the most popular and most widely-appreciated version. That being the late 80s, though,

there was by definition a huge gulf between the arcade experience. By necessity, the home

consoles received a break, an easier time in what was one of the most vicious games

of the time. And even then, the level of difficulty was such that every kid from Saitama to Smethport

knew how to circumvent this: Up up down down n’at. But such a thing didn’t exist in

the arcades. You just had misery, destruction, and maybe some Laffy Taffy you got from the

counter after some idiot left their tickets in the skee-ball machine. Now we don’t even

have that, with this XBLA remake of Super Contra, the 1988 successor to the alien-slaughtering

childhood-destroying nightmare. And it hates you. (As all good arcade games should.)

As was the case before, two grizzled combatants with unlimited ammunition and a mean streak

a mile wide take to the ground to thwart an alien invasion, using whatever guns just happen

to fall from the sky courtesy of inexplicable flying weapons pods. The primary innovation

over the previous version, though, is right here: sloped terrain. That’s pretty much

it. Oh, there are also overhead-view free-roaming segments, mixing up the gameplay a little

bit... but it’s still the same basic concept: Shoot anything and everything that moves.

Unfortunately, that’s where the game gets a bit dicey. Y’see... despite being a combat-trained,

grizzled combatant, you move about as fast as a anemic snail carrying ten thousand rounds

of ammunition. And your standard firearm, to which you are reduced every time you lose

a life, fires rounds that seem to max out at about five miles per hour. Compared to

its predecessor, power-ups are much fewer and further between. And then that lasts until

you get hit by anything, which - given the swarms of hostiles constantly rushing the

field from every angle, might be as many as twelve seconds. I used to be good at this.

Honest.

Unfortunately, when Digital Eclipse remade this game for XBLA, their idea of “graphical

enhancement” seemed to be “keep everything looking pretty much the same, but add huge

explosions and blurring effects.” Which is great when you annihilate a huge helicopter,

only to have foes rush THROUGH the wreckage (and huge explosions and blur effects) to

mangle you. The screen, being an interpretation of the arcade version, features a vertically-oriented

playfield (again, jarring to the home console player) flanked by woefully blurry pictures

of our heroes. While it brings the game to a new audience, who might be able to take

to it for what it is - and don’t get me wrong, the classic arcade mode looks fantastic

if you feel like being a purist - those of us who grew up playing the home versions probably

haven’t hit this particular gap between the arcade and Super C versions quite this

hard. Oh, and the code... is a lie.