Contra on the Xbox 360 broken?

When I played Contra for the Xbox 360 online I didn’t have any problems with the set up. I’m no pro player, but I managed to make it to the last boss on several occasions with a partner that was still alive and shooting. On the other hand Chris Kohler from Game|Life had some serious issues. While playing a co-op game Kohler and his friend noticed the game was out of sync. The screenshot above shows the same game of Contra from two sides. Notice on the right screen the second player is alive and kicking butt while on the first player’s side the second player is long dead. Has anyone experienced issues with playing Contra online? I’m going to mess around with it some more and see if I can replicate the same problems as Wired’s crew did.