"manliness (noun): Fighting a giant space centipede while entering Earth's atmosphere."

Over the last year, a new trend has gained popularity with game developers. I’m talking about new games made in the style (both graphically and in terms of gameplay) of “retro games”. On North American shores, it would seem that “Mega Man 9″ started the retro movement. However, in Japan, the country where such games originate, Konami’s “Gradius ReBirth” was released almost a month earlier.

The reverting of the Gradius franchise into an “old school” style was apparently successful enough to not only spawn “Contra ReBirth”, but also “Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth” and “Salamander ReBirth” (according to recent ESRB ratings and filed trademarks). Is a game intentionally made to look and play like something a decade or two old worth the ten dollar price tag? Let’s find out!

The first thing you will see in Contra ReBirth is the opening cinematic which tells the story through still-frame drawings with text underneath. The intro itself is enough to make you feel as though you’ve traveled back to gaming’s past. Not only is the aesthetic intentionally dated, the actual story being told is hilariously nonsensical and filled with border-line “engrish“. I can only hope that the cutscenes are intended to be bad and not seriously trying to tell a story. Regardless, the results are highly amusing.

The basic gameplay in Contra ReBirth is the same tried and true, run and gun gameplay that you would expect from the series. You’ll start off by choosing one of the two starting heroes: Bill Rizer and Genbei Yagyu. Neither of the two characters seem to have any difference as far as gameplay is concerned (as far as I could tell, anyway). There are, however, two unlockable characters whose size (one bigger and one smaller than Bill and Genbei) actually seem to affect how easily you can be hit.

I didn’t come across any new weapons while playing Contra ReBirth. In fact, there are even less types than normal. The only weapons I came across during my entire playthrough were Spread Shot, Homing Missile, and Laser. This was a bit surprising and actually felt like a step backwards, even from the early entries in the series.

Thankfully, the two weapon slots introduced in Contra III: The Alien Wars have been implemented in Contra ReBirth. You can switch which slot is in use at any time by pressing the assigned button. This allows you to save different weapons for different situations and even switch to slot a with a less important gun if you feel that death is imminent.

One of Contra ReBirth’s strengths is found in its level design. Starting things out with a bang, the first level puts you in a spaceship fighting aliens, and ends with a two-form boss battle. The battle starts with a giant mouth cracking the glass of the window behind you. After defeating it, you will ride the wreckage of the exploded ship down to the surface of the planet while fighting a giant space centipede. Once it’s defeated, the next stage will take place on the ground below. It’s these transitions that help give the level progression an added sense of coherency.

Anybody who has played Contra 4 on the DS knows that it is crazy hard, even for a Contra game. Contra ReBirth is still “Contra Hard”, but definitely not “Contra 4 Hard”. In fact, Contra ReBirth has unlimited continues. This, coupled with more lenient checkpoints, contributed to me actually beating the game (playing co-op with Jonah) in my first sitting (excluding my brief experience with it at PAX). Though I played on the Normal setting, the game also features Easy, Hard, and Nightmare (assuming you have already finished Hard mode).

Overall, Contra ReBirth is a fun little game, especially if you have somebody to play co-op with. Unfortunately, it’s a bit short (five stages) and doesn’t live up to the fantastic standard set by Contra 4. What ReBirth will get you, though, is the ability to play a new Contra game cooperatively on your T.V. at half the cost of one of the two required cartridges it would take to play Contra 4. That and the fact that, if you can beat the final boss, you will be able to see the heroes get picked up by a helicopter… ON THE MOON!

Tags: 2-D, Contra, Contra ReBirth, downloadable games, Konami, mooncopter, Nintendo, retro games, retro gaming, run and gun, Wii, WiiWare

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.