Most gamers know the infamous “Konami Code” and 9/10 will say they remember it because of the 30 lives code in Contra on the NES. What many don’t know is that Contra was originally an arcade game and the NES was a port of it. The XBLA release is based on the arcade version, which means… No 30 lives code, sorry guys. Should you still play?
For those that don’t know (Which means you are too young, because if you lived through it, you’d know it!) Contra was an arcade game made by Konami in 1987. As with most arcade hits, Contra was released to various platforms for home gaming including the NES. This is where the game found even more fame and became the classic that it is today. It is a 2D side-scrolling run-n-gun game. It has some platform elements (ie, you have to be able to make jumps to avoid death) but you’re mostly shooting at enemies all around you that become more and more difficult. Along the way you can pick up power-ups in the forms of different kinds you can use such as a machine gun, laser, and the infamous “spreader.” The challenge comes in the fact that one hit and you’re dead. You do not have a shield or armor, you do not have a life bar. You are hit, you die, and you only have 3 lives per continue.
Now this was done back in the days of arcades where if you can make people die frequently then they will keep pumping in more quarters to keep playing, but over 20 years later games are very different and people may not be used to that. Games now have life bars and/or regenerating health, save points, unlimited continues, etc. Back in 1987 the only way to have unlimited continues was to have unlimited quarters in your pocket. The NES version had the Konami code as I mentioned before to 30 lives, and the game was still a challenge. Now with the XBLA release you have a set number of lives (3, as I said, no codes) and a set number of continues to try and still keep it a challenge since you are not paying quarters this time around. This makes the game still quite a challenge today, although sometimes a bit too much if you aren’t used to these older style games. I grew up playing them, so it was great to play again. Even better is the fact that you can play 2 player co-op with a friend to try and beat it together (and no stealing lives in this version!).
There is also an option for an Xbox Live Game, but don’t expect to ever really use that option. When the game was first released on XBLA it was slammed in many reviews for the online play being broken. If you even connected at all you usually would have lag or even have it so that people would be seeing two different things happening in the game. Your friend would be playing just fine but on your screen it looks like they were jumping around like idiots. It was later on patched but the damage was done and no one was trying to play online anymore. It’s been a few years and it is totally dead now and I did not have anyone else to try it with to see how it would run, but I do remember still having lag issues after the patch was released. If getting this game for a fun co-op experience, expect to really do it local only.
A nice new feature with the XBLA version is the addition of leaderboards. I have been a fan of these in games lately since we no longer have arcades to go to and try to beat scores, and also because now we can see how we compare to those around the world. This version also has the usual 200 points worth of achievements to earn that have various requirement such as beating certain areas in a certain amount of time, getting a certain number of points co-op, beating the game with only 1 credit, and more. I don’t even have half of them and it will be quite sometime before I get them so that is keeping me playing for some time still as well on top of the usual “just plain fun to play” style of game it is. There is an option to play with the original arcade graphics or to play “enhanced” graphics which is basically just a smoothing filter. The smoothing is ok, basically what you see with a lot of these XBLA arcade ports and the SEGA Classics.
4/5 Stars – This is a classic game that is still just as fun and challenging as it was back in 1987. For only 400 MS points ($5) you will get to play without needing a pocketful of quarters and with friends on your couch or (maybe) online. Well worth the money. Click here to go to the official Xbox.com listing and add it to your download queue.
