59 levels to play before you die: A - D

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From the brilliant to the barmy - levels that every gamer needs to experience

Contra: Shattered Soldier (PS2) | The first level
This side-scrolling, 2D shooter is famed for two things: being ungodly difficult, and reviving a classic code that gave you a zillion more lives but that still didn't help much because the game remained so damn... bloody... DIFFICULT.

However, the good news is that the first level is all you need to sweat through to experience the best this game has to offer. By rendering everything in 3D and making the explosions retina-searingly bright, the developers somehow created a game that was visually arresting despite the fact that 90% of it was brown or gray. Toasting mammoth mosquito-lizards with a flamethrower is still impressive today, blasting away at jet-pack-mounted chumps and burrowing mechasnakes while skiing down a mountain is just crazy enough to rock, and the boss entrance is the whole reason this level made our list.

D - G | G - L | M - S | S -Z