I believe it was a 4-in-1 tape for a keyboard console for type-training or something, with Contra being one of them, can’t even remember the other three though...
I think I played it when I was 5-ish, which would be 1997, or 10 years after it first released. Things travelled a bit slow back then, no?
Anyway, my parents never allowed a fully-dedicated gaming console, which means that Contra was the only console game I’ve played till... yesterday-ish I guess?
So the next thing would be Red Alert 95, my very first PC game. I’ve played tons of games on PC tracing back to this.
RA95 didn’t affect my taste in games though, I still like RPG and sim racing the most, and RTS is still not attractive to me at least.