All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Contra: Evolution is a remake of the original Contra, for mobile devices. It's coming soon to Android, and is already tearing up the sales charts on the iPhone.
The game it's based on is one of the enduring classics of the 8-bit era. Even today, Konami's 1987 NES game is great fun. But Evolution has big problems. The control scheme is awful, and Konami has seen fit to add freemium-style purchases to the game, so players with more money than skill can pay their way to completion.
Typical for an iOS remake of a console classic. What's disturbing is that players perceive these issues – and yet are unbothered by them. "Controls are off and your thumb covers a lot of the active area..." writes one App Store customer review, spelling out the issues. And yet it continues: "...but still worth it for us old Nintendo fans!!!"
In other words: "I can't see the screen, and the controls don't work right, but the melange of whatever random things are happening underneath my thumbs evokes nostalgic memories, so it's good."
Another four-star review called Evolution a "classic," but complained that the controls "are so hard. Can't shoot diagonally at turrets and jumping is a chore."
Contra is a game in which literally all you do is run, jump and shoot. Part of what makes Contra a standout example of this genre is that the controls are so precise and pleasing, even by today's standards. Two of those functions barely work at all in this version, yet App Store gamers are hurrying to fling their money at it.
There's a takeaway here, and it's that you don't actually have to try that hard if you want to sell a throwback to a fondly remembered classic on the App Store. Slap a virtual control pad and tons of pay-to-win mechanics in there, and nobody will care! All the beloved game designer axioms about designing to the strengths of the platform can be safely ignored, left to collect a scant few hits in the depths of Gamasutra's archives.
Of course, Contra: Evolution is not the first terrible game to enjoy the adoration of plenty of fans. The graphic design of Rage of Bahamut looks like the aftermath of a war between two Geocities pages, but at one point it boasted 10 million active players.
"Bahamut's success seems to tell today's game designers that a game with minimal interactivity, massively disorganized UI and incredibly confusing game design is the way to hook millions of players and make a fortune," Limic Software CEO Arash Keshmirian told Wired in an email earlier this year.
Konami, apparently, has taken that lesson to heart with Contra: Evolution.
And let's not forget the dozens of thrown-together mobile ports by big publishers like Capcom, Activision and Ubisoft. All of those games are, like Contra, primarily employing nostalgia to lure gamers in.
Nostalgia is a powerful force. It's not surprising that fans of old-school Contra games would decide to buy this new version of the classic title. It is surprising, however, that those fans aren't balking at the broken control scheme and needless integration of real-money "gems" and "coins."
Another App Store reviewer sums it up: "Can't see anything most of the time. But $1... I'll forget all that[.] It's cheap."
