I think that it was possible to hit it with the crummy flame weapon, too, and I seem to remember hitting it with the machine gun and default weapon by kind of jumping towards the pod, and pulling back before hitting the heart.

I always remember the code being:

UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A B A SELECT START

of course that was for 2 player, but I could have sworn you do B A twice.

it's only been a couple months since I played it and used the code..