Contra

Contra Online [PS2, Xbox, PC – Cancelled]

After the cancellation of Castlevania: Resurrection and the death of the Dreamcast, the same team at Konami of America pitched a few other projects for different consoles. One of these unrealized games was a new 3D Contra with online multiplayer, planned to be developed for PS2, Xbox and PC.

They wanted to have classic single player and local coop story mode for old-school fans of the series, but at the same time testing online multiplayer for the first time.

Some details about this lost Contra game were found by fans, and preserved below to remember the existence of this cancelled concept.

“Contra’s HQ have intercepted SOS from the biggest Russian nuclear submarine that is sinking to the bottom of Barents Sea. While Contra’s HQ continues monitoring the unsuccessful rescue attempts, suddenly the submarine crews stop responding to the Russian Northern Fleet hails. Meanwhile, Contra’s spy satellite registers the beginning of nuclear missiles launch form the sub, and transmission to Russian Navy operations that Red Falcon is demanding to stop the rescue attempt otherwise there are will be a missile strike retaliation. After analyzing the spy satellite data, Contra intelligence realizes that Red Falcon is preparing its third attempt to conquer Earth by using Russian submarine as its base to assemble and power it’s robotic war machines in the safety of deep sea.

Members of Contra Forces are called in and ordered to stop the Red Falcon, and were successful in defeating evil alien entity and its forces. Or, at least they thought so. The “Red Falcon” had actually been merely wounded. It escapes the submarine blast to a secret retreat located in the mountains of Bosnia. Were alien forces lie dormant aviating for decoy Barents Sea invasion to begin, so they can start a real attack of the Earth forces? The Contra intelligence is learning that Red Falcon is not the brains behind an operation but just a pawn controlled by a mysteries alien only know as “Dark Queen”. Contra marines are called again for the final showdown.”

Story mode would have been divided into 3 worlds (Submarine, Mountain Trail and Underground Base): each one with several levels and Bosses. Past Contra protagonists could have been unlocked during the game, to be used as playable characters.

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The team planned many different modes for online multiplayer. An idea was to have online coop up to 4 players, split in 2 teams that would fight through different missions before meeting again to kill the boss together. Online Versus mode was also planned, set in a virtual-reality world similar to VR missions in Metal Gear Solid. This could have been a third person or first person shooter, depending on the best prototype they could work on.

As this was only an early pitch they were still thinking about the best Konami IP to use for their first online game. If Contra could have been a risky series (because of its hardcore fans), other possibilities were open such as using the Project Overkill IP instead.

In the end disagreements between Konami of Japan and Konami America killed the american team. Many of their latest games were canned, such as Survivor: Day One for Nintendo 64

Contra Spirits 64 [N64 – Cancelled]

Contra Spirits 64 is a cancelled shooter / action game in the contra series that was in development by Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka for the Nintendo 64. There are just a few info about this unreleased project as Konami never shown any official screenshot or concept art, but the title was in many list of games to be released for the N64 and the hopes went up for many Nintendo gamers that wanted a new and fun game for their 64bit console. Unfortunatly it seems that as the Nintendo 64 sold poorly in Japan, Konami decided to stop the development of the project and disbanded its team.

As we can read on IGN64:

Contra was planned, but the original team was disbanded and all team members now work on different projects,” said a company spokesperson. [Contra] has pretty much been shelved. […] There is concern over the poor N64 console sales in Japan […]

Contra 64 would have been a sidescrolling 3D game, with some sessions in which the camera would have switched angles or move behind the characters, possible for boss battles. There are some rumors that say that the Contra Spirits 64 concept was resurrected and became Contra: Shattered Soldier for PS2, but as Contra N64 was in development in 1998 and Contra PS2 was announced and released in 2002, it’s hard to say if the 2 project have anything in common.

Below you can see some scans from old magazines that wrote about Contra Spirits 64 (if you have Next Generation Issue 29, Volume 3 May 1997 and can make a bigger scan of their N64 article, please let us know!).

Thanks to Celine and Contrapedia for the contributions!

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Contra Rebirth [Wii – Beta / Debug]

Contra Rebirth, a run ‘n’ gun downloadable game from Nintendo’s Wiiware service, released in Europe on September 9th of ’09, and America only 3 short days later, with one big difference. The European version has a code to access the games debug mode, allowing you to modify what weapons you have, give you invincibility, and access the game’s only remaining test level, which oddly enough, strongly resembles a level from Super Mario Bros. Unfortunatley, in just those short 3 days before the US version’s release, the debug mode was removed from the US version, while the European version kept it. Also odd, is that the Japanese version released first (05/12/09) and yet the European version is the only one to have the debug mode.

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Contra 4: removed 4-Players coop?

Robert Seddon told us that in Retro Gamer magazine #51, p. 39, they talked about a removed 4 players coop mode that was meant to be in Contra 4 for the DS. Matt Bozon, director of the game, told to RG that “Our first playable incarnation was four-player Wi-Fi, but it was taking us in the direction of a wildly unbalanced game with fewer bells and whistles. We dabbled with Rumble Pak, but the team wanted each feature done right or not at all.” In the magazine we can ever read that some screens of the 4 players mode were released online, but i dont remember any.. do you know where to find these?

In a related note, on Wikipedia there are some infos on the leaked Contra 4 Beta ROM: “A Prototype version of the game was leaked to the internet in ROM image form. The NDS header indicates a US serial, but the game has been suggested to be a European prototype. The similarities between the prototype game and early game trailers confirm that they are the same. Among the many differences from the final product, each level starts the player with 99 lives, the player can choose any level, the Factory and Alien Hive stages are incomplete and sounds are missing and/or placed in different cues.” 

Unseen Changes: Contra VS Probotector

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Contra: Japan & USA vs Europe

Even though the arcade version of Contra was distributed in Europe under the title of Gryzor with its graphical content unchanged, Konami were forced to changed the in-game graphics for the NES version, replacing the human characters with robotic counterparts, when it was released in the PAL region due to a censorship policy in Germany that did not allowed the graphical depiction of humans beings killing each other in video games. Konami changed the game’s title to Probotector (a portmanteau of “robot” and “protector), replacing Bill and Lance with robotic counterparts named RD008 and RC011, as well as most of the human enemy characters.

The subsequent games in the series, Super C for the NES and Contra III: The Alien Wars for the SNES received the same treatment, becoming Probotector II: Return of the Evil Forces and Super Probotector: Alien Rebels respectively. The Game Boy versions were subjected to this conversion as well, with Operation C and Contra: The Alien Wars becoming the Game Boy versions of Probotector and Probotector 2. Ironically, despite the change in the games’ graphics, the plot descriptions in their manuals followed their Japanese counterparts more closely than their Americans to the point that they’re practically literal translations. The PAL version of Contra: Hard Corps, which was simply titled Probotector, was the last game to undergo this conversion. The Mega Drive version of Probotector does not follow the continuity of the previous games and drastic changes were made to the in-game plot.

The first console Contra game to remain intact in the PAL region would be the PlayStation game Contra: Legacy of War (C: The Contra Adventure was not released). Every new Contra game released afterwards in the PAL region, including Contra Advance: The Alien Wars EX (the GBA version of Contra III) were released unchanged and with the same localization given in the American version.

[Info from Wikipedia]

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