The best thing about the ever increasing list of games that are backwards compatible on the Xbox One is the way a game will pop up on your Available to Download list.  If you owned Contra on the 360 you can now access it on the One, along with four other single player games.

So, you know how Contra is a made-up fictional thing that only exists as a video game franchise, right? Well, no, wrong, actually. Because co-opping and shooting all the things isn't enough, the toy makers at NECA are pushing out Contra action figures for the eight year old inside us all.

To celebrate the launch of what many (including myself) consider the greatest video game system of all time, I asked the Co-Optimus staff to share their memories of the NES. We will then take a look at the Top 5 greatest cooperative experiences the original Nintendo had to offer.

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Start.  This sequence of button presses is still ingrained into the hearts and minds of many gamers today.  It is the famous Konami Code, a cheat that allowed power ups, extra lives, and all sorts of other ways to extend your playtime.  The first use of the Konami Code was in Gradius, a sweet little shoot em up from the glory days of the NES.  But probably the most famous use of the code was in the subject of today's Classic Co-Op: Contra for the NES. You, the readers of Co-Optimus, voted for Contra as this week's Classic Co-Op game.  Considering the other choices are fantastic games in their own right (especially Bubble Bobble, which will probably make it into this column some day), Contra clearly was an important and popular game.  Co-op gameplay was pretty rare at the time of the game's release back in 1988.  That may seem hard to believe today, in a time when many titles include co-op in some form.  In Contra, players take on the role of two superbuff commandos, Mad Dog and Scorpion, as they take on an enemy army, infiltrate some seriously dangerous bases, and then eventually kill the big boss, a wicked looking alien called Red Falcon, which was certainly crimson in hue, but not very birdlike at all.