The announcement of Contra: Rogue Corps was unexpected…very unexpected. Yeah, to be honest, it doesn’t get much more unexpected than that one. The game not only came after many assumed the series was long dead, it didn’t look anything like previous entries. For some people, that’s been a bit of a downer, but there is hope as the series could find its way back to being 2D down the road.
Speaking with DualShockers, Producer Nobuya Nakazato said that Contra could go 2D again. He explained earlier in an interview with GamingBolt that the shift to 3D with Rogue Corps was due to the 4 player co-op. Nakazato says that doesn’t mean the series is necessarily done with 2D, but said they would need some way to innovate before doing so.
“Yeah, I love the old 2D games as well and I’d love to make new ones, but just modernizing the graphics, upgrading the graphics, and creating something new in them would not be the right way to do it, in my opinion,” Nakazato-san said. “I’d have to come up with a new innovation and maybe change a bit of the genre and then I can start working on one of those.”
Contra: Rogue Corps will release for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC on September 24th. If you’re curious about this new direction, a demo is available to try the game out on consoles.