Back in the spring of 2016 Konami had announced that they’d partnered up with Tencent to produce a new mobile entry in their legendary Contra series. That game would end up being Contra: Return, developed by Tencent’s internal TiMi Studios, who most people know as the studio behind Call of Duty: Mobile and Arena of Valor/Honor of Kings. The game initially launched in China and saw some great success, and slowly began arriving in other parts of the world. But a Western release was still up in the air, so in July of last year TiMi reached out to its fans to ask if they’d be interested in seeing Contra: Return make its way out West. The results were apparently favorable, as today TiMi has officially announced that the game will be seeing a North American release next month under the title of Contra: Returns.

So, what is the difference between Contra: Return and Contra Returns? I… don’t think there is any? Garena appears to publish and maintain the game as Garena Contra: Return in various Asian regions, and it doesn’t seem like the game launching in NA next month as Contra Returns is some drastically different release than the one that’s been kicking around in other parts of the world for the past few years. I actually fiddled around with one of those international versions last year, and this is a surprisingly enjoyable take on the classic Contra formula. It had a ton of story content, which I found interesting, and pretty much all of the monetization shenanigans revolved around an extremely deep weapon customization and upgrading system. Basically similar to their own Call of Duty: Mobile, which is an extremely tolerable type of free to play in my opinion.

I’m actually looking forward to checking out a localized version of Contra Returns, and if you are too and want to get ahead of the game you can pre-order the iOS version or pre-register the Android version ahead of its North American launch on July 26th.