- Contra: Operation Galuga
- Contra Returns
Contra had first made its way to smartphones with a 2011 remake of the first game, dubbed Contra: Evolution. For a follow-up, Konami joined up with Chinese mobile developer Tencent and their subsidiary TiMi Studio Group to create Contra Returns. This is a drastically more ambitious title, one that’s also technically a remake of the first game but adds in elements from nearly every other Contra game.
The story opens with aliens led by Red Falcon crashlanding on Galuga island, following the plot of the first Contra. But beneath the surface of the island, they find Dr. Geo Mandrake, originally from Contra Hard Corps, conducting experiments in order to clone his dead daughter Lucia and ending up with a bunch of zombies in the process. The ridiculous story then continues on over several chapters, bringing in even more characters into the fray. There’s quite a bit of dialogue, much of it voiced, too.
The game is 2.5D, much like Contra: Shattered Soldier and the later Contra: Operation Galuga. Since it’s made for smartphones, it requires use of the touch screen, with the lower-right corner having onscreen buttons to jump, fire, and use one of several subweapons. There are tons of playable characters – over 70! – with plenty of supplementary weapons, each with their own strength, ammunition limit, and cooldown. Considering the limitations of the controls, it actually works relatively well. Unlike the old days, your characters can take several hits before dying, and the action isn’t quite as hectic as you’d find in many of the later Contra titles anyway. Each chapter is divided into several small chunks, each taking maybe a minute or two to complete, making it ideal for gaming on the go.
But this is a free-to-play smartphone game, and that comes with all of the usual caveats. While some characters and weapons are given to you over the course of the story, most of them need to be obtained through loot boxes and purchased with real money. Along with this is an extremely convoluted currency system that’s focused on various goodies and upgrades. While you can play a bit of the game without having to spend money, you’ll eventually reach a point where your weapons just aren’t strong enough to proceed, and you either need to grind for an absurd amount of time or cough up some cash to get past these barriers.
The big appeal lies in the large number of characters. You start with Bill Rizer, and can get characters from across the Contra canon, including Lance, Lucia from Shattered Soldier, and the entire cast of Contra Hard Corps, including Doyle, the mission commander. You’ll even find characters from other Konami games like Jackal. Other new characters include soldier Pulse Williams, who joins you relatively early on. Some of the characters are a little silly, like the polar bear Snow Bear, though he fits along with the goofier side of the series as seen in Neo Contra. And then there are the cross media collaboration characters like John Connor and the Terminator from the Terminator series and Michelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But most of the original characters, and their assorted alternate skins feel wildly out of place for the series. When a series like Contra includes characters like comely pop stars and sexy witches, then it’s officially been railroaded into gacha waifu hell.
Contra Returns was obviously made by folks who had a lot of love for the classic series, and you can see it everywhere, from the story to the levels to the weapons. And there’s quite a lot of content too, between the lengthy single player campaign, the PvP mode, and even a rogue-like mode. The soundtrack is excellent, with plenty of remixes of Contra runs as well as other Konami games like Yie Ar Kung Fu and Salamander. But ultimately it just wears the skin of the classic series, while burdening the player with the overwhelming monetization and pay-to-win mechanics that plague so many other smartphone games.
This is doubly unfortunate because Contra Returns was shut down in North America in August 2024, making it completely unplayable. It would be nice if the base of the game was remade and rebalanced into a traditional Contra game, but it’s heavily unlikely since Tencent isn’t known for taking their game outside of the mobile space.
Character Gallery
