Old games were tough!
I don’t remember playing Contra in the arcades back in the 80’s. The reason being is that I had it at home on my NES. Two decades later the arcade version comes to the Xbox 360.
First off, I already knew I was going to buy this game. Because it’s a great classic game like Contra and the fact that it’s only 400 marketplace points ($5). Right after I purchased the game, me and an online buddy played through the first few levels. That’s as far as we were able to manage playing through until we died. Either the games difficulty was ramped up or games were just WAY harder in the 2D era. You can almost pinpoint the parts of the game that are just so ridiculously difficult as the point where they wanted us kids to pump in another quarter. One thing I still don’t understand is the occasional framerate slowdown that occurs on Live Arcade games. It’s not like they’re graphically demanding on the system, but Contra suffers a little from it too. Online lag was no issue at all though. Never once was our game dropped or hard to get started. Kudos to Konami for not going the way of DOOM, which lags to the point of being unplayable most of the time.
The graphics hold true to 1980’s style gaming, like all the other classic Arcade titles do. It really piles on the nostalgia because it’s such a good game that everyone remembers and loved so much. What’s there to say about the game play. A is shoot and B is jump. That’s it, that’s all you need. There’s of course the weapon upgrades that you pick up along the way too, making the levels just a little bit easier.
The achievements in Contra are pretty reasonable for the most part. The two that will serve a challenge are “Beat the game in 12 minutes” and “Beat the game with on credit (without continuing).”
For any retro gamer or Xbox Live Arcade fanatic, Contra is a must buy.