Konami announces new "Anniversary Collection" bundle, including Castlevania and Contra

Despite the controversy the company has faced with their focus on pachinko machines and what they did to Hideo Kojima, Konami is going to celebrate their 50th year in the industry by releasing a series of "Anniversary Collection" releases - with the first being a focus on Arcade Classics that include the Castlevania arcade game "Haunted Castle", "Life Force", "TwinBee", and three other titles. This will be released on April 18 for the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC -so all platforms get a taste of old school retro action and games the publisher used to make.

That won't be the end of things however, as a Castlevania Anniversary Collection and a Contra Anniversary Collection have also been announced - bringing some four retro titles for each franchise back along with four unannounced ones as well, bringing a total of eight games for each released collection. Those are still awaiting release dates and more details, so visit the official Konami website for more information.

Prepare For Hard Corps Uprising!

Most of you all know and remember the side-scrollin' shooting game Contra. Do you remember Contra: Hard Corps for the Sega Genesis though?

I was reminiscing about this game a few days ago with some friends. It was the one and only Contra installment to feature four different types of characters to choose from. Also, players could carry and select four different types of weapons they pick up as they progress through the game, and branching paths led to a number of different scenarios the player could explore, unlocking multiple endings in the process. Yeah, this game was good for it's time, and being more of a Genesis owner during the 16-bit Console War, it was a nice addition to the collection I had back then.

Contra: Hard Corps Gameplay
Now the latest word is that a sequel is coming up... A spiritual sequel to be exact!

As you can see from the pic above featured in a post by IGN, a new Contra game is coming! Announced by Konami, Hard Corps Uprising is the latest Run N' Gun shooter to be coming from the minds behind Contra, and is set to be released for the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network in fall this year! Colonel Bahamut, who was one of the main baddies of the original Hard Corps game, is now in the side of good and one of the main characters the player will control alongside a partner to combat alien forces in this game of machine guns and spreads! Only two characters have been confirmed for the game so far, but Konami may put up downloadable content that features more characters eventually! The artsyle of the game is anime inspired - primarily because Arc System Works, the guys who did the Guilty Gear and Blazblue series, are developing the game! That sounds like a lot of fun to my brain to contain, and I'm really looking forward to playing this baby already!

For more info, check out IGN's post! Hard Corps Uprising is a downloadable game due for Xbox 360 and PS3 on Winter 2010!