Contra​ (魂斗羅) is a video game series produced by Konami composed primarily of run and gun-style shoot-'em-up. The series debuted in 1987 as a coin-operated arcade game simply titled Contra, which was followed by the release of Super C in 1998 and several sequels produced for various home platforms. In Japanese, the title is spelled with the kanji characters 魂斗羅 or Kontora. This is a form of ateji, in which the characters are used for their phonetic pronunciations rather than any inherent meaning they may have.