The real Contra is back. That should be obvious to many people given the name (the first true sequel to the series since Contra III came out 15 years ago) and the choice of platform, the very 2D-friendly Nintendo DS. Konami was showing off a quick demo of the title in its Barker Hangar booth, and even after a few minutes with it, it's apparent that fans of classic side-scrolling action games will rejoice when this puppy hits the shelves.

The demo began in the typical jungle setting that may look familiar to fans from the original game. I was able to jump from platform to platform or dive down into the water below to aid in avoiding the streams of enemies and gunfire headed my way. The action takes places on both screens of the DS, as if it were one tall display, and some parts of the level design take advantage of this. When reaching a tall cliff face, I had to use the new grappling arm (Y Button) to yank myself from the bottom screen to the top, hand-over-hand across a metal grate, then drop back down to the bottom screen so I could get back to taking out everything in sight. It was during this sequence that I noticed the amount of detail and wonderful animation in my larger-than-average character sprite. Things move as fast as in previous Contra games, but I don't ever remember seeing them move so smoothly.

While admiring the animation I caught a glimpse of a power-up blimp floating on the side of the top screen. I didn't think to look up there while I was shooting, ducking, and dying down on the bottom screen—something I will want to get used to doing in the future to so that I don't miss something good to shoot with. You start with the standard machine gun but now have the ability to carry two weapons at once. The L and R Buttons toggle between them on-the-fly. The nice thing about this is although you lose your active weapon when you die, you switch back to the other when you respawn and continue the push forward.

The controls in this early build felt absolutely fantastic. I was able to jump around and aim my shots exactly how I wanted every time I tried. That didn't stop me from dying several times, of course. Either I suck at Contra more than thought I did, or the game will be as tough as the originals. It's probably a bit of both.

Contra 4 is going to be a haven for fans of the classic Contra games. Though no music was audible in the E3 build, all the sound effects from the original sure were: The power-up noise, the mechanical damage noise, the death noise and the pause sound. And speaking of those last two, I made sure to try inputting the Konami code to see if it was in there. It wasn't, or at least the classic version of the code entered on the pause screen wasn't. If C4 is as challenging (read: impossible) as the NES original, we might need those thirty extra lives.