CONTRA REBORN!

Konami have been introducing their popular franchises to the Wii. We've seen Gradius make a WiiWare return and that horrible Castlevania fighting game (when will you learn, Konami. Castlevania sucks in 3D), not to mention Solid Snake in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Now, it's time for my all time favorite classic Konami franchise to step up. Of course, I'm speaking of Contra ReBirth, which was released this past monday on WiiWare. I haven't played an awesome Contra game since Contra III: The Alien Wars. Since then, most of the games have been less than stellar (primarily Legacy of War and The Contra Adventure - both of those games sucked). Then Contra 4 came out (I still have yet to play that one) which brought back the series in superb form. Now we have one for the WiiWare, and it kicks ass. It reminds me a lot of Contra III, with the ability to switch between two weapons on the fly and the return of the homing missile, which is tied with, of course, the spread gun as my favorite weapon. Bill Rizer is back, of course, but Lance is gone, literally. Lance went on a solo mission back in time to the 1970s and was never heard from again. Which leaves Bill and his new partner, Yagyu (from Neo Contra) to go back and finish the job. Everything I love about the series is back: shitloads of enemies, bullets, and explosions. Some of the stages are crazy. The first boss battle has you jumping out of your exploding spaceship to fight a giant space centipede, or whatever, while you ride on the debris that is burning up while entering the Earth's atmosphere (I'm not making this up, check out the video). Another stage has a bunch of purple, robotic, giant llamas that you can blow the heads off of. Crazy. This game is so much fun. It brings me back to the days of playing the original with my younger brother, as always, implementing the Konami code that everyone knows by heart (man, I did that shit in my sleep). Anyway, if you haven't played it, do so. And if you have a Wii, it's ten bucks, man. I swear, Contra ReBirth could wipe the floor with the other WiiWare games out there. Pick. This. Up. Anyway, here's some of that beautiful bean footage. By beans, I mean "wanton destruction."