Contra, Backwards: Geekstrada on Artnoc, Contractor, and the Joy of Assisted Tinkering

There are certain things about video games that we tend to take for granted, particularly when it comes to the ones we've been playing for most of our lives. In a traditional side-scrolling platformer, for instance, you generally start on the left and work your way towards the right. It's such a familiar convention that most of us probably never give it much thought. But what if you took one of the most recognizable run-and-gun games of the NES era and reversed the entire experience? Not just the direction of travel, but practically everything about it? That's precisely the question that occurred to Geekstrada while he was having dinner and playing Konami's Contra on his Pixel. Geekstrada is the developer behind TortOS and co-develops Leaf alongside Helaas, who is responsible for a substantial amount of the work on that project."Honestly I was eating dinner playing Contra on my pixel and it occurred to me I’d never seen a 2D platformer that ran right to left, always the other way…