Name: Contra 4
Genre: Side-scrolling action
Platform: Nintendo DS 

Just thinking about my days with the NES brings back a flood of memories. Days of blowing into cartridges to make them work, nights of making my wide receivers run at 200mph on John Elway Football, and of course Konami.

For those who don't remember (or too young to have known) Konami was pretty much the third party developer for the NES. They brought us the amazing Castlevania, the ahead-of-its-time Double Dribble (a great Virtual Console title, I don't care what Coop thinks), and of course, Contra.

For those not in the know, Contra was a side-scrolling action game (ported from the smash-hit arcade cabinet) where you played as, well, a contra. As either Bill Rizer or Lance Bean (or both in co-op) you would go on a mission to reclaim a tropical island from a private army known as the Red Falcon. Throw in some aliens, the spread gun, and the famous Konami code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A) and you've got all the makings of a classic.

As Edith Bunker said, "Those were the days!"

Cut to twenty years later- to a time where every handheld gaming system on the market has more processing power than my NES could have imagined. Konami is still around, and their latest offering, Contra 4, has hit the shelves. And the fact is, if you liked the original Contra, you will love Contra 4. 

The plot to Contra 4 is almost identical to the original game: you have to destroy aliens working in concert with terrorists, and if any of them touch you, you die. The added twist is that this game utilizes both screens of the DS for the gameplay. You don't need the stlyus, in fact, after the start-up screen, the touch aspect of the DS is completely useless. You will use the D-pad and three buttons (shoot, jump, grappling hook) and that's it.

The level layout is the same as the original Contra, with most of the levels being the standard 2-D side-scroll interspersed with the indoor levels, which I would describe as a pre-3-D look. There is a wide selection of weapon upgrades you can gather along the way, including missles, automatic machine guns, homing missles, and the ever popular spread gun. Konami has also added a few playable characters, so that in addition to Rizer and Bean, you can also play as Mad Dog and Scorpion from Super Contra.

Hey, hey, the gang's all here!

The old school feel to this game is, for me, part of its charm. Konami knew they had a winning formula, and that gamers would love a chance to play it again. With the exception of the split-screen aspect, it would have been a natural fit on the Super Nintendo.

I only really have two major complaints about the game. The first one is, its really hard to play. There are three level settings (Easy, Medium, Hard) and I found myself having to play it on the Easy setting in order to get anywhere on it. The second complaint is with the Konami code. Althogh you can input it, it doesn't give you the 99 lives like it used to. It upgrades your weapons slightly, but come on, it just ain't the same!