Back to the Alien Wars

We are now eleven games into the ContraStarted by Konami in 1988 the run-n-gun platform series Contra was, for a time, one of the flagship franchises for the company. series and I have to ask: what really is Contra at this point? I ask because once you move outside of the last, arguably great, title in the franchise, Contra: Hard Corps, the very soul of the series feels like it was lost. When the transition from 2D to 3D happened, it felt like the company didn’t have a clue what to do with the series, so they chucked it off to other developers, Appaloosa, to let them try and figure it out. When that didn’t work out, after the underwhelming Contra: Legacy of War and the equally underbaked C: The Contra Adventure, Konami then tried to bring the old team back together, putting the Conta: Hard Corps director in charge for another spin of the wheel. Even then, though, Contra: Shattered Soldier and Neo Contra still lacked the spark that marked a good Contra game.

Contra was out in the weeds (or, more appropriately, stuck in the jungle) and it seemed like no one could tell just what would make for a proper Contra sequel. Thankfully one team knew how to do it and, ironically, it wasn’t Konami themselves. Three years after the release of Neo Contra, the series was back, this time on the Nintendo DS (and later mobile phones) for a game developed by WayForward Technologies. Those familiar with the company will know them as the company behind the Shantae series, and they’ve also become the go to for reviving old brands (Aliens: Infestation, Duck Tales: Remastered) as well as solid twists on new and old IP (like The Mummy Demastered). At the time, Konami taking a chance on the company seemed like a big risk, but the company worked their magic and delivered.

Contra 4 is a very back-to-basics game. Considering most of the reinventions of the series hadn’t worked very well, WayForward decided to cut away all the fat and get back to what fans liked about the series: sprites, action, platforming, and fun. Contra 4 takes everything that worked about the early games of the series – Contra, Super Contra, and Contra III: The Alien Wars – and mashes it together with some fun new twists on the formula to give fans exactly what they’d been asking for: Contra, just as they remembered it.

The setup is simple. Four years after the Alien Wars, Black Viper returns. The evil alien terrorist organization attacks the Earth destroying many cities and killing millions. In response the government pulls together the contras, loading them onto a helicopter and sending them off into the jungle to track down the aliens and battle them. Across nine stages, through the jungles, factories, fortresses, and into the alien hive itself, the soldiers will fight, all to get to the heart of Black Viper and take out the aliens once and for all.

The main meat of the game is Arcade Mode. This is your classic Contra experience, with your soldier (or soldiers, if you’re linked up and playing two players) dropping into the jungles of the first stage and battling your way across the nine levels of the game. That first stage will feel like a shot of pure retro adrenaline right in your vein. The stage looks like the old NES jungle stage, just with fancier graphics, and the music is a touched up arrangement of the same track. The game hits you right in your gamer soul, saying, “you wanted Contra, so here’s Contra,” and it works.

The basics are all here. Running, jumping, shooting. The simple gameplay to a tee. Not that WayForward kept it at the very stripped down core. The two-weapon system from Contra III: The Alien Wars is here, letting you have one weapon type in reserve while you’re using the other. And, naturally, if you die you only lose the active weapon you were using. Additionally, the upgrading weapon system from Super Contra is added in as well. Pick up a weapon and you get the basic version. Pick it up a second time and it upgrades, giving you a more powerful version with bigger bullets, better reach, and more attack. It allows for more customization in your character build without discouraging experimentation. It’s solid.

The game also makes good use of the Nintendo DS hardware. The game is played with the screens aligned vertically, and both screens are actively used in most stages. Standard side scrollers will feature action going on in the top and bottom screens, and then players can traverse up and down between them, sometimes via the movement of the stage and other times via a grappling hook the characters can now use. Everything is balanced so that even if you are on one screen and the enemies are on the other, you see everything and can react properly no matter what.

The vertical nature also allowed the developers to put in a lot of vertical-focused stages. Many of the platforming sections include vertical sections the players have to navigate, with climbing and jumping key to getting through the areas. The dual screens make these sections much more fair than they would be in other Contra titles since you can easily and clearly see everything coming. Honestly, WayForward had a great formula for this game, using the verticality as an asset, and the game shows just how good the DS could be for platforming experiences.

The only time the game goes down to one screen is when you’re in the fortress stages. These are modeled on the faux-3D stages from the original title, with players battling room by room through the fortress, killing switches and taking out enemies until they reach the boss. The top screen handles the action here while the bottom screen simply shows a map. While I don’t think these do as good of a job showing off the hardware, I can fully understand how it would have been difficult to use both screens actively from this viewing angle. It does make these stages feel less interesting for the players, but at the same time you have to have this kind of gameplay represented for it to feel like Contra. It’s expected.

The game also gives a lot of fun twists to the basic formula. As you battle through the jungle you get to the encampment at the end that marks the start of the fortress stage to come. But when you break the three sensors on the building and blast it apart, instead of letting you into the fortress the encampment rumbles, then shoots up in the air revealing it was a much larger structure with more going on. These kinds of second-part evolutions happen frequently, with an alien bug then becoming a massive monster to fight, or a big boss evolving into an interior stage you have to then climb. The game never lets up with creative staging or fun set pieces, which makes it all the more interesting to play.

The design of the game is absolutely impeccable. It looks absolutely gorgeous, with lush, flowing graphics that show off just how good sprite work could be. Playing through this game I was reminded again and again of later titles WayForward worked on, especially The Mummy Demastered) and how much I love everything this company does. From the music to the controls to the graphics, Contra 4 is perfectly designed and it’s hard to think of anything the company could or should have done differently. They absolutely nailed it.

Surprisingly this was the only game that WayForward designed for Contra. You’d think with the favorable reviews the game got (B+ or better from just about every gaming publication) and people calling it a “return to form” for the series, Konami would have wanted to get a sequel from the company out the door. Instead, though, they shifted over to Contra: ReBirth, part of their reinvention line that M2 worked on. Since then other companies have taken a swing at the series, but not WayForward. It’s a pity since I would have liked to see what else they could have done with more freedom to really experiment.

But maybe this was what they wanted to do, and having done it, they got out. There’s no denying they made one hell of a Contra title, delivering on all the wishes series fans had made. It’s a solid, retro shooter that any Contra fan would love, doing what Contra does best. It’s not the most ground breaking game, and it doesn’t try to push too far outside the formula, but after a series of games that tried to redefine what Contra could be, WayForward’s Contra 4 gave us exactly what we needed: Contra, exactly how Contra should be, and nothing more. Sometimes that’s all you need.