Classic case of nostalgia clouding judgement

[Drixxel]

Maybe he wrongly assumed that everybody played Contra. That might be elitist in its own right, but he was still correct in his estimations and he wasn't doing it out of an NES bias, which is what was implied by the OP.

The review testifies to patchy co-op play over Xbox Live. That's a fair complaint, and I buy it. However, referencing an "arcade vs. NES debate" in the concluding paragraph is as close as Jeff Gerstmann comes to explaining why he prefers the NES port of Contra over the arcade original, and seeing as this bitching makes up the rest of his explanation for the score he gave the game, it'd be nice to know a little more of his thoughts over just "NES Contra > Arcade Contra.". Maybe he finds the 8-bit graphics of the NES port especially comforting. Maybe he prefers the thumpy characteristics of Konami's NES musical efforts. Or maybe he's inclined to having the arcade's final stage broken up into a series of stand-alone levels. There's no telling why ol' Jeff prefers NES Contra over arcade Contra given the context of that review.

This is not a topic worth arguing further. It's a carelessly written review for a fucking $5.00 Xbox Live download, and a badly written one.