Score: 5.0

November 8, 2006 - Before Gears of War, there was Contra.

As one of the first great-co-op games, in both arcades and at home on a lengthier NES version, Contra holds a special place in the heart of any shooter fan old enough to remember the game.

I always called them red guy and blue guy, but Lance and Bill thrilled us all with their aerial antics and eight-direction firing abilities. Today, the dynamic duo makes a next-gen debut with the arcade version of Contra on Xbox Live Marketplace. Giddy with excitement, I cranked up the classic. Minutes later, I turned it off in anger.

Online multiplayer, simply, is broken. On the third Waterfall stage, our game became disconnected, but we were still playing. Basically, we both were seeing a different screen. My partner kept jumping at the bottom of the screen and I yelled at him to c'mon. And then he told me I had already died because I was jumping around like a crazy man and that he was fighting the boss. WTF? The happened every time we played. The tester should be canned.

Offline, the co-op played great until my partner wasn't able to continue. For each co-op game, you get a few continues. After that, it's game over. The strange thing is that you can't simply hit the start button and jump back in. You have to wait for both players to lose all their lives and then a giant continue screen pops up, even though it constantly says "Press Start" at the top of the screen. When you do continue, only the first player respawns and the second player is then able to hit start and jump in. A few times, however, it wouldn't even let my partner jump back in. Broken.

At least the Achievements are fun. Trying to beat the game on one life is a great challenge many stoners will remember from their college days while ditching classes. There's even one for beating the game in 12 minutes. As for the other next-gen "upgrades," there are "enhanced" graphics and sound. The graphics look the same except for new smoke effects, explosions and gunfire. The updated soundtrack is a nice electronic take on the old Contra tunes, and I personally enjoyed it.

Yes, Contra costs only 400 Microsoft points, or five bucks. And yes, going for the Achievements is fun and a great measure of your skill. The updated graphics are a bit annoying as the classic version still looks fine, but the updated soundtrack is kind of cool if you are looking for a change of pace. 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. Wait to buy this game until news of a patch hits. Or just wait.

The Konami Code (also known as the Contra Code) is a cheat code that can be used in many Konami video games, usually giving the player a large number of lives or fully charging up the abilities of the character. The code was first used in the 1986 release of Gradius for the Nintendo Entertainment System but was made famous in the Contra series. During the game, the player presses the following sequence of buttons on the game controller:

↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A This is the original version of the code, designed for the NES controller. In common usage, many players will include Start at the end of the code, but this merely serves the function of beginning or unpausing the game and is not part of the actual code. The exact sequence varies from game to game, and has been adapted to fit the button layouts of different video game consoles.