Contra co-op is fixed (sort of)
An update is now available for Contra, Konami's recent Xbox Live Arcade title. Many will recall that Contra initially suffered from serious syncing issues during Xbox Live co-op play. This typically resulted in each player seeing completely different things, as in the image above where one player is fighting a level boss and the other hasn't even made it that far.
Naturally, when we heard there was an update, we jumped at the chance to test out co-op. We hit up a Joystiq blogger (our Live Arcade testing guru, Ludwig Kietzmann) and proceeded to kill some alien scum. Despite the usual lag, the syncing issue seems to have been eliminated (especially considering the fact that our two testers live an ocean away from each other). It looks like Konami's solution may have been less than elegant though, because the option to continue during a co-op game has been removed altogether. To compensate, players are given more lives. Contra had continue screen issues before, so this may be unrelated to the co-op fix, but we find its removal a little puzzling.
Still, for the moment at least, co-op seems to be in working order. Those of you hammering away at the co-op achievement may want to give it another go.
[Thanks, modeps]
