Contra Critic Reviews

It's gone slightly crusty and yellowed with age but the sheer difficulty ensures this remains as addictive a challenge as ever before.

It's a solid arcade title, but those people that were expecting to find the NES version will be disappointed.

Despite all the caveats, fans of the better-known Contras should find the original arcade game an enjoyable curiosity, and it's also pretty cheap at only 400 Microsoft points.

Of all of Konami's retro games, this is the best. Contra is manically tough, and even Live co-op play doesn't make it that much easier. If you can get to the end without continuing then we'll salute you as a hero.

Contra on the XBLA is well worth a look for Contra completists and other fans of side scrolling shooters, but most people will get their fill with the demo download.

The graphic design seems a bit smoother than you might remember it from back in the day, no doubt due to whatever tweaks Konami has done to it for the Xbox 360.

This is an accurate emulation of the arcade version of Contra. Unfortunately, you're probably not looking for the arcade version of Contra.

A solid addition to Xbox Live Arcade, but it is simply just not the version of the game most of us will expect and prefer. Instead of delivering the NES build of the game, we are given the coin-op version that is designed to take quarters from your pocket, meaning it’s quite difficult, and without the thirty-lives code it gets frustrating very quickly.

It's nerve-jangling fun while it lasts, but unless you're a score whore, Contra loses its appeal once you beat its five missions.

Contra deserves more than one play-through, but the bugs make it one of Xbox Live Arcade's black sheep. Hopefully, Konami will pull out all the stops for a version of "Super Contra."

As far as achievements go, the list is fairly well balanced and is everything from beating Level 1 with no extra weapons to beating the whole game (which is where that code comes in).

Hard and furious paced play from this eighties arcade classic. We would have preferred to have seen a port of the superior NES version though.

The arcade version of Contra was never as well-loved as its NES counterpart, so the choice to port it to the Xbox Live Arcade seems questionable...but not nearly as much as the dodgy online co-op implementation.

The co-op mode has the potential to give the game a decent replay value if they ever get around to patching it, but for now you'll have to stick with the challenging eight levels that will make for a decent arcade gaming experience.

After playing coop with a few of my friends, we all were left disappointed expecting the same excitement we had on the NES. I guess nostalgia does wear off over time. It’s a shame that Contra didn’t grab a hold of my attention like I thought it would.

This Xbox Live Arcade port of Contra is the perfect example of how you can screw up a classic arcade game. You may still have a good time going through this action game, but if you're the type of person that fell in love with the NES version you will be sorely disappointed.

Single-player gameplay is great, but with online bugs and multiplayer bugs, you may want to buy a 12 pack of Keystone light or five frosties from Wendy's instead of throwing down on this unfinished game.

Contra is a fairly typical example of one of those games from the period that's too unforgiving to be truly enjoyable, and suffers from too many annoying design conventions that were taken for granted back then.