If you grew up in the NES era, Contra is probably a game that’s near and dear to your heart. Personally, I put hours and hours into the shooter. I have fond memories of playing with a friend, entering the Konami code for extra lives, and then struggling our way through the game, even when we had over 90 lives on our side. Konami recently teamed up with PunchBox Studios (the team behind Pocket Climber) to bring an HD remake of the original Contra to iOS.
Contra: Evolution is based on the Famicom version of Contra. In case you didn’t already know, the Famicom (or Family Computer) is the Japanese version of the NES. The Famicom version of Contra is almost exactly the same as the NES version, so Western players are going to be hit by plenty of nostalgia as well.
For those of you new to the series, Contra is a hybrid platformer and shoot ‘em up. You play a soldier who moves, jumps, and swims through the world as he unleashes an endless stream of gunfire against all who stand in his way. You’ll start each life with a machine gun, but you can find powerups that give you special gunfire like rolling flames, a spread shot, and a lightning-blue laser. You have unlimited ammo, so you’ll keep your powerup until you replace it with another or die. Like any good shoot ‘em up, Contra is very difficult and it only takes one bullet to take you down. Fortunately, you have extra lives and continues on your side.
The move to iOS has had mixed results for Contra. The completely remade graphics are vibrant, crisp, and look superb on a retina display. The characters, environment, and background are much more detailed and have much smoother animations. Despite the detail bump, Punchbox has done an excellent job of keeping the character and level design true to the original game. Your hero’s classic spin-jump looks and feels the same as always. I love that everything moves the same way as its 8-bit counterpart.
All of the classic music is present. The quality is not particularly high, but it’s better than 8-bit and the music is a major contributor to the healthy dose of nostalgia. The classic sound effects are all here too, including the “Ugh!” whenever your hero dies.
Because the level layouts, enemies, guns, and character movement remain unchanged, all of the strategy remains the same. Unfortunately and expectedly, virtual controls make the game much harder to control and you’ll find yourself dying often because you couldn’t execute a life-saving jump or duck quickly enough. You have the option between a virtual joystick and a virtual d-pad, but neither work very well. You can also turn auto-fire on or off. Having it on makes the game much easier to play, but makes it harder to perform timed shots (like when you want to fire at a certain elevation in the middle of your jump). Worst of all, continues are not free (the Famicom version allowed unlimited continues and the NES version let you continue three times). After you run out of lives, you’ll be asked if you want to spend two diamonds to continue. That’s right, Contra has been monetized.
Contra: Evolution is not just a graphical overhaul, it adds a bunch of content. There is now gold, diamonds, and EXP to collect, and there are in-app purchases to get more of all three. Gold and EXP are earned after each level but diamonds can only be earned via in-app purchase. An equipment system lets you spend gold on weapon power-ups you can bring into battle. As you level up with EXP, you unlock more power-ups in the shop and earn more equipment slots. If you die with one of your equipment slots active, you will lose that power-up. You can change your equipped weapon on the fly in combat with small buttons on the bottom of the screen. The gold, EXP, and equipment form an interesting system that actually provides a sense of progression even if you are dying constantly.
A new MISSION mode has you select a level to play and you are tasked with beating the level with a target score and target completion time. There are three difficulties to choose from that change the amount of extra lives you get. Each level has three badges to earn for each difficulty.
Finally, there are two new female characters avaialble to unlock. Each plays differently than the two soldier characters. One is unlocked by beating the story or spending 50 diamonds and uses double guns. The other is unlocked with 50 MISSION mode badges or 70 diamonds and uses a katana.
Contra is the game that popularized the well-known Konami code in North America. It let you start with 30 lives and then gave you another 30 lives each time you continued. A similar system is present in Contra: Evolution. Diamonds can be used to increase the amount of lives you will start each game and continue with. You’ll begin the game with a three life max. $1 worth of diamonds will permanently increase your life count by 1. You can also instantly take your life count up to the limit of 30 with just short of $20 of diamonds. Disappointingly, the Konami code has essentially been reduced to an in-app purchase.
The remade graphics are awesome and all of the new content is fun and provides a lot more to do in the game, increasing its replayability. However, the moneygrabbing really hurts the game. Requiring a premium currency to continue in such a difficult game is bad enough to outweigh all the good stuff they’ve added. You’re in for a very long haul if you hope to beat Contra: Evolution and unlock the girls without dropping quite a bit of money on diamonds. The game is only 99 cents, and you will get better at the controls with time (I was eventually able to beat the first boss without using a continue!). If you played the original, the 99 cents is well worth it for a punch of nostalgia and to check out the excellently updated graphics. On the other hand, if you’re looking to try Contra for the first time, you’d be better off trying it on one of the many other consoles it has been ported to.
iPhone iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/contra-evolution/id578198594?mt=8
iPad iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/contra-evolutionhd/id578198956?mt=8
Android Google Play Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.konami.contraevo.gp&hl=en
