Contra Force
A Kick ass Contra game for the NES. Contra Force story has extremely little if anything to do with the Contra serie's story because Contra force was actually not a Contra game, It only had the name Contra in it because Konami wanted to make Contra Force sellable and Contra Force has many of Contra's gameplay style (along with a two player side-scrolling shooter option which the series is well known for). In Contra Force, you have the choice to be 4 characters: Smith, Burns, Iron and Beans. Plus, the characters are interchangable, so whenever you have only 1 life on Burns, you can always switch to Smith so you don't have to start all the way over from the beginning of the level.
Anyone would know that Contra Force had nothing or very little to do with the contra series as Contra Force's story took place in 1992 (Post-Cold war era just only a little more than 10 years ago) against human terroist-like enemies while the rest of the Contra games took place in 2300's (the far-future) against aliens who want to conquer earth. However it is still a great classic game!