Hello Malstrom
I don’t quite get this. Shouldn’t Contra 4 at least have sold well? Sure it couldn’t become a major hit, but bombing?
I only got to play it a few months ago, because I didn’t even know it existed, since it was never released in Europe. So I watched a few videos on YouTube. It looked like Contra. The challenge seemed fair, not cheap, the music was awesome and the game actually had colour, lots of colour (unlike, say, Contra: Shattered Soldier, which was all bround and gray with no real music). Bill and Lance looked cool, just as I would imagine a graphics upgrade of the NES classic to look like.
I imported the game and I regret nothing. The entire game has so good controls and is well designed, the bosses are cool, the screen never gets cluttered with special effects. I love how the game is all Pick up & Play, no cutscenes, no story, just the game. I played Contra ReBirth on Wii before, it was just meh. This one on the other hand is, aside from Tetris and Castlevania, my favourite DS game. I like how it is all kick-ass, no whiny emo soap opera, or all dark and depressing, it’s just an over-the-top action game. No bloated unnecessarily complicated RPG mechanics (like Castlevania), just shooting things.
The only thing I can think off that is bad is the cover
It’s awful, it looks like a bad 90s comic book cover (just google anything from Rob Leifeld). Why is it all red and black? What in the world is that stuff on their shoulders? They don’t have that in the game, even the manual calls them the dudes without shirts (BTW, the manual is really funny). Did the person who drew this even SEE the game? The game is all colourfull! And why do Bill and Lance have anatomically impossible muscles? What is this, poor man’s Gears of War?
Now this is more like it:
Two cool action guys and an evil alien in the background. One guy looks even like Rambo.
So, what went wrong? OK, it is not inviting to girls and women, so it cannot succeed as a hit, but for what is is, I find it really good. If the NES game sold well, shouldn’t this one sell well as well? It can’t be just the cover?
The big reason why people loved Contra was because of its co-op multiplayer. Contra 4 had it but required people to buy an additional game.
Contra 4 seems like it made the Mega Man 9 mistake of thinking Old School = Hard & Unforgiving. Old School Mega Man is like Mega Man 2 which is not a hard game at all. The reason why Mega Man 2 seemed challenging, at one time, was because it was people’s very first Mega Man game.
Contra 4 needed to be… had to be… people’s very first Contra game. The developers seemed to think old school meant unforgiving.
Contra wasn’t that hard of a game. What made Contra not that hard was in part that it was played on a large television set with a normal controller (or in the arcade). Contra 4 is played on very tiny screens. In fact, that gap in between the screens is extremely annoying when bullets pass through. If Contra 4 was on the home console, it would have been easier to play.
I don’t think Contra 4 was attuned very well to fulfill its job as a handheld game. How do people play handheld games? They play them on the bus, sitting on the toilet (yes, I know about the readers’ disgusting ways), in bed, outside, or in a doctor’s office. The game seems a little too intense for these areas. No one wants to be in bed working up a sweat trying to deal with the intensity.
Ultimately, I think Contra 4 was set up for new Contra players to fail. If you’ve never played Contra before, you’re in a world of hurt with the game. Most players would just declare the game bad and go find a game that doesn’t set them up to fail.