The Wish List: Contra Action Figures

The Wish List is an article that we'll be doing here at HiddenLevel that will consist of one or more contributors discussing something they would like to see become a reality.  It could be anything from a movie property made by a certain director, an action figure that has never been made, new video game downloadable content, or anything else they can dream up.  Some things will be less likely of ever becoming a reality than others.  Today's wish list item is from Brunpuppies.

Something I've wanted to see for years, especially now that we have so many great video game action figures from NECA, is a set of Contra action figures.  Contra for the Nintendo Entertainment System, was one of the most important games from my childhood.  Friendships, alliances, and rivalries were formed due to that game. Countless hours were spent beating the game over and over a gain.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, here is the basic plot:

In Contra, the player controls one of two armed military commandos named Bill "Mad Dog" Rizer and Lance "Scorpion" Bean, who are sent on a mission to neutralize a terrorist group called the Red Falcon Organization that is planning to take over the Earth. 

Details of the game's setting varies between supplementary materials: the Japanese versions sets the game in the year 2633 on the fictional "Galuga archipelago" near New Zealand, whereas the manual for the American NES version sets the game during the present in an unnamed South American island. The American storyline also changes the identity of "Red Falcon" from being the name of a terrorist organization to the name of an alien entity.

What's really important is that the game involved a lot for shooting, jumping, and yelling at your buddy to stop going through so many lives.  Almost every child of the 80's still has the incredibly crucial code, up up down down left right left right B A (select start), ingrained in their memories.  With out this code that upped the amount of lives a player had from 3 to 30, the game was nearly impossible to complete.  Maybe more so than any other game at the time, this was an 8-bit masterpiece that you really wanted to play along side a friend rather than solo.  

In this two-player mission to protect Earth from Red Falcon, you were represented by a pair of red and blue grabbed commandos, Mad Dog and Scorpion, but the cover art revealed a little more about the game influences.  You were clearly playing as Arnold "Dutch" Schwarzenegger and Sylvester "Rambo" Stallone. This is who I see the action figures being based on.  John Harmon over at Mint Condition Customs captured this perfectly.

Click Here for more pictures.

Both figures are made off of NECA action figure bases and NECA has also making all the best video game figures in the past few years, so they are the logical choice to make this wish a reality.  I'm sure the likenesses would be impossible to obtain, especially since they have nothing to do with the properties, but one can dream.  I would be fine with generic head sculpts as long has the figures included the different lasers and bullets to clip on the ends of the guns.  For now I may need to get a whole lot better at painting and customizing and just make my own set.

Chances of ever being made are 5/10.

Just for the heck of it, I want one of these too: