Another week, another Xbox Live Arcade release that is older than half our readers. It seems that this has been the tone for Microsoft's casual-gaming Arcade service, which ironically is pushing games that are either too hard or too old to appeal to more than the curious or nostalgic. Arguably, Konami's coin-op classic Contra fits into both these categories. Which begs the question "why?”, but more importantly: "is it any good?”

Contra's roots are as a vertical-screen oriented arcade game, but it is perhaps more famously known in its much harder Nintendo Entertainment System iteration. If you aren't a serious gamer, or you're too old to actually know what an NES is, then the chances are that Contra isn't really going to appeal to you in any fundamental way. It lacks the pop-culture recognition of your Defender or Pac-Man type of game, and at the risk of angering its greying fans, it wasn't that memorable a game in the first place...at least once the sting of losing all those 20c coins you sunk into it had dissipated anyway.

Contra was one of the first games to take place even remotely close to Australia; an asteroid crashes to Earth on the fictional-island-with-a-name-similar-to-another-retro-XBLA game, Galuga, which was just off the coast of New Zealand. The asteroid brought with it an alien life-form, and the fairly laughable sounding Red Falcon terrorist group arose to take over the world. While in this day and age nobody would pay much attention unless it was to watch Aussies thrash the Kiwis in virtually every sporting code available, back in 1987 (er...2633 or something in the game) the world decided to at least make a token gesture to help out our (very distant) cousins across the Tasman, and sent two blokes named Bill and Lance in to sort out the situation.

You assume control of one of these heroes - although Contra boasts two-player co-op, so you can drag a friend along as well - progressing through a variety of levels including horizontal and vertical scrollers, as well as a third-person shooter mode.. While simultaneous co-operative play may have been a big deal twenty years ago, it's commonplace these days, and the frustrating limitations of the original remain. The screen won't advance if one player lags too far behind, which can cause the player at the front to miss a jump or get hit by an enemy from off screen. Rapid vertical ascent can also spell death for the slower player at the bottom of the screen, so co-ordinating with your team-mate is actually quite essential. And unlike your modern-day Gears of War co-op where you can take a ton of damage and revive your fallen friend, Contra's punishing one-hit death-difficulty is fiendish, and co-op only takes the edge off slightly. If you even manage to get co-op happening, that is.

Co-operative play over Xbox Live is probably the biggest drawcard for the game, and it will come as a bitter blow to many Contra fans that this is also its biggest weakness. In the few games we tried, online co-op broke entirely after the first couple of levels, with one player even ending up in a totally different level to the other. Konami have promised a patch way back in November, but at the time of writing, this was not available. Offline co-op still works fine which is something, but releasing broken games onto the Arcade is not something we want to see happening, especially since there's no refunds available. It's worth noting that not everyone seems to have problems with online co-op, so you might get lucky and be able to play through an entire game.

The other enhancements for the Xbox Live Arcade port are a bit of a mixed-bag too. Naturally the inclusion of Achievements is welcomed, although Scorewhores will be disappointed to see that unlike many games, these Achievements are almost fiendishly difficult to unlock. Beating the game in 12 minutes or using only one credit are two that spring to mind, but there's a couple of easier ones to keep you going. Both the graphics and audio include options to play Enhanced or Original, and opinions will be divided over which to use. Enhanced graphics smooths things out a bit and adds some new smoke and explosion effects, while Enhanced audio remixes the soundtrack with a modern electronica feel. It's nice that player's are given the option to adjust these, but it only serves to highlight how annoying the lack of user-adjustable control settings can be.

With only half a dozen or so levels to play through in this port of the original arcade version of Contra, don't expect a particularly long or in-depth gaming session unless you're Achievement-hunting. Playing in co-op should extend the lifespan of the game, especially if they ever bother to fix the online aspect. Yet ultimately, the slightly longer but more difficult version of the game are what many people were expecting from Contra, so unless you have a particular fondness for the arcade version, you may want to give it a miss.