EPISODE 1778

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00] ANNOUNCER: WayForward is a renowned video game studio that was founded in 1990. The company has developed games for publishers such as Capcom, Konami, and Nintendo, and has released their games across major hardware platforms from the last 35 years. They are also the creators of the Shantae series of 2D Platformers.

WayForward recently developed the latest game in the storied Contra series called Operation Galuga, which is a reimagining of the original Contra from 1987. Voldi Way is the founder and CEO
of WayForward, and Tomm Hulett is a director at WayForward. They joined the show
to talk about the history of their studio and developing Contra: Operation Galuga.

Joe Nash is a developer, educator, and award-winning community builder, who has worked at companies including GitHub, Twilio, Unity, and PayPal. Joe got a start in software development by creating mods and running servers for Garry's Mod, and game development
remains his favorite way to experience and explore new technologies and concepts.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:14] JN: Voldi and Tomm, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me today. 

[0:01:17] VW: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

[0:01:19] TH: Yeah, it's good to be here.

[0:01:20] JN: So, as we mentioned in the site, you're both from WayForward games, which embarrassingly I didn't realize until we introduced, Voldi. I guess is from your surname, is the name inspiration there.

[0:01:31] VW: It is, it is. Yes. Kind of weird in retrospect -

[0:01:34] JN: No, it seems great.

[0:01:34] VW: - but I started WayForward on my 20th birthday, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

[0:01:40] JN: Awesome. Well, I think it would be good with that in mind. It'd be good to kick off with introductions for who you both are and how we got here. Voldi, would you like to start?

[0:01:48] VW: Sure. I'm Voldi Way, the CEO and founder of WayForward.

[0:01:53] JN: Perfect. And Tomm?

[0:01:54] TH And I'm Tomm Hulett. I'm a director at Way Forward. I've been there about 12 years now. 

[0:01:59] JN: Awesome. Well, it's a good tenure. I always love to see game studios with long tenures. That's always a nice side in these days and times. 

[0:02:06] VW: And we actually worked with Tomm before he joined us, while he was still at Konami, we worked with him.

[0:02:12] TH: Yes. I produced Contra 4, which WayForward worked on before Operation Galuga on the DS.

[0:02:18] JN: Awesome. So, that actually already sets up, I guess, like a bit of a time jump. So, Contra 4, was that the last Contra title before Operation Galuga?

[0:02:26] TH: There was Contra ReBirth, which Konami did internally in Japan after Contra 4. Then, there was a hiatus, and then there was Contra Rogue Corps, which was more of a - it came out on Apple Arcade and other platforms, but it was more of a, you keep replaying it. It's not like a roguelike, but it's kind of like a roguelike.

[0:02:48] JN: Yes, a little bit of a departure from the classic genre into trying new things. Yes, absolutely. Well, before we get into Contra specifically, while we're talking about WayForward. We seem to have a lot of guests on the show who I call prolific often, but it seems to always be the case. You publish a lot of great games. Your bank catalog is awesome and there's some really interesting IPs on there. Can you tell us a bit about the studio, and what kind of games you make? I guess, Voldi, do you want to kick off?

[0:03:11] VW: Sure. We primarily make PC and console games, but we have developed actually a couple dozen mobile games. Over the years, we've been around for almost 35 years, and during that time, we've developed for robotics, and EEG neurofeedback, and location-based entertainment, like cruise ships for both Princess Cruises and Disney Cruises. We've worked with Universal Studios, but primarily console like PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC. 

[0:03:41] JN: Yes. You've done a lot of the handhelds. I think I saw that Shantae was originally a Game Boy color game. Is that the right Game Boy generation?

[0:03:48] VW: It was.

[0:03:49] JN: Cool.

[0:03:49] VW: Yes, we worked on Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis console, all the various consoles throughout the decades.

[0:03:57] JN: Very cool. So, for listeners who aren't aware, so I guess straight up like Contra, as I mentioned is reimagining of a classic. What was the original Contra? Tomm, out of your Konami background, can you introduce us to Contra? Yes, I guess the 1987 classic.

[0:04:11] TH: Yes. Contra was kind of the seminal run and gun established the genre in the arcade. But I think it really became famous for the NES port, which back in the day - now, ports kind of strive everything, it's identical. So, no matter which platform you're on, it's the same. But back then, there was a lot of variants based on a variety of factors, but on the NES, I think they were just trying to figure out, since you're not feeding quarters into it. You dropped a chunk of money and now you own the game. How do we give players value for that? So, a lot of the - and Contra just turned more stages, there are just more level.

So, if you played in the arcade, you have the home version, there's more stages. Then, they also gave them a chance to polish the gameplay a little more. So, the NES version or the Famicom version in Japan is just quite a bit better to play. It just feels better because they had more time. So, that's kind of what made Contra famous. Then, of course, it was very hard, and so there was also a code that they left in the game that would give you 30 lives, which was the Konami code. So, all those things kind of together made it like the famous game. And you could play with a friend, which again, back then was rare. So, it just had all these things going for it. At least in my childhood, everyone played Contra, everyone was familiar with it, so it has this reputation.

[0:05:24] JN: Awesome. This wasn't the game that introduced the Konami code. It was around before then?

[0:05:28] TH: It was technically in Gradius first, but everyone used it for Contra. So, it kind of - back then, it was called the Contra code. But now I think more people heard a nerd to be like, "It's actually from Gradius." So, now, it's the Konami code.

[0:05:42] JN: I think, embarrassingly, my introduction to the Konami code was actually through the Google Pixel laptop. The Google Pixel Chromebook had the Konami code built into it. They made all the LEDs do something, and that was the first time I'd ever heard of it or experienced it.

[0:05:53] TH: Yes, there's kids toys from maybe Fisher Price, anything video game themed, if you
put in the Konami code, it does like a special thing, like all of them. So, it's pretty funny.

[0:06:03] JN: There must be a database somewhere of all of the Konami code implementations. Very cool. So, that'll make sense. The NES port, that's really interesting. Just one of the things you mentioned there, the economics and working that out. Which I guess we've seen versions of that. You mentioned working on Apple Arcade games. So like, we're kind of like, we've seen lots of iterations on game monetization. Obviously, microtransactions are like a big one. But that's just really - yes, had never really thought about that jump from feeding cores into machines, into the home, and whatnot. That must have meant for games developers. So, how many stages were there on the original if that's not a too esoteric question versus the new one?

[0:06:38] TH:  I'm going to get facts checked, but I want to say, it's like six and then eight. So, they expanded by two stages, I want to say.

[0:06:45] JN: Cool.

[0:06:45] TH: Maybe it's seven and eight. There's at least one extra stage.

[0:06:49] JN: Okay, awesome. Cool. To bring on to your new game. Oh, I guess new. It's March this year? March 2024?

[0:06:54] TH: Mm-hmm.

[0:06:54] JN: Cool.

[0:06:54] VW: Yes.

[0:06:56] JN: So, we kind of pitched it as a reimagining, but I know it's been - there's lots of added, there was like questions early on as, is this a sequel? Is it remake? What is Operation Galuga? Voldi, do you want to take this one?

[0:07:07] VW: Well, actually, I'm going to pass this over to Tomm, because as the director, he is the visionary for this. So that one, I'm going to pass it to Tomm.

[0:07:14] TH: Yes. Now, I'm going to ramble for a long time. 

[0:07:16] JN: Great.

[0:07:17] TH:  So, at the start, Konami approached us. They didn't tell us what Operation Galuga was yet. They just said, "Hey, WayForward, would you like to work on a new Contra game? What would that be like?" So, we just got to pitch what we would like, and it was obviously a 2D gameplay game. "Oh, we hadn't decided on 3D graphics yet, but it's just like 2D game. Here's what we would do. We'd have a bunch of characters, and a bunch of weapons, and we'd do these overload things, which is a new feature from it. What do you think?" And Konami said, "Hey, that's all great. We agree it should be 2D. We're doing this reimagining of the first game." And then, we got kind of the download of what the game would be.

What Operation Galuga is, is bringing the classic gameplay of Contra that people would want, why it's beloved, bringing that into 2024. Which means it's not - the reason Konami didn't want to do 2D pixel graphics or hand-drawn is, they didn't want anyone to look at a screenshot and go, "Oh, that's a throwback. I'm not in the mood for a throwback," like whatever. Their vision, and this is maybe now more clear because we've got the Silent Hill 2 remake just came out. We've got Metal Gear Solid Delta and things. But like, it was, "No, no, this is like the Contra you love. It's why you play Contra, but it's new, and it's modern, and it's a current game in 2024 on your Sony Xbox, whatever."

To that end, they also wanted to start - you don't play Contra for the story necessarily, but they didn't want anyone to be confused and be like, "This is the 11th Contra. What do I need to know?" And then, put it down. So, it's like, no, no, this is the first mission. This is a recreation of Contra 1 in story, like in premise, let's say. But there's new story, there's new characters. You obviously start in the jungle, and you're going to move through the island, and get to the weird alien gross stuff. But the stage designs themselves are all new. This is a brand-new Contra game.

So, fans who did play that original arcade game, this isn't just the NES port or something beyond. It's like, this is the 11th Contra or whatever. But it happens to be a recreation of that first storyline premise so everyone can play it. Then, the mechanics, quality of life stuff, all that stuff is like, we had to find ways to make it accessible to modern players. But to take this hardcore genre that's very difficult, and then make it gentle for them to play it, and understand why it's cool, and not be put off by, "You'll never beat this game." Everyone should be able to find a way to beat it and be satisfied with the Contra.

[0:09:36] JN: Cool. Oh, God, a bunch of things I want to talk about there. So, you mentioned that it's brand-new stages. They follow the same - it's the same story, same ordering. It's like the theme of the stage is the same. Mainly the one that like, I think the one that always stands out to me is the inside of the alien, when you get to that. Each stage, broadly speaking is like, will be recognizable to players of the old one. Then, it's the actual levels encounters in that.

[0:09:58] TH: Yes and no. How we approached it, you got to have the waterfall, you got to have the jungle, like I said. You have to have the inside of the alien. There's no field. There's things people expect, but then, we also threw in new areas. There's a village now. The storyline Konami wanted to tell was, why this island, why the aliens are here. There's an ancient artifact that's been buried here. So, we have a temple.

It's kind of fun taking, here's these mechanics we want to hit from the original, but here's this new stage that never existed. So like, where's the crossover? Then, we also pulled in things from Super Contra, the sequel, both in the arcade and the NES. So, it kind of becomes this reimagining of the 8-bit Contras, so we can pull in bosses from Super Contra, we can put things out of order. For example, there's a big truck with spikes on the front. In the original Contra, that's in the snow field, which I believe is stage five. Now, it's in our second stage, because we have a motorcycle stage, so we put the car in there and stuff like that. We tried to surprise players and then it's been out. Now, I can spoil it. We even have a gross alien stage that's not inside the alien. So, players who are like, "Oh, okay. I get it, they're doing this. It's at the last stage, and maybe we don't go inside the alien anymore." Then, we go inside the alien. We try to fake people out, or play with expectations a little bit.

[0:11:14] JN: Very cool.

[0:11:14] VW: Hey, Tomm, I'm going to let you fact check me on a live podcast, but I've been saying that the Operation Galuga, shorten is OG, and it's short for like the OG Contra, the original Contra. Then, I've heard people on the team actually say, "Wait. No, that's not a thing." So, did I just make this up in my head or is that a thing? It's the OG Contra.

[0:11:34] TH: Okay. So, I'm going to brag a little bit. I've named a lot of Contra games. Contra 4, which we were pitching with WayForward, I was a producer in Konami, like we said. We were trying to communicate, this is a return to the old Contra games. It's like Contra 1, 2, 3, and now our game. We're not erasing anything after that. It wasn't the point. But it was like, how do we communicate to the jaded consumer base? This is the true Contra that you've been waiting to play since you finished Contra 3. I thought, "Let's call it Contra 4," and that stuck. Then, when it went to Japan, where it wasn't called Contra 3, it was called Contra Spirits. I said, "Well, it's on the DS, let's call it Contra Dual Spirits," and that stuck.

So, I was very excited with this game, because Konami was calling it Contra Galuga, and they said, "What should we name it?" And I said, "Operation Galuga," because what Voldi just said. It's the OG Contra. 

[0:12:28] JN: That's amazing. I love that.

[0:12:29] VW: He is a genius at naming because - and Joe, just so you know, there were like, what? Eleven Contra games before Contra 4?

[0:12:35] TH: Something.

[0:12:35] VW: It's something.

[0:12:36] TH: Not 11.

[0:12:38] VW: Something like that. There were at least 10. Anyway, there were -

[0:12:42] JN: [Crosstalk 0:12:42] Tomm is currently counting in the end. There we go. 

[0:12:48] TH: There were a lot, there were more than four. It was at the four count.

[0:12:52] VW: Contra 4, it was kind of like - I mean, like Tomm said, it's not a snob against the other games, but it was a very subtle way of saying, this is a continuation of the original three.

[0:13:02] JN: Right. Well, you referred to Silent Hill, and I guess the Resident Evil you make as well. Gamers have been kind of trained to this with like, I think Call of Duty does it, and Resident Evil does it. Where they have games that are following the number system, being released interwoven with games that aren't, and they're different continuities, and it's the same universe, but different - you expect different things from them. So, that makes sense. I think that worked and it would totally work.

I guess one thing that would be good to go back to. So, you mentioned run and gun in the genre. We spoke about the classic gameplay. But for folks who don't know what that means, what's in these gameplay like? I mean, for me, it's a very evocative image. Like the genre is like, it is what you would see, at least for me, is like what I think of as arcade games most of time. Other than like Time Crisis kind of stuff. But it was like, it's a classic thing, but can you describe it?

[0:13:47] TH: I would say, a run and gun has platforming and shooting, lots of shooting. The more bullets, the better. With Operation Galuga, a couple of times, we tried to get as close to a bullet hell as we could. Bullet hells are more space shooter things, where you have free movement around. A run and gun is like a space shooter with gravity. So, you're on the ground and you're jumping. But, yes. I'd say, not generally, it's a linear, not too many adventure elements or RPG-type elements. That's more, you have your settings, and your guy, and then you're like improvising with what happens in the stage. So, if something drops and you can grab it, that's great. If you miss it, you've got to make do. Then, yes.

[0:14:24] JN: Cool.

[0:14:24] TH: Does that cover it, Voldi? How would you describe a run and gun? Voldi has played a lot of my run and guns.

[0:14:29] VW:  Well, I always describe them as like a shooter with platforming. But much like you said, a space shooter, but with platforming, but you went into a lot more details and that's better.

[0:14:39] JN: So, there's a couple of genres that haven't stood test time or been like overtaken. First-person shooters have kind of become everything in a lot of ways. You mentioned making it accessible for a modern audience. What are some of the, I guess, concerns to bringing something like Contra out in 2024? What kind of things were you looking to tweak in accessibility front?

[0:15:01] TH: I think it's easier now than it was for Contra 4. Contra 4 hit before the indie boom. It proceeded like Mega Man 9 and all that. It was on the cusp where people were still asking, like, "Why would I play a 2D game where you just jump and shoot?" Nowadays, we've had the indie boom and all this stuff. So, not just old people like us have like, "Oh, look, guys. Everyone loves these games." But new players are being introduced to these concepts, so they're not going to see it and think, "Oh, gross, that's dumb." They're like, "Oh, that's like this other game I played. Maybe I would like this." 

So, yes, the concerns were - and again, this was a concern we have at WayForward. Voldi specifically doesn't want my games to be too hard. Spidersaurs, which is a Contra-like that we made, it's an internal property. Voldi was on my case. It was too hard. He would play it and tell me, "I can't beat level one yet. You got to make it easier."

[0:15:49] JN: Oh, you the benchmark, Voldi?

[0:15:51] TH: Kind of, yes.

[0:15:51] VW: No, I'm more like the granny player, because I'm the low end, I should say. I'm like easy mode benchmark. Then, we have some people who are the high end. If it's not tough as nails, then they're going to complain that you're treating them like babies.

[0:16:07] TH: Yes. So, it's a concern we have, obviously, but then Konami also was a great client. Again, they didn't want to dumb it down. It wasn't like, make a Contra anyone can play. It was. Everyone has to be able to play it, but we also need the hardcore people to feel like it's difficult. It can't be -

[0:16:22] JN: It's a skill sailing or a high-skill sailing. Yes.

[0:16:26] TH: Yes. It can't be, someone goes, "I beat my first Contra," and then everyone's in line is like, "Yes, but it wasn't a real contra. It was like the easy one." We couldn't have that. We knew how to make the hard game. That's not a problem. We're making the true Contra game. That's the easy part. It's what elements of that, what can we tweak, how can we make it accessible, what's too far, what would break it? Or, have we not pushed this far enough? So, there's things, quality of life things like, you can aim at 360 degrees. You're not limited to the eight directions. 

I mean, it started on the D-pad, on the NES. Konami really pushed for this. This is something I pushed back against. But then, once we played it, it was like, "Oh, this feels better." The reason I think it feels better is, you have a wide screen now. Old screens are basically square. Eight directions covers the square. When you widen it, eight directions covers your half of the screen, and then there's all these enemies you can't really get a beat on. So, having 360 lets you hit them.

We also added a life bar, which if you look at Nintendo, once they added features that would like, if you die too many times in this Mario game, we play the level for you. Once they implemented that, they went back to making hard levels. So, having a life bar, we can make a hard Contra level. We can make a bullet hell boss because you have a little bit of leeway. But then, with those features, we let players turn them off. You can go back to one hit kill, like the classic Contra, which I guess we didn't say out loud. But old Contra games, you die in one hit. So, you can set Operation Galuga to do that. You can set it to do eight-way aim. If you want, that's fine.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, we added perks, which you can unlock. That's not micro transactions. It's all like - you get coins in the game, you don't buy them. That's important to note. So, you can purchase the perks you want, and then, you can use those to tweak your game. So, if you want to start every game with a spread shot, that's a perk. If you don't want to lose weapons when you die, if you think that's unfair, that's a perk. You basically are - we established the Contra rules and you're breaking them as you won.

So, the important part about both of those spectrums, making it harder or making it easier is you are not penalized or rewarded for doing anything I just said. So, nothing in the game is saying, "Intrinsically, you played it wrong." At the end of the game, there's a result screen. You can post it on Twitter and brag about it. Look, I didn't use perks. I used one-hit kill. I'm the best Contra player ever." But the game is not giving you any motivation to do either direction. That's kind of how we did it, to make it accessible, and then we just made the hard conjugate, and it seems to work out.

[0:18:55] JN: That's awesome. No, that's a really interesting approach. And I guess, on the results screen, there's no score that's like, "Oh, you use so and so perks here on like a 0.25 multiplier" or whatever, which is some other stuff I've seen around that. 

[0:19:05] TH: People were assuming that at first, but I don't know if anyone's data might it yet. But yes, that data is there, but you're not being rewarded or penalized. You're actually being rewarded for things like playing with multiple players, or how many weapons you picked up besides just killing enemies, how many overloads you used, things like that.

[0:19:22] JN: Cool, speaking of multiple players, this has four player co-op on the challenge mode, right?

[0:19:29] TH: It has four player co-op on arcade mode.

[0:19:30] JN: Arcade mode, cool. Not on the main story mode.

[0:19:33] TH: We can cover that really quick. There's story mode, which is all the story. That's two players just because, it lets us tell a story that feels like your two guys are the ones doing it. It has unlockable characters you can swap them. Then, we have arcade mode, which is all the same stages, all the characters that you've unlocked, but up to four players. And then, the bosses also have a little extra attack in arcade mode. Then there is challenge mode, which is focus challenges, like a little 30-second to two-minute skill check, that will help you unlock more coins that you can get more perks faster if you want.

[0:20:03] JN: Awesome. Okay, so I have a bunch of technical and direction questions. But before we get to that, I guess, you mentioned that Konami approached you and you mentioned that there's been other games built in the meantime. But, I guess, one of the questions I wanted to ask was, why revisit the OG Contra like now? I guess, it's nearly 40 years, but was there something in particular about the timing that made you or made Konami want to build this game at the moment?

[0:20:28] TH: Speaking for Konami, so take it with a grain of salt. But again, based - on and this isn't any secret info, this is me as someone who worked on a Konami game that we're talking about, looking at the rest of their games recently. I really think Konami feels like they're going, "Hey, we're here to prove that we're back and we're going to take the best, most - like the legacy entry everyone's imagining when they think of this brand, and we're going to bring it back out in a relevant way. That's how we have Contra OG. Everyone thinks of the jungle and going inside the gross alien. So, our game has that. Silent Hill 2 is Silent Hill 2. And then, Metal Gear Solid Delta is 3, which is, these are all like the big -

[0:21:05] JN: Yes, big -

[0:21:05] TH: Then, someone was like, "What's the best version of this game?" These are the ones they would say. So, I think that's the motivation, but that's just me speculating.

[0:21:14] JN: Yes, that makes sense. Voldi, as we mentioned, like WayForward cover such a breadth of types of games, but also IPs. How does reimagining fit into what you do, and how do you think about it commercially?

[0:21:26] VW: Well, reimagining's actually kind of started falling into our lap, I think was A Boy and His Blob, was maybe one of the first. Then, DuckTales: Remastered, and Bloodrayne. We ended up doing a lot of them. Even smaller ones like The Last Vikings and stuff. But I think what happened was, we've been around so long that games that are, the classic games, I'm doing air quotes for those, were ones that we remember when they were in classic. We're holding them to remember them. So, it kind of became a natural fit for us, because we had actually worked on old school, 8-bit, 16-bit games. So, it wasn't originally part of our strategy, it just kind of like got pushed on us, but we embraced it, of course, because we remember when those games were new. And actually, with the River City Girls, and we just launched our Double Dragon DLC. I remember playing Double Dragon in the arcade when it first came out. So, yes, I wouldn't say it was part of our master plan strategy. It was really just something that came our way and we embraced it. 

[0:22:30] JN: Just a perk of being a game studio that stood the test of time, I guess. You get to revisit the things you've built and played back in the day. So, I guess on to some more, like getting into the weeds of operation. You mentioned earlier that the game does a 3D graphics, and you would avoid pixel art for reasons. How did you come to decide, the style, and the visual identity of the reimagining with that in mind? What was your approach to deciding the general graphical direction?

[0:22:56] TH; It was a lot of back and forth with Konami, really. I mean, once they said, "No pixel retro look," it kind of set us in the right neighborhood. I was just dialing in what style here looks right. And then we had some more Japanese inspired styles. People have seen them on concept art, things that have been posted on social media, but Konami really wanted to go with like a comic book look.

I think to a Japanese audience, the American comic book look is like American, right? And Contra is this buff soldier brand. I think it just fits. So, it was kind of like, well, we know this style will work for Americans and then for Japanese, it might feel like it was appropriate for Contra. Then just dialing in, I mean, we also recently worked on Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which is similarly 3D art, but completely 2D gameplay. So, we had some artists who had worked on that and those some really compelling backgrounds. So, besides just the characters we set about doing like deep backgrounds. 

What I wanted from a design standpoint is I didn't just want it to be running completely left to right. We have a little bit of spline work so that the levels kind of zig and zag and you wind through the jungle. So, you might -

[0:24:03] JN: Go around the corners to make like, "Oh, that's really cool."

[0:24:06] TH: You can have a nice like, "Oh, there's a log in the way," until we kind of turned around it. It's still 2D gameplay, but it's a little bit progressed. You feel like you're in this space.

[0:24:17] JN: I've always been really nice because like the original, I know had that like faux 3D shooting gallery thing. So, I kind of took that as like that was an intentional nod to what they were playing within the original. I don't know that was the direction of it.

[0:24:28] TH: I did imagine. I was like, "How far can we push it? Can we have a moment that's kind of turned?" We do. We have some boss intros that turn to that perspective. Obviously, with gameplay, with your shooting bullets that travel in a straight line, there's a little bit of a - we had to find the sweet spot that was acceptable. But in level editor, you could unhook the camera and we had some compelling views of like, "Oh, this is really neat." Or we go look down at the player. But yes, then we replace those stages that you're talking about with vehicle stages, which is where we totally, we go crazy with the angle swaps. You're zipping through a base. So, you do a 90-degree turn into a service corridor and stuff like that. And then there's one later with a train that you kind of are zigging and zagging in Z-space with the train.

So yes, things like that. We can take this genre that started off like the eight-bit interpretation of an action movie and they just do like, here's some cool action movie stuff that you couldn't do back then. It was all abstracted and now like, "Look, there's a train, it's actually moving around in 3D." You're
actually interacting with it. Then a couple bosses. The camera turns face head-on and you're driving towards the camera and shooting behind you and cool stuff.

[0:25:31] VW: One other note on the art side is we tend to shy away from anything super photo-realistic not because it wouldn't be fun to do. But you hit that on uncanny valley and all of a sudden it takes a lot more time, a lot more effort, a lot more money. You need a much bigger budget to get that photo realistic look. So, from the start, we said, "Look, we hope you're okay with doing this stylized, because we don't even want to attempt to enter the uncanny valley." Fortunately, they were happy with that. So, part of the decision was to not go too realistic. Trying to make it as a very stylized.

[0:26:05] TH: Part of that is I carried through, I think it was something Matt Bozon put together for Contra 4, but it was like to communicate way forwards and tend to be just like, "Contra is colorful," and it had like screenshots of the NES, like, "This is a blue and this is purple. This isn't a gritty brown thing." 

[0:26:22] JN: We're not talking CPL washover, right?

[0:26:24] TH: Right. Contra 4 was contemporary with Gears of War. Obviously, totally different games, but like people can remember what that era looked like and so I did the same thing we're it's like Contra's colorful and kind of was like, "Yes, yes, we know." I was like, "Okay. Cool. I think we're all in the same page."

[0:26:40] JN: Perfect. I think this is a bias I've nursed since like my early days of playing console games, but like I'm glad we've kind of put the boot into the photo realism thing and we're back to like no style, let people have an artistic style and let it be wacky and let it be out there, or let it be just like completely absurd and we're not on the ever escalating arms for photorealism now. I think that's good for the industry. I think it's good for players. I'm glad to hear the kind of the reasoning behind it.

So, I guess moving on to how the game is built, it's a Unity game. So, I don't really know if these are coherent thoughts. But when, and I guess it's kind of answer by the fact you built games in between, but like, what did you have from the original in terms of assets? Do you have a playable copy of the original? What were you able to draw on as you came about designing this?

[0:27:31] TH: Well, you can't use any code or anything.

[0:27:33] JN: Of course.

[0:27:34] TH: Konami's assets are limited because it's very old. I don't know if anyone played The Cowabunga Collection, the Turtles game. They dredged up a lot of source stuff on there in the special features. Something like this, it's really just the ideas and the concepts. So yes, playing a lot of the games. Obviously, Konami's released the anniversary collections for Contra and their other games. So, we had you know all that for reference cool, but I have access to all those games anyway. It's more for this the younger staff where it's like, "Oh, you haven't played a Contra and you're programming this boss. Here's the collection." It's a great resource to them.

But for us, I mean, I was playing Contra games as research for Spidersaurs which I mentioned and then we worked on Bloodstained which I've been playing some similar games in the Konami library, I think I'm allowed to say. So, I've been in Konami's zone for years now. It was great having Contra as kind of the button at the end of that. Where it's like, "Oh, I've been working on these Konami-similar games and now I'm working on Contra again. This is fun." But it's just bringing all that knowledge and obviously having worked on Contra before, there's things myself and then just WayForward as an entity have been like, "Oh, it'd be cool if we had tried that." Or, "Here was an idea we didn't get to."

So, being able to bring that in is cool. But yes, I guess, reference-wise, as an old guy, I just make all the young people play my retro games. But I get to hear someone who worked on, we're on "Spidersaurs, Bloodstained, and Contra." And then he was just playing different games that he was catching up on this summer, and he was like, "I just played Symphony of the Night. This game's really good." It was like, "Yes."

[0:29:10] JN: The surprise, yes.

[0:29:12] TH: This famous genre defining game is pretty good.

[0:29:15] VW: Well, actually Matt Bozon, our creative director, he used to like force everyone to play if they had - well, first of all, I think before that, it was like, "Well, if you haven't played it, you have no place as a designer here." But then he got over that. But then he started making everyone play Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid, I think we're like the two that were his like, "Okay. This is part of our DNA. You have to play these games."

[0:29:38] TH: Yes. Then I got hired because I was pre-seasoned already. I didn't need to play those. I was already good to go.

[0:29:43] JN: If you mentioned them in an interview, you've heard it here first, if you want to join WayForward, those are the games to quote. The reason I ask that, I guess, is I think a lot of the reaction I've seen to like fans of obviously I had to go through YouTube and see what like, old school fans were saying about it. There's a couple of like reactions that really stand out to me. I mean, one we've already touched on which is like, I was not surprised, but like, basically, everyone I saw was like, "Oh, it's really cool that this explains the story. I never had any idea what was happening in the first one, and now I know why it's happening, which is great."

But the other one I saw was people constantly commenting on, like, the feel of the player control and, both it being accurate to their memory of, well, I guess the power fantasy that had played in the first game. But also, being super slick and super smooth. You mentioned the 3D direction already, but I guess I wanted to know, like, what goes into, like, if anything goes into it at all, replicating the feel of those old games, whether that's played on joystick, whether that's played on NES, in a modern engine like Unity. How much work are you having to put into the player controller to get it to feel like where you want it to be, if that makes sense?

[0:30:50] VW: We spent a lot of time on this because we pride ourselves on really digging deep and like fully grokking the games that were remaking and we'd like to say we play them the way you remember them, not the way they were, because some of the games like A Boy and His Blob was actually kind of terrible. There were a lot of like really poor design decisions and we kind of fixed those but people played and it's like, "Oh, this is just like the original." Yes, because it's how you remember the original. Same with DuckTales: Remastered, same thing.

But Contra, since there were so many people, and it was actually, I won't say like polarized, but some people were like, "No, you have to stick to the hardcore. It has to be like eight angles. It has to be all that" - and then other people were more like, just, is that because you guys are sadists and you hate your players? And then we did a lot of focus testing. We had a lot of external opinions, a lot of people who on both camps, people who were hardcore, original Contra fans and then also people who had never played any Contra games before.

So, I guess I'm setting the stage for it. There was a lot of thought and effort that went into that. And then take it away, Tom.

[0:31:56] TH: When I worked at Konami on Contra 4, I don't remember if I'm folding time here, but my memory of it, Voldi, is me and Simon, my co-producer, traveled to WayForward. And we said, "Hey, we want you to work on Contra." And then they got excited. Then we came back to the office and in a day or two, they'd sent us this demo with the sprites from Contra 3 and with the perfect Contra jump. And we were like, "This is the jump from Contra." That is, in my mind, is the gold standard of what we need to achieve. So, I carry it with me like a burden.

The first step is getting the jump. The Contra jump in OG is not, as you remember it, it's literally the same jump. Same ascent, same descent, same angle, same arc.

[0:32:42] JN: Fascinating.

[0:32:44] TH: And part of that jump is it's not a variable jump like a Mega Man or a Mario where you can release it and jump shorter. Contra has a fixed height jump. To me, that's fundamental. The reason they did it back in the day as you can aim in the air. To make it accessible to any player, not just an expert, you need to take away something they're worried about to let them aim in midair because they're going to be worried about aiming. So, you eliminate some of the jump freedom. I realized that on a different game that was a demo that never came out, but I carried that back to Contra OG. So, the one thing that I wouldn't budge on is the jump can't be variable. That's going to be too complicated for novice players to do, especially if we have 368 and that would be bonkers.

But then everything else like Voldi said, we know how to make it feel like you remember the old one. We probably know why it was like that. We probably have a compelling argument to keep it that way. But should we and so that was tested in various ways and like I've already talked about, we usually gave you the option. If it's something like aiming, we're like, "Okay, this is better. We're going to make the game around this." But you have freedom to do this. It's fine. It's in the game. But then when it came to things that were new, Contra 4, we had a grapple, that's back in this game, but this game also adds dashes, double jumps, which are just jumps in the midair. That's easy.

[0:34:05] JN: Yes. There's slides as well, right? I think I saw slides.

[0:34:07] TH: Slides, slapping bullets away, things like that. Then it's, okay, we have this game that we made feel authentic and now we have a new thing that didn't exist. How do we make that feel authentic? Because you obviously can't have a character that feels disjointed. It all has to feel natural. So, things like that were a lot of interesting thought. I think this will feel right. Then we would test it like Voldi said. Some of the people are like, "This is great." And some of the people are like, "This doesn't feel right." It's like, "Okay, well, we know it can feel right. So, what do we - do we tweak the speed? Do we tweak the range? What are we tweaking?"

There's all sorts of little cool - it feels like you're excavating an old school game when you do it, like, there's a character named Stanley, who's new for this game. Konami wanted this guy to have like a rival to Bill Lance. He he's in a mech suit, like an Iron Man mech suit. So, he can hover. That makes sense. But then, how does - can you disable the hover? Can you hover and cut it off? Can you - how does it work with a double jump? Can you double jump into a hover? Do you fall straight down? Do you fall? All these choices about hovering, and what I stumbled on is, okay, you can cancel hovering, you can resume it. So, it's not like Princess Peach where she just falls. You could like you could do like a staggered hover.

[0:35:27] JN: I'm so glad you said that. I had Peach in my head the whole time. Sorry.

[0:35:32] TH: But originally, he would just drop. It felt weird like you couldn't dodge bullets. You cut it off and you'd fall right into the bullet. So, what I what we added was a little hop. If you're hovering and then you cut the hover, he kind of does a little mini jump. But then you could resume the hover. So now, as Stanley, you can you - I'm motioning this for people who don't have video, which is all of you. But you can be hovering in a straight line. You can cut the hover and do a short hop over a bullet and then keep hovering in a straight line.

[0:35:59] JN: Oh, that's very cool.

[0:36:00] TH: So, which also extends your hover because it's set to a set time, but when you cut it, pauses it. That was like, I found this elite min-max strat and I'm like, "This is great." And it's in a game that I'm making that isn't out yet. I found it. So, just stuff like that is like a nice eureka moment where you're like, "This is perfect." This is something you'd find on a game's done quick. Someone would be explaining this to you from an old game from 30 years ago. It's like, "This has to go in. This is how it works." So yes, stuff like that. We look for those moments in these new mechanics.

[0:36:33] VW: Just one more thing to add to that. I think matching the original feel was probably the easiest part. Coming up with something new for like modern sensibilities that modern gamers might feel more comfortable or more like what they're used to, that took more time. But then, a lot of it came down to since we had both in the game, what is the default? I remember we went back and forth for a long time on the 360 aiming, the default, or is that an option? Like a perk?

Anyway, but that's where focus testing was really helpful. It's like, "Oh, well people prefer this, so we're going to make that one the default and then go in the eight-way aiming as like the option."

[0:37:15] TH: Yes. For a while 360 was the option and I think Voldi thinks I was - I was done fighting by then. I was actually only playing 360 at that point, but Voldi probably thinks I was a -

[0:37:27] VW: I thought you were - our Creative Director, Matt Bozon, he was hardcore in the eight-way aiming camp. Actually, yes, I didn't think that you were in that camp.

[0:37:33] TH: Once it had to go in, to design the game, I had to play that way. Otherwise, a boss would be broken. If I was designing for eight, and you could use 360, the boss would be easy. So, I was doing it, but then I was like, this is more fun. And then once Konami mandated that, I was like, "Yes, okay." But Voldi made me remember another thing. So, on the end of I rant, the other thing for bringing old-school gameplay in is I insist on rectangular hit boxes. I know capsules are more modern and you can make them work like rectangles, but I'm a jerk and I use rectangles.

[0:38:10] JN: That's perfect. It's funny, actually, I saw a YouTube short of a tutorial explaining why we use capsules the other day. So yes, very good point. That brought up another question that I completely - or bosses. We mentioned bosses a bunch. Again, kind of bosses are another situation where I like the level I'm interested in what has changed because you've used a lot of the, I guess, the appearances of the bosses also have been updated and brought into 3D. What was your approach to the bosses?

[0:38:34] TH: For a boss, I generally try to think of - so generally with this operation, but we didn't try to recreate old boss patterns. There's things we used and then obviously, people can play and see familiar things. But that wasn't the goal. It wasn't like let's remake this boss and then add stuff. So, I approach a boss. Okay. He looks cool. What type of boss is it? Is it a back wall boss where I'm shooting to the head or something? Or is it a character that's moving around? Then what are cool things, it looks like he could do? Then once I design that is like, "Oh now, he exists and he's doing cool things because he's a cool guy." Then I look for the holes in that. I'm like, "Oh, if I stand still, I can totally school this guy." Then, okay, well, he needs like a fan of bullets or something.

So, then I'm filling in holes. It's like I take the prototype boss, and then I run the fight in my head. Okay, now I'm a smart player. What am I doing to exploit this guy's weaknesses? Then filling in those holes. But then obviously, you're leaving room, you're figuring out the strats. Okay, well, I want you to be able to stand here for this long. Or the weak point for this attack is this and then I'll make an attack with a different weak point, so you're constantly moving. I guess my goal is that there's going to be - you're going to have multiple strategies. You got to adjust your strategy. What is he doing? How do I react? And then, we just test that, and then adjust speed and whatever.

Once in a while, a player will find an exploit that we missed and it's like, "Okay. Well, it's probably late in the game. What can we do that's quick that makes that mitigates it a little bit?" Stuff like that.

[0:40:04] JN: Awesome, cool. I know we're running a little bit short on time. Squeezing two last questions. Earlier you mentioned GamesDoneQuick, and the minute you explained how you're layering on the mechanics and the results screen, obviously my mind went straight towards, "I bet the speedrunning community is having a blast with that." Is that happening? Are you seeing speedruns? Are you seeing GDQ submissions? Are you seeing deranged people trying to make it as hard as possible situations?

[0:40:26] TH: I've seen speedruns.

[0:40:27] JN: Cool.

[0:40:27] TH: There's a Japanese player named Game Commander who really rinsed it. He was doing four player speedruns online at one point. I'm getting it down to speeds I didn't think were possible. 

[0:40:37] JN: Wait. It was him playing all four or having three firsts?

[0:40:41] TH: No, no, no. He had people join him and they all - he's mastered the game to a ridiculous degree. I haven't seen it on the GDQ schedule that just came out, which makes me sad. So, to that point, we are never designing games just for speedrunners because it's very niche, but I think for the whole time I've been a WayForward, I've been conscious of speedrunning when I'm making a game. So, we are thinking about how will speedrunners play it and sort of eliminating unfair randomness. Well, this can't be that random because speedrunners have to be able to play it.

[0:41:10] JN: Interesting.

[0:41:12] TH: Then every once in a while, you'll come up with - a bug would fix, but this is an unintended result of this level design and we will evaluate like, "Okay, is it bad? Or is it like speedrun cool?" So, we do leave things in that we find like, "Oh, speedrunners are going to love this." That goes in the game.

[0:41:27] JN: There's like a secret skip that you're sitting there and be like, "Wait till they find this," kind of thing, right?

[0:41:32] VW: Yes. That happens more often than you'd think because I've many times used it as rationalization for leaving a bug in the game even we released in retro realms games recently. They had like a Halloween and Ash vs Evil Dead game. There was this one situation that was so, it was just so weird. It was completely reproducible but so weird. So, only someone really trying was going to find it. And we're like, "Let's just leave it in. Speedrunners will love it." But it was also us just being lazy and not wanting to - I wouldn't even say lazy. I would say like the deadline was approaching and it's like, "We're not going to mess with that." But yes, that happens a lot.

[0:42:11] TH: It's good for like balancing a boss. I think, a game like Contra, there's so many weapons, and there's so many different axes of balance that we did a lot, more work than I've done on a project before balancing it. But you'd still come across like, "Oh, if they have these exact weapons and this exact formation and they get here, they can just nuke this boss." At that point, it's like, "Yes, but that'll look sick on a speedrun. If they can hold on to those weapons and do whatever other tricks they're going to do to get here and they can do it, like Contra just earned a charity a million dollars. That's great. So, leave it in.

[0:42:43] VW: Well, plus sometimes it's just funny. I remember the, what was the back dash in Risky's Revenge, Shantae: Risky's Revenge or something where you could make it to a level faster by just back dashing like all the way through the level. It looks totally silly, but I mean, it's hilarious on a speedrun. But it works. I guess we could have fixed that. But it's more fun to leave it in.

[0:43:05] JN: Yes, absolutely. Very cool. And then yes, I guess like last question about WayForward is, yes, I guess just generally as a business, like how big is the studio? How do you organize your teams on games? I imagine you're working on multiple games concurrently. Is that, we say is correct, Voldi?

[0:43:19] VW: Yes. We have around 120 employees full-time, and we have some freelancers that we pull in, but 120 full-time staff. We tend to work on five or six projects at a time. And that is by design, actually. We learned that strategy back in the nineties from a client who recommended it, because when you work on one or two games and one of them gets delayed or canceled, which happens for random reasons, out of our control, then you're kind of screwed, right?

So, having five or six going on at once helps even out cash flow. It also makes it not as painful if something happens to one of the projects. So, I mean, on the flip side, it means we probably won't have those huge, like, Spider-Man games or -

[0:44:09] JN: Quadruple A, 400 million.

[0:44:11] VW: Exactly. But I think it is probably one of the reasons we've survived for almost 35 years. Knock-on wood. So yes -

[0:44:22] JN: That's safe advice.

[0:44:23] VW: We don't have dedicated teams. It's not like, "Oh, this is team A. This is team B." We do have some shared disciplines. It started out with just audio, but then we added on a UI shared discipline because so much of the user interface elements, even though they look different, they're the same elements across projects. We added a VFX team. Actually, I think VFX was even before UI. We have a, well, more recently, we kind of carved out some of animation because it used to be all the animators were embedded in the team. Now, the programmers are still embedded in the team. Back in the day, we had an engine team when we were developing our own tech, but ever since we've been using Unity and Unreal for everything, we haven't had an engine team. So, all the programmers are basically dedicated to a project, but there are some shared disciplines that come in.

[0:45:13] JN: Yes, that's really cool. Awesome. It reminds me of, I don't know if you're familiar with Strange Scaffold, but they're working on multiple games. I can't remember his name, which is terrible of me. Strange Scaffold is a very interesting studio, but they do very small, they're in indie studio, but they do very, really quite small games, but they also work on an absurd number at once. I believe that, that's mostly a cash flow thing as well. So, it's really, really interesting.

I'm aware we're out of time. So, Tomm, Voldi, thank you so much. This has been super interesting. Yes, Operation Galuga was out in March. Highly recommend checking out. It looks like a blast. Thank you for joining me today.

[0:45:46] TH: Thanks so much.

[0:45:46] VW: Yes, thank you so much for having us.

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