Late last year, word spread around in arcade circles about a brand new Contra video redemption game by Konami under the name of Contra Burst. This quietly appeared on location test at Round1USA‘s flagship Puente Hills Mall store, although all we had to go off of was a photo of it being set up and another taken from after it went into operations. Nothing else was said on it following this, with no news coming through of any other tests, but early last week, AH reader projectatlantis1 alerted us to it being set up at a nearby location. As per Ryte from Round1USA, it turns out that the game is now slowly rolling out to all their venues, and following some scouting from Ted we have the first look at it below…
Special thanks to Ryan Little for grabbing all the media and information here!
Contra Burst
For a quick refresh on the basics, Contra Burst brings Konami’s classic arcade run and gunner back to its original home for the first time since the rare China-only arcade edition of Evolution. To get this out of the way first, it is not a game in the exact same mold of those – here, we instead have a video redemption (or videmption) piece, where up to four players blast through four levels with mounted guns for tickets.
This is being made to convert the Bomberman Arcade cabinets released to Round1USA several years back, which apparently haven’t performed very well (Ryan says they saw most use at this location as makeshift tables for DDR players to sit on :P). As you can tell, the conversion kit changes the shape of the machine dramatically, making it more vertically elongated and adding the gun stations:
From the looks of the below attract/demo mode video shot for us by Ryan, all of the action takes place on its new large upper screen (which seems to have increased in size since the first test, alongside a few artwork changes), but there is also a second, smaller monitor below it displaying neat touches like level map information and general gameplay instructions. According to him it plays like Nerf Arcade, however you can see some perspective shifts that change things up, and a few classic Contra bosses can be spotted appearing to boot. These are battled as a final bonus stage, and change depending on your score.
The appearance of those bosses alongside the game’s original characters is good – sometimes with these pieces you get the name, but little of the property itself. If you watch right to the end, you’ll also note that this does have a leaderboard/high score ranking system. That is only noteworthy because certain games on the market (particularly video redemption releases) forego including those nowadays, like the recently-covered Hot Wheels: Victory Lap, so it’s nice that this one is sticking to its guns. It partly makes up for the ticket redemption element, although some would surely appreciate it going out as a pure video game more.
Now it’s not a complete surprise that Konami made this, as they have been starting to use their video game properties more actively again for certain arcade releases of late. Some of you may recall them retheming their Marble Carnival pushers to Castlevania: Marble of Souls specially for Round1USA a little while back, as well as making other pushers based on their IPs, such as Momotaro Dentetsu (which released to R1USA as Gold Railroad) and Power Pros (now coming over with its original theme intact). Those all had a small video-based element, but were first and foremost pushers, which is where this is unexpected. In fact Contra would seem to be their first attempt at a light-gun shooter since 2014’s Silent Scope Bone Eater.
The most interesting thing about the game pointed out by Ryan though is that it does not have any e-Amusement network functionality. Due to the attendant fees involved this feature is typically the biggest roadblock in any newer Konami arcade release receiving a proper release outside of Japan, Asia, and/or Round1USA’s locations. But the question is, will they take advantage of its absence outside of R1USA? It’s hard to call, as they of course have not widely distributed their arcade games across the West (besides some offline versions of DDR in Europe via Electrocoin) for some time now. Having said that, perhaps the recent rumors of them reconsidering this and a new internal reshuffle at their arcade division (which will be covered at length in an upcoming Newsbytes post) may bring about change…
Either way, as of writing this post Round1USA have still not officially announced this game rolling out yet (nor the new Gitadora Arena Model cabinets they are also receiving from Konami), as it sounds like they are waiting for when more locations have it fully set up. This should indicate that even if this isn’t exclusive to them, it will take a little while for that to happen. I think it would be nice if it did, especially with a non-redemption version as well, but who knows. Until then however, would you like to play Contra Burst at a Round1USA location or arcade near you soon?
