Nintendo 3DS Will Have Contra. Of Course.
January 19, 2011 by: jphilipsThe headline is pretty much all that I know about it. Nintendo’s new 3D handheld system will have a version of Contra.
Source? How about CNN? They’re pretty reliable, I’d say. Maybe not airtight. We’ve seen press eagerness before, resulting in another helping of vaporware.
Nope, Amazon has Contra 3DS available for pre-order. That’s a pretty good sign. Still not as good as certain, but good enough for now.
Perhaps most encouraging, oddly enough, is the relatively high price (and by that I don’t mean that you’ll need a mortgage refinancing to buy it, just that it’s more expensive than the DLC and retro compilation deals we’ve been seeing). At $34.99, Konami and Nintendo are tacitly saying that this game is good enough to cost as much as a totally original, totally new title. Even if some of what we’re paying for is the Contra name and the no-glasses 3D technology, that’s still plenty of room for good ol’ Added Value.
While Nintendo’s DS gave us fans a Contra 4 that was Tony the Tiger-sized GREAT!, I have to admit that the Wii was more like Malt-o-Meal. So Nintendo was probably about due.
Sure, Contra: Rebirth was kinda cool in that it existed at all, but it simply added nothing to the series. As afraid as I was about using the Wiimote for Contra, I was disappointed to realize that it wasn’t going to be an option at all.