Contra reprisal would need to be more than a "generic shooter", says Cox

Contra has been rumoured as the next title from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow studio Mercury Steam, but so far Konami hasn't uttered a peep on the matter. Producer Dave Cox has said that in order for the series to return, it'd have to be more than a "generic shooter".

Rumours about the series' reprisal surfaced after Konami trademarked something called Contra: Run and Gun.

Siliconera recently asked Cox about the trademark, to which he replied, "I think if you’re going to bring Contra back you’ve got to be able to do something unique and intuitive that hasn’t been done before.

"You can’t just bring out a generic shooter. You have to have a new idea. I think if we had a new idea and we could combine that new idea with the universe of Contra that would be special. Yeah, watch this space."

When quizzed about Contra 4 on Nintendo DS he continued, "The problem with doing games like that is you are not doing anything new. You are basically remaking or doing your slant of something that has happened before. You have to have the things that made that game great, like Castlevania, you need to have that, but you have to not be afraid to do something new.

"The problem with Contra it hasn’t really had anything done new to it so it’s become this hardcore niche game. How would you bring Contra back so it isn’t a hardcore niche game? Contra: Hard Corps has always been my favourite game in the series and like other 2D Contra games I would say the core of Contra is hardcore. The games are designed to be challenging, even if you use the Konami code to cheat."

But what if someone did try rebooting Contra? Cox mused, "If someone were to do Contra, to say hypothetically, it would be like a new IP in many ways. We are hardcore gamers, we played those games, but there are a lot of people that don’t know what Contra is.

"They have no idea. There is a massive audience out there, they play Call of Duty and love those games, but they don’t know what Contra is. I think if we were going to reintroduce something to that audience. It has to be new, unique, it’s got to stand out. It’s got to have a new idea, something really cool about it that’s never been done before."

Would you like to see the series return? Let us know below.

Via Nintendo Life.