WayForward Games with Tomm Hulett and Voldi Way

Summary

Podcast Summary: Software Engineering Daily – WayForward Games with Tom Hewlett and Voldi Way

Release Date: June 26, 2025

In this engaging episode of Software Engineering Daily, host Joe Nash welcomes Voldi Way, CEO and founder of WayForward Games, and Tom Hewlett, a long-standing director at the studio. The conversation delves deep into WayForward's illustrious history, their approach to game development, and their latest project, Contra Operation Galuga. Below is a comprehensive summary capturing all key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode.

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1. Introduction to WayForward Games

WayForward Games, established in 1990, has a rich legacy of developing games for major publishers like Capcom, Konami, and Nintendo across various platforms. Notably, they are the creators of the beloved Shantae series. Recently, they took on the mantle of reinventing a classic with Contra Operation Galuga, reimagining the iconic 1987 Contra game.

Key Participants:

• Voldi Way – Founder and CEO
• Tom Hewlett – Director at WayForward, with 12 years at the studio and previous experience at Konami

2. The Contra Legacy and WayForward’s Involvement

The conversation begins with an overview of the Contra series. Tom provides historical context, highlighting Contra's significance in establishing the run-and-gun genre, particularly its celebrated NES port known for enhanced gameplay and difficulty.

Tom Hewlett [04:10]: "Contra was kind of the seminal run and gun, established the genre in the arcade... it just felt better because they had more time."

WayForward's collaboration with Tom dates back to Contra 4, where they contributed significantly before embarking on Operation Galuga.

3. Introducing Contra Operation Galuga

Contra Operation Galuga is not merely a remake but a reimagining of the original game, blending classic elements with modern enhancements. Tom elaborates on how Konami approached WayForward to develop this title, emphasizing a commitment to maintaining Contra's core essence while introducing fresh mechanics and narratives.

Tom Hewlett [07:14]: "Operation Galuga is bringing the classic gameplay of Contra that people would want, why it's beloved, bringing that into 2024."

4. Design Philosophy: Balancing Nostalgia with Innovation

The team aimed to honor the original Contra's spirit while making it relevant for today's gamers. This involved creating new stages, introducing fresh storylines, and integrating modern gameplay mechanics without alienating longtime fans.

Stage Design: While maintaining iconic environments like jungles and alien interiors, Operation Galuga incorporates new areas such as villages and temples, expanding the game's universe.

Tom Hewlett [09:58]: "There's a village... So it's kind of like a reimagining of the 8-bit Contrats."

5. Gameplay Mechanics and Accessibility

A significant focus was on making the game accessible to modern audiences without diluting its challenging nature. Features like 360-degree aiming and a life bar system were introduced to cater to both novice players and hardcore enthusiasts.

Tom Hewlett [16:22]: "We have perks you can unlock... You’re not being rewarded or penalized for anything."

Player Customization: Players can adjust settings to suit their playstyle, such as enabling or disabling perks, aiming degrees, and life bar features, ensuring a tailored gaming experience.

6. Visual and Graphical Direction

Rejecting photorealism to avoid the uncanny valley, WayForward opted for a stylized, comic book-inspired look. This choice aligns with Contra's legacy and ensures a vibrant, engaging visual appeal without the high costs associated with realistic graphics.

Tom Hewlett [22:56]: "Konami really wanted to go with like a comic book look... it was kind of like, well, we know this style will work for Americans."

Level Design: Incorporating 3D elements within a 2D framework, the game features dynamic environments with spline-based level progression, enhancing the sense of movement and immersion.

7. Boss Design and Gameplay Balance

Boss battles in Operation Galuga are crafted to encourage multiple strategies, requiring players to adapt and respond dynamically. Tom explains the iterative process of designing bosses that are challenging yet fair, ensuring no single strategy dominates.

Tom Hewlett [38:35]: "I'm going to think of the boss... and then we run the fight in my head."

8. Community Engagement and Speedrunning

The game has sparked interest within the speedrunning community, with players exploring optimal paths and strategies to achieve record-breaking times. While WayForward doesn't design specifically for speedrunners, they're mindful of creating an experience that accommodates various playstyles.

Tom Hewlett [40:26]: "We're never designing games just for speedrunners... but I think speedrunners are going to love this."

9. WayForward’s Studio Operations and Business Model

With a robust team of around 120 full-time employees, WayForward manages multiple projects concurrently—typically five to six. This diversification ensures steady cash flow and mitigates risks associated with project delays or cancellations.

Voldi Way [43:20]: "We have around 120 employees full time... we tend to work on five or six projects at a time."

Shared Disciplines: The studio employs shared teams for disciplines like audio, UI, and VFX, fostering collaboration and consistency across different projects.

10. Conclusion and Future Outlook

The episode wraps up with appreciation for WayForward’s dedication to preserving classic gaming experiences while innovating for the future. Contra Operation Galuga stands as a testament to their expertise, blending nostalgia with modern design to create a compelling entry in the storied Contra franchise.

Tom Hewlett [45:46]: "Thanks so much."
Voldi Way [45:46]: "Yeah, thank you so much for having us."

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Final Thoughts: WayForward Games exemplifies a harmonious balance between honoring gaming legacies and embracing contemporary advancements. Contra Operation Galuga not only revitalizes a beloved classic but also sets a benchmark for future reimaginings in the gaming industry.

For listeners interested in game development, design philosophy, and the intricate process of reinventing classic titles, this episode offers invaluable insights from seasoned industry professionals.

Transcript

[Joe Nash]

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. Voldy Way is the founder and CEO of WayForward and Tom Hewlett is a director at Wayforward. They join 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 his start in software development by creating mods and running servers for Garry's model. And game development remains his favorite way to experience and explore new technologies and concepts.

[Interviewer]

Voldi and Tom, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me today.

[Voldy Way]

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah, it's good to be here.

[Interviewer]

So as we mentioned in the start, you're both from Wayforward Games, which embarrassingly I didn't realize until we introduced Voldy, I guess is from your surname name. Is the name inspiration there?

[Voldy Way]

It is, it is, yeah. Kind of weird in retrospect, but I think it was great on my 20th birthday and it seemed like a good idea at the time, so.

[Interviewer]

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?

[Voldy Way]

Sure. I'm Voldi Way, the CEO and founder of Wayforward, Pavet and Tom.

[Tom Hewlett]

And I'm Tom Hewlett. I'm a director at Wayforward. I've been there about 12 years now.

[Interviewer]

Awesome. Wow, that's some good tenure. I always love to see game studios with long tenures. That's always a nice side in these days and times.

[Voldy Way]

And we actually worked with Tom before he joined us while he was still at Konami. We worked with him.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah, I produced Contra 4, which way forward worked on before Operation Galuga on the ds.

[Interviewer]

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 Glooga, there was Contra Rebirth.

[Tom Hewlett]

Which Konami did internally in Japan after Contra 4. Then there was a hiatus and then there was Contra Rogue Core, which Was more of a. It came out on Apple Arcade and other platforms, but it was more of a, you know, you keep replaying it like.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Hewlett]

And it's not like a roguelike, but it's kind of like a roguelike.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. A little bit of a departure from the classic genre. Not a rogue trying new things. Yeah, yeah, 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 back catalogue 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 Vold, you want to kick off?

[Voldy Way]

Sure. So we primarily make PC and console games, but we have developed actually a couple dozen mobile games and over the years we've been around for almost 35 years. And during that time we've developed for, you know, robotics and eeg, Neurofeedback and location based entertainment like cruise ships. You know, for both Princess Cruises and Disney Cruises. We've worked with Universal Studios, but primarily console like PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and PC.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, you've done a lot of the handhelds, right? I think I saw that Shantae was originally a Game Boy color game. Is that the right. The right game generation? Cool. Yeah, yeah.

[Voldy Way]

We worked on Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, you know, console, all the various consoles throughout the decades.

[Interviewer]

Very cool. So for listeners who aren't aware. So I guess straight up like Contra as we mentioned, is a reimagining of a classic. What was the original Contra? Tom, for your Konami background, can you introduce us to Contra? Yeah, I guess the 1987 classic.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah, 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, you know, now ports kind of strive. Everything is identical. Right. So no matter which platform you're on, it's the same. But back then there was a lot of variance 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, right, you dropped a chunk of money and now you own the game. How do we give players value for that? And so a lot of the. On Contra it just turned into more stages, there's just more levels. So if you played in the arcade, you have the home version, there's more stages. And then they also. That 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. And 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 it with a friend, which again back then was rare. So it just had all these things going for it. So at least in my childhood everyone played Contra, everyone was familiar with it. And so it has this reputation.

[Interviewer]

Awesome. And this wasn't the game that introduced the Konami code.

[Tom Hewlett]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Was it around before then?

[Tom Hewlett]

It was technically in Gradius first, but everyone used it for Contra. So it kind of. Back in the day it was called the Contra code. But now I think more people have heard. Heard a nerd to be like, it's actually from Gradius. And so now it's the Konami code.

[Interviewer]

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 that made all the LEDs do something. And that was the first time I'd ever heard of it or experienced it.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah, 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.

[Interviewer]

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 was the economics and working that out, which I guess we've seen versions of that you mentioned working on Apple Arcade games. So we're kind of like. We've seen lots of iterations on game monetization. Obviously microtransactions are a big one, but that's just really had never really thought about that jump from feeding cores into machines into the home and what 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.

[Tom Hewlett]

I'm going to get fact checked. But I want to say it's like six and then eight.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Tom Hewlett]

So they expanded by two stages. I want to say maybe it's seven and eight.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Hewlett]

There's at least one extra stage.

[Interviewer]

Okay, awesome. Cool. So bring on to your new game. Oh, I guess new is March this year. March 2024. Cool.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yes, yes.

[Interviewer]

So we kind of pitched it as a reimagining, but I know it's been, you know, there's a lot of stuff added. There was like questions early on. Is, you know, is this a sequel? Is it a remake? What is Operation Galuga? Voldy, do you want to take this one?

[Voldy Way]

Well, actually, I'm going to pass this over to Tom because as the director, he is the visionary for this. So that one, I'm going to pass it Tom.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah. Then I'm going to ramble for a long time.

[Interviewer]

Great.

[Tom Hewlett]

So at the start, Konami approached us. They didn't tell us what Operation Golooka was yet. They just said, hey, way forward. Would you like to work on a new Contra game? What would that be like? And 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 was 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. And 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. So what Operation Beluga 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 like 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, like 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. So to that end, they also wanted to start. I mean, you know, 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. And 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 cool.

[Interviewer]

So. 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. So like the theme of the stage, it's the same, right? Mainly the one that like I think the one that always stands out to me is like the inside of the alien. You get to that like it. So each stage, broadly speaking is like. Will be recognizable to players of the old one. And then it's the actual levels, encounters in that.

[Tom Hewlett]

So yes and no. So how we approached it. So you got to have the waterfall, you got to have the jungle. Like I said, sure. You have to have the inside of the alien. There's a snow 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. So 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? And then we also pulled in things from Super Contra, the sequel, both in the arcade and the nes. So it kind of becomes this like 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. And in the original Contra, that's in the snow field, which I believe is stage five. And now it's in our second stage because we have a motorcycle stage, so we put the car in there and stuff like that. So we tried to surprise players and then it's been out. Now I can spoil it. Like we even have a gross alien stage that's not inside the alien.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Tom Hewlett]

So players who are like, oh, okay, I get. They're doing this. It's at the last stage and maybe we don't go inside the alien anymore. And then we go inside the alien. So we tried to like fake people out or play with expectations a little bit.

[Interviewer]

Very cool.

[Voldy Way]

Hey, Tom, I'm going to let you fact check me on a live podcast, but I've been saying that the Operation Galuga shortened is og and it's short for like the OG Contra, the original Contra. But then I've heard people on the team actually say, wait, no, that's not a thing. So did I just make up in.

[Tom Hewlett]

My head or is it.

[Voldy Way]

Contra?

[Tom Hewlett]

I'm going to brag a little bit. I've named a lot of Contra Games Contra 4, which we were pitching with way forward. I was a producer, 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 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. And I said, let's call it Contra 4. And that stuck. And 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. And 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 Voldy just said, it's the OG Contra.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing.

[Voldy Way]

I love that he is a genius at naming because. And Joe, just so you know, there were like what, 11 Contra games before Contra 4?

[Tom Hewlett]

Something.

[Voldy Way]

Something. Yes.

[Tom Hewlett]

Not 11.

[Voldy Way]

Yeah, something like that. There were at least 10. Anyway, there were a bunch of listeners.

[Interviewer]

Tom is currently counting in the air. There we go.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah, there were a lot. There were a lot. There were more than four. It was not the four, unfortunately, you don't have four.

[Voldy Way]

It was kind of like, I mean, Like Tom said, it's not a snub against the other games, but it was a very subtle way of saying this is a continuation of like the original three.

[Interviewer]

Well, you know, you referred to Silent Hill and I guess the Resident Evil you make as well. Like there's been like, you know, 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 like, you know, different. You expect different things from them. So that makes sense. I think that. I think that totally works. So 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 do these games play like? I mean, for me it's a very evocative image. Like it's. This genre is like, it is what you would see, at least for me. It's like what I think of as arcade games most of the time, other than like, you know, time crisis kind of stuff. But like it was like, you know, it's a classic thing. But can you describe it?

[Tom Hewlett]

I would say a running gun has platforming and shooting. Lots of shooting. The more bullets the better. With Operation Glue Guy, a couple 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 yeah, and I'd say not generally it's linear, not too many adventure elements or RPG type elements. It's more. You have your, 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 and then. Yeah, cool. Does that cover it? Voldy, how would you describe a running gun? Voldi has played a lot of my running guns.

[Voldy Way]

Well, I always describe him as like a shooter with platforming, but like much like you said a space shooter but with platforming, but you went into a lot more details and that's better.

[Interviewer]

So there's a couple of genres that haven't stood test time or been overtaken. First person shooters have kind of become everything in a lot of ways. And 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 and what kind of things were you looking to tweak in that accessibility front?

[Tom Hewlett]

I think it's easier now than it was for Contra 4. Contra 4 hit before the indie boom. It preceded, like Mega Man 9 and all that. So, like, it was on the cusp where people were still asking, like, why would I play a 2D game? You just jump and shoot. Nowadays we've had the indie boom and all this stuff. And so not just old people like us have like, oh, no, look, guys, everyone loves these games, but like, 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, yeah, the concerns were. And again, this was a concern we have at WayForward. Voldy specifically doesn't want my games to be too hard. Spider Source, which is a Contra like that we made, it's an internal property. Voldy 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.

[Interviewer]

Oh, are you the benchmark Voldy?

[Voldy Way]

No, I'm kind of like more like the granny player, you know, because, like, I'm the low end, I should say. I'm like the easy mode benchmark. And then we have some people who are like the high end. Like, if it's not tough as nails, then they're going to, you know, complain that you're treating them like.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yep. So it's a concern we have, obviously. But then Konami also was a great client. They, 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.

[Interviewer]

It can't be a skill ceiling. A high skill ceiling.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can't be. Someone goes, I beat my first Contra. And then everyone's. Everyone in line's like, yeah, but it wasn't a real Contra. It was like the easy one. Like, we couldn't have that. So 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 in 360 degrees. You're not limited to the eight directions. Like, I mean, it started on a D pad.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Hewlett]

On the nes. Right. 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. And the reason I think it feels better is you have a widescreen. 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. And 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. Right. 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.

[Interviewer]

Right?

[Tom Hewlett]

So you can set Operation Kaluga to do that. You can set it to do 8 way aim if you want, that's fine. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we added perks, which you can unlock. It's not microtransactions, it's all there's. You get coins in the game, you don't buy them, that's important to note. But. 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 spreadshot, 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, cool as you want. And 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 don't use One Hit Kill. I'm the best Contra player.

[Voldy Way]

Ever.

[Tom Hewlett]

Right. But the game is not giving you any motivation to do either direction. And that's kind of our how we did it to make it accessible. And then we just made the hard Contra game and it seems to work out.

[Interviewer]

That's awesome. No, that's a really interesting approach. And I guess like, you know, on the results screen there's no like score that's like, oh, you use so and so perks. You're on like a 0.25 multiplier or whatever. Which is like some other stuff I've.

[Tom Hewlett]

Seen around that people were assuming that at first, but yeah, I don't know if anyone's data mined it yet. But yeah, that data's 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.

[Interviewer]

Cool. Speaking of playing multiple players, this has four player co op on the challenge mode, right?

[Tom Hewlett]

It has four player co op on arcade mode.

[Interviewer]

Arcade mode, cool. They're on the main story mode.

[Tom Hewlett]

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. 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. And then there is challenge mode which is focus challenges, like a little 30 second to two minute skill check that'll help you unlock more coins that you can get more perks faster if you want. Awesome.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so I have a bunch of technical and direction questions, but before we get to that, I guess, you know, we've kind of. You know, you mentioned that Konami approached you and you mentioned that, you know, 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 like, was there something in particular about the timing that made you know, you or make Konami want to build this game at the moment?

[Tom Hewlett]

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. And that's why 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. Someone was like, what's the best version of this game? These are the ones they would say. Right. So I think that's the motivation, but that's just me speculating.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that makes sense. Valdi, how do you, you know, as we mentioned, you like Wayforward covers. Such a breadth of types of games, but also IPs. How does a reimagining fit into what you do and how do you think about it commercially?

[Voldy Way]

Well, reimaginings actually kind of started falling into our lap. I think it was A Boy In His Blob was maybe one of the first. And then DuckTales Remastered and BloodRayne, and we ended up doing a lot of them, even smaller ones like Las Vegas Vikings and stuff. But I think what happened was we've been around so long that games that are, you know, the classic games, I'm doing air quotes for, those were ones that we remember when they were in classic world enough to remember them. And so it kind of became a natural fit for us because we had actually worked on old school, you know, 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, right? And actually with the River City Girls, and we just launched our Double Dragon dlc. And, you know, I remember playing Double Dragon in the arcade when it first came out. So, yeah, 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.

[Interviewer]

Just a perk of being a game studio that stood the test of time, I guess. You get to revisit the things you built and played back in the day. So I guess onto some more getting into the weeds of Operation Kaluga. So you mentioned earlier that the game does a 3D graphics and you had avoided 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.

[Tom Hewlett]

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, I don't know, 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 and then just dialing in. I mean, we also recently worked on Ritual of the Night, which is similarly 3D art, but completely 2D gameplay. So we had some artists who had worked on that and done some really compelling backgrounds. And so we just. Besides just the characters, we set about, you know, 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.

[Interviewer]

So you're going around the corners. The big, like ordinary. That's really cool.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah, you can have a nice, like, oh, there's a log in the way. And so we. We kind of turned around it or. Yeah, it's still 2D gameplay, but it's a little bit progressed. You feel like you're. Oh, you're in this space.

[Interviewer]

I thought it was a really nice. Because, like, the original, I know, had that like faux 3D shooting gallery thing. So I, I kind of took that as like. That was an intentional nod to what they were playing with in the original. I don't know if that was the.

[Tom Hewlett]

Direction of it 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 you're 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, you know, unhook the camera and we had some compelling views of like, oh, this is really neat. Or like we go look down at the player. But yeah. And 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 or you. 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 yeah, things like that. We can take this genre that started off like the 8 bit interpretation of an action movie and then just do like, here's some cool action movie stuff, right, 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. And then a couple bosses, the camera turns face head on and you're driving towards the camera and shooting behind you. And cool stuff.

[Voldy Way]

One other note on the art side is we tend to shy away from anything super photorealistic. Not because it wouldn't be fun to do, but you know, you hit that uncanny valley and all of a sudden it takes a lot more time, a lot more effort, a lot more money. Like you need a much bigger budget to get that photorealistic look. So from the start we said, look, we hope you can. You're okay with doing the stylized because we don't even want to attempt to enter the uncanny Valley. And fortunately they were happy with that. So part of the decision was to not go too realistic, try to make it as a very stylized.

[Tom Hewlett]

And part of that is I carried through, I believe. I think it was something Matt Boson put together for Contra 4, but it was like a. To communicate way forwards intended visual. Like Contra is colorful and it had like screenshots of the nes. Like this is a blue and this is purple. Like this isn't a gritty brown.

[Interviewer]

Right Thing.

[Tom Hewlett]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Like washover. Right.

[Tom Hewlett]

Contra 4 was contemporary with Gears of War, obviously totally different games, but people can remember what that era looked like. And so I did the same thing where it's like Contra is colorful and Konami was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. I was like, okay, cool. I think we're all on the same page.

[Interviewer]

Perfect. I think this is a bias I've nursed since my early days of playing console games. But like, I'm glad we've kind of put the boot into the photorealism 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, completely absurd. And we're not on the ever escalating arms war of photorealism Now I think that's good for the industry. I think it's good for players. I'm glad to hear that's 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 answered by the fact you built games in between. But like what did you have from the original in terms of assets? And like do you have a playable copy of the original? What were you able to draw on as you came about, you know, designing this?

[Tom Hewlett]

Well, you can't use any code or anything. Of course Konami's assets are limited because it's very old. If anyone's played the Cowabunga Collection, the Turtles game, they. They dredged up a lot of source stuff on there in the special features. So something like this, it's really just the ideas and the concepts and so yeah, playing a lot of the games. Obviously the Konami's released the anniversary collections for Contra and their other games. So we had, you know, all that for reference.

[Interviewer]

Cool.

[Tom Hewlett]

But I have access to all those games anyway. It's more for the, the younger staff where it's like oh, you haven't played a Contra and you're programming this boss. Here's the collection.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Tom Hewlett]

Like it's, it's a great resource to them. But for us, I mean I've. I was playing Contra games as research for Spider Source, which I mentioned and then we worked on Bloodstained, which I'd been playing some similar games in the Konami Library, I think. Am I allowed to say so I've been in Konami Zone for years now. So 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 4, there's things myself and then just way forward 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 yeah, I guess reference wise as an old guy I just make all the young people play my retro games. But I get to hear like someone who worked on work on Spider Swords, 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, yeah, the surprise. Yeah, this famous genre defining game is pretty good.

[Voldy Way]

Well actually, Matt Bozan, 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 were like the two that were his. Like, okay, this is part of our DNA. You have to play these games.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yep, yep. And then I got hired because I, I was pre seasoned already. I didn't need to play those. I was already good to go.

[Interviewer]

If you mentioned them in an interview, you've heard it here first. So do you want to join Way forward. Those are the games to quote. So the reason I asked that, I guess is I think a lot of the reaction I've seen to like fans of. Obviously I had to go go through YouTube and see what like, you know, 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 kind of 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 you know, both it being accurate to their memory of like, I guess the power fantasy that they had played in the first game, but you know, also being super slick and super smooth. You know, 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.

[Voldy Way]

We spent a lot of time on this because we pride ourselves on really digging deep and fully grokking the games that we're 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 Buenos Blob was actually kind of terrible. Like 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. Yeah, 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, like. 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, you know, 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. There was a lot of thought and effort that went into that. And then. Take it away, Tom.

[Tom Hewlett]

When I worked at konami on Contra 4, I don't remember if I'm. If I'm folding time here, but my memory of it Voldy is. Me and Simon, my co producer, traveled the way forward and we said, hey, we want you to work on Contra. And then they got excited, and 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 Contrast. And so that is, in my mind, as the gold standard of what we need to achieve. So I carry it with me like a burden. So 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.

[Interviewer]

Fascinating.

[Tom Hewlett]

It's. 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 high jump. To me, that's fundamental. The reason they did it back in the day is you can aim in the air. And so 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, especially if we have 360 aim. That would be bonkers. But then everything else. Like Boldi 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 like if some. 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 added the 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.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Slides as well, right? I think I saw slides.

[Tom Hewlett]

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. And like, I think this will feel right. And then we would test it like Voldy said. And some of the people were like, this is great. And some of people like, this doesn't feel right. And it's like, okay, well, we know it can feel right.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Tom Hewlett]

So what do we do? We tweak the speed? Do we tweak the range? Do we. What are we tweaking? And 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 be like a rival to Bill Lance. And he. He's in a mech suit, like an Ironman mech suit. And so he can hover. That makes sense. But then, you know, how does. Can you disable the hover? Can you hover and cut it off? Can you. How does it work with your. With a double jump? Can you double jump into a hover? What is that? Do you fall straight down? Do you fall like 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 do like a staggered hover.

[Interviewer]

I'm so glad you said that. I had Peach in my head the whole time.

[Tom Hewlett]

Sorry. But originally he would just drop and it felt weird, like you couldn't dodge bullets, right? You'd cut it off and you'd fall right into the bullet. And so what we added was a little hop. So 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, 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 the straight line.

[Interviewer]

That's very cool.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah. So which also extends your hover because it's set to a set time, but when you cut it, pauses it. So that was like, I found this Elite Min Max stat strat. 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, no, 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, yeah, stuff like that. We look for those moments in these new mechanics.

[Voldy Way]

And 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 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? And I remember we went back and forth for a long time on the. Is360 aiming the default or is that an option? Like, you know, like a perk? So 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.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yep, yep. And for a while, 360 was the option. And I think Voldy thinks I was. I was done fighting by then. I was actually only playing 360 at that point. But Voldy probably thinks I was. I was a whole day.

[Voldy Way]

Oh. Oh, yeah.

[Tom Hewlett]

I thought you.

[Voldy Way]

Because our creative director, Matt Bozine, he was hardcore in the eight eight way aiming camp, actually. Yeah, I did think that you were in that?

[Tom Hewlett]

No. 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 8 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, yeah, okay. But Voldi made me remember another thing. So on the end of my rant, the other thing for bringing old school gameplay in is I insist on rectangular hitboxes. I know capsules are more modern and you can make them work like rectangles, but I'm a jerk and I use rectangles.

[Interviewer]

That's perfect. Funny. Actually, I saw a YouTube short of a tutorial explaining why we use capsules the other day. So. Yeah, very good point. That brought up another question that I completely. Oh, bosses. We mentioned bosses a bunch. Like, I kind of. Bosses are another situation where, like, the level I'm interested in, what has changed because you've used a lot of the. I guess the appearance of the bosses obviously been updated and brought into 3D. What was your approach to the bosses?

[Tom Hewlett]

For a boss, I generally try to think of. So generally with Operation Galuga, 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 at a head or something? Or is it. Is it a character that's moving around and then what are cool things it looks like he could do? And then once I design that, it's 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. And then, okay, well, he needs like a fan of bullets or something. So then I'm filling in holes. So it's like I'm. 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. To exploit this guy's weaknesses and then filling in those holes? But then obviously you're leaving room. You're figuring out the strat. Like, 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 have to adjust your strategy. What is he doing? How do I react? And then we just test that and then adjust speed and whatever. And then 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. It's like, what can we do that's quick? That makes. That mitigates it a little bit. Yeah, stuff like that.

[Interviewer]

Awesome. Cool. I know we're running a little bit short on times. Squeeze in two last questions. Earlier you mentioned games done quick 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?

[Tom Hewlett]

I've seen speedruns. 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.

[Interviewer]

Wait, how is him playing all four or having free throws?

[Tom Hewlett]

No, 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. We're never designing games just for speedrunners. Right. It's a very niche. But I think for the whole time I've been at Way forward, I've been conscious of speedrunning when I'm making a game. So. So we are thinking about how will speedrunners play it and sort of eliminating unfair randomness. Like, well, this can't be that random because speedrunners have to be able to play it.

[Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Tom Hewlett]

And then every once in a while you'll. You'll come up with a. Not a bug would fix, but like a. This is an unintended result of this level design. And we will evaluate, like, okay, is it bad or is it like Speedrun?

[Interviewer]

Cool.

[Tom Hewlett]

Yeah. And so we do leave things in that we find we're like, oh, speedrunners are going to love this. Like, that goes in the game, right?

[Interviewer]

There's like a secret skip that you're sitting there being like, I can't wait till they find this kind of thing, right?

[Voldy Way]

Yeah, yeah, that happens more often than you'd think because you know, I've many times used it as rationalization for leaving a bug in the game. Even in. We released Retro Realms games recently. They had like a Halloween and Ash versus 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 is going to find it and we're like, you know, so we're like, let's just leave it in Speedrunners. I love it. But it was also us just being lazy and not wanting to be lazy.

[Tom Hewlett]

I would say.

[Voldy Way]

I would say like the deadline was approaching. It's like, we're not gonna mess with that, right? But yeah, that happens a lot.

[Tom Hewlett]

It's good for like balancing a boss, I think. You know, 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 these exact formation and they get here, they can just nuke this boss. And at that point it's like, yeah, but that'll look sick on a Speedrun, right? Like 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.

[Voldy Way]

So sometimes it's just funny. Like I remember the. What was the back dash in Risky's Revenge? Shantae? Risky's Revenge or something where you could make it through a level faster by just backdashing like all the way through the level. And it looks totally silly, but I mean it's hilarious on a Speedrun. But you know, it works. I guess we could have fixed that but you know, it's more fun to leave it in.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, absolutely. Very cool. And then yeah, I guess like last question about way forward is. Yeah, 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 it's correct.

[Tom Hewlett]

Holding. Yeah.

[Voldy Way]

Yeah. We have around 120 employees full time. I mean we have some freelancers, you know, we pull in but 120 full time staff and 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 90s from a client who recommended it? Because when you work on like one or two games and one of them gets delayed or, you know, or canceled, which happens for random reasons out of our control, then you're kind of screwed. Right. So having Fiber 6 going on at once helps even out cash flow and 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 Spider man games or quadruple a 400 million. Right, exactly, exactly. But, you know, I think it is probably one of the reasons we've survived for almost 35 years now. Knock on wood. You know, so, yeah, that's. Oh, and then 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, you know, so much of the user interface elements, even though they look different through the same elements across projects. We added a VFX team. Actually, I think VFX was even before ui. We have. 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 a engine team.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Voldy Way]

So all the programmers are basically dedicated to a project, but there are some shared disciplines that come in.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's really cool. Awesome. It reminds me of. I don't know if you're familiar with Strange Scaffold, but they're working across 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 an indie studio, but they do very, really quite small games. But they also work on an absurd number at once. And I believe for them it's mostly a cash flow thing as well. So it's really, really interesting. Yeah, I'm where we're out of time, so. Tom Foldy, thank you so much. This has been super interesting. And yeah, Operation Galuga was out in March. Highly recommend checking out. It looks like a blast. Thank you for joining me today.

[Tom Hewlett]

Thanks so much.

[Voldy Way]

Yeah, thank you so much for having us.