A game by WayForward for DS, iOS, and Android, originally released in 2007.
Contra 4 is a run and gun shooter that serves as a nostalgia-driven revisit of the NES
Contra, while also acting as a direct sequel to
Contra III: The Alien Wars on SNES. The game takes place in 2638, two years after the eponymous Alien Wars where Red Falcon was finally defeated by the descendants of the original game’s heroes. (Red Falcon was the primary antagonist in all three canonical
Contra games to this point.) But after a short period of peace, the world is once again thrown into chaos when an alien being known as Black Viper descends upon Earth. All seems lost until strange readings are detected near New Zealand on a fictional cluster of islands known as the Galuga Archipelago.
You play as one of four heroes – or two heroes in local 2P co-op – although the differences between them are only cosmetic. You may select one of the heroes from the first two games, Bill Rizer or Lance Bean, or one of the heroes from Contra 3, Mad Dog or Scorpion. By competing objectives in the game’s optional Challenge Mode (which is unlocked when you complete the main game on any difficulty), you can also unlock Probotector from the PAL iterations of the early Contra games, as well as several other heroes from the Contra series, including Lucia, Sheena Etranzi, Jimbo, and Sully.
The Challenge Mode features 40 short levels, with various rewards unlocked after every fourth completed challenge. This includes unlocking full emulated NES versions of
Contra and
Super C, as well as other extras like comics, interviews, and a sound test. Challenge levels last only a few minutes each – with some lasting less than a minute – and task the player with completing speed runs, maintaining a given accuracy level, defeating a certain number of enemies within a time limit, re-fighting bosses with specific weapons, and even using some prototype weapons that aren’t featured in the main game. New challenge levels become available slowly as you complete earlier ones, allowing you to skip around a bit if you get stuck. Challenge levels certainly are difficult, and the same can also be said for the Arcade Mode.
The Arcade Mode is the main campaign, and it’s every bit as difficult as its predecessors, especially given the large number of enemies and projectiles, and the fact that you die in a single hit. You are able to select between Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulty settings. Easy Mode grants you 10 lives per continue, and 5 continues total, but playing on this difficulty doesn’t let you access the final two levels or let you see the true ending. For that, you’ll need to play on Normal Mode with just five lives per continue, or Hard Mode with three lives per continue. Most players will find Easy Mode challenging on its own, but it primarily serves as a practice mode to experience the levels before you take on a run in Normal Mode. (And yes, there is a 30-lives code in place here, but it only works on your first continue.)
As is typical of the series, you have a super high somersault jump with a lot of midair maneuverability. Your default weapon is a rapid fire rifle, which fires automatically as long as the button is held (unlike the original NES game where you had to collect a rapid-fire powerup… or use a turbo controller). The weapons system is based around that of Contra 3, where you can carry two weapons at a time and alternate between them at will. If you are killed, you lose whichever weapon was equipped at the time, and that slot returns to the rapid fire rifle.
Borrowing from Contra 3, there are hand-over-hand sequences where you hang from rails or occasionally climb walls, and you are able to lock your position to plant your feet and fire freely in eight directions. You can also go prone to dodge bullets or shoot enemies that are low to the ground, but many of the weapon powerups allow you to dispatch enemies anywhere on the screen… or across screens since this game originated on the Nintendo DS.
The action takes place on two screens and the game is therefore much more vertically-oriented than any other game in the series. To help you navigate between screens, you now have a grappling hook, but it only serves to connect you to a point and then reel yourself into that point. There are no secondary uses or swinging. While having action take place across screens may seem contrived or confusing, it’s integrated into the core of the experience.
In some levels, players will find themselves navigating between upper and lower screens, but quite often they’ll just need to be mindful of powerful enemies that can attack from above, or large screen-filling bosses that tower over them as they extend across both screens. In some levels, like the trademark waterfall ascent, the verticality gives you a look ahead at the challenges that await, while letting you pick off enemies from afar… or catch a stray bullet if you’re not careful.
In the laboratory level, the upper screen is largely inaccessible, acting only as a network of pipes to let alien creatures descend into the playfield. In the 3D base levels, the lower screen is replaced by a map of the complex. In some later levels, players can opt between a high road and low road with different enemies and powerups available on each.
Powerups come directly from the Contra series playbook, with most dropped from falcon icons that fly in sine wave patterns, and destroying these reveals a letter that lets you know what kind of weapon it represents. The game includes the machine gun (M), laser (L), fireball (F), spread gun (S), and barrier (B), and all of these act like they did in the original NES game. The machine gun is a powerful rapid fire weapon, the laser is a slower-moving concentrated beam that’s very strong, the fireball is as unwieldy as before (it’s not like the flamethrower that came later in the series), and the iconic spread gun shoots a wide spray of bullets. The barrier is a simple shield that grants the player invulnerability for a few seconds. There’s also a golden falcon icon with no letter that destroys all onscreen enemies. In a nice touch, you can drop a powerup if you don’t want to have it equipped, which is mostly a tool for sharing powerups in 2P mode.
Coming over from Contra 3 are the homing missile (H) and crush gun (C). The homing missile makes it easy to hit any target, but they do very little damage, while the crush gun is a missile that does concentrated explosive damage in a straight line. Additionally, every weapon has a second power level that is unlocked by collecting the same icon twice, with most pickups effectively doubling your firepower. As such, the 3-shot spread gun gets powered up to five shots, and the machine gun fires two lines of bullets instead of one. Even the cruddy fireball becomes a destructive area-effect weapon when powered up. But you’ll need to balance the use of your powered up arsenal with the likelihood that you’ll die when carrying one of these weapons and get bumped back down to your rifle.
Level progression very much falls in line with that of the original Contra on the NES… so much so that some levels act almost as remastered extended versions of the originals. You begin the game in a lush jungle with mountains in the background, populated by grassy platforms atop rocky cliffs, along with exploding bridges, turrets, and enemy soldiers in all directions. Even the end-level boss is a fortress with an obvious weak point and a couple of turrets… although these expectations get subverted somewhat when the fortress extends upward onto the top screen.
3D base levels are now done in actual 3D rather than the choppy pseudo-3D of the original game. The waterfall level is an extended vertical ascent with a similar boss… but the boss has a lot more moves than the one from the NES original. Levels toward the end of the game become more alien in nature as you get closer to the lair of the Black Viper. That said, even levels that seem ripped directly from other games in the series have plenty of surprises and challenges, including new enemy types, the introduction of mid-bosses, and some additional considerations when playing across two screens. And when you do find yourself facing a familiar boss, there’s always some new twist to defeating it.
There are a few setpiece moments to break up the action, such as riding a missile as it’s launched into the sky… and crashes back down on a city. There’s also an extended vehicle sequence that ends with a boss that’s so big, you have to get off your hoverbike and climb around on it to hit all its weak points… and that’s where the game will end if you’re playing on Easy Mode. If you bump the difficulty up, you’ll get to experience a 3D alien hive level followed by a lengthy final level with midboss and boss encounters, along with some tough platforming sequences.
Aesthetically, the game looks and feels like it belongs smack dab in the middle of the 16-bit era of the franchise, with the horsepower of the hardware handling loads of enemies, bullets, and rotating boss bits without any slowdown. Character and enemy designs fall directly in line with the series’ roots, and the sound effects and musical compositions are similarly inspired. Music for the game mixes classic tracks with new elements and entirely new tunes, and the soundtrack was composed by Jake Kaufman, (
Shovel Knight,
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero,
Retro City Rampage,
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon.)
2D CRED
Contra 4 was developed by WayForward, a California-based company founded in 1990. The developer’s catalogue consists mostly of licensed titles, including this game, as well as
Batman: The Brave and the Bold,
DuckTales: Remastered,
The Mummy Demastered, and the
Adventure Time games. In 2009, the company reimagined the NES game
A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia with their Wii release of
A Boy and His Blob. WayForward is perhaps best known for their original IP’s, which include the
Mighty series (
Mighty Flip Champs,
Mighty Switch Force, etc.) and the
Shantae series, which consists of the original
Shantae on the Game Boy Color,
Shantae: Risky’s Revenge,
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse,
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, and
Shantae and the Seven Sirens.
The game was published by Konami, a company based in Chūō, Tokyo and known in the foundational years of the video game industry as a powerhouse developer, with early arcade hits like
Scramble and
Frogger and the creation of numerous genre-defining classic franchises during the home console era, notably
Metal Gear,
Silent Hill,
Castlevania, and
Contra. The studio also saw a great deal of success from the development of licensed titles across numerous popular franchises, including
Batman,
X-Men, and
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In the modern era, the company’s focus has shifted toward publishing and curating their popular intellectual properties with sequels and re-releases.
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