When you talk about classic video games, Contra invariably comes up as one of the original "run-n-gun" titles that everyone enjoyed. It had great controls, a good variety of levels, and required exact timing to complete. Konami recently announced that a new Contra was being released, but only for the Nintendo DS.

The Konami representative I talked to said the idea for a new Contra series came from last years successful release of New Super Mario Bros., in which the classic Mario gameplay was brought back with some updated graphics and a few new surprises. Contra 4 has these same goals, with the biggest change from games in the original series being the use of two screens for gameplay. The addition of a grappling hook to your standard arsenal gives you the ability to grab onto beams overhead to raise yourself to the upper screen. Also you now have the ability to hold two different weapons, so that uncomfortable decision of whether to pick up the Fire gun or hold onto your machine gun doesn't even have to be made.

The game is just fun to play. It feels like the old Contra series, with all the difficulty of numerous enemies, and of course the flying power-up barrels. Power-ups can fly by on either screen, with the ones that fly by on the top screen being a little difficult to hit. Since your standard gun bullets have a fairly low velocity, knocking the power-up from the sky requires firing into the air almost as soon as you see it.

One of the great features that kept people playing Contra was the multiplayer, and the DS will be keeping that tradition alive with a local ad-hoc multiplayer mode. Expectedly, each player will have to have a copy of the game, but there may be bonus features that allow multiple players to play together with one cartride. Including the original Contra as an extra feature would be nice, but again, details have not been finalized.

The Konami team is working hard to make the original side scrolling shooter relevant in gaming again, and with a little luck, I think they'll be quite successful.