Contra has always had a special place in my childhood. It was the only game I've ever played with my mother. We were able to beat it using the Konami code. It must have left an impression on her as well since she still remembers the code even though that was over 30 years ago.
As far as a moveset, I've always struggled to come up with something that felt authentic, yet still fit Smash well. My original idea was to have several attacks utilize different guns, like his forward smash was the Crush gun and the up smash was the Spread gun. The problem I had was, while this worked as a functional moveset, it never felt very authentic to Contra’s gameplay.
Last year, my brother came up with an idea that I love a lot that would be perfect. If you've ever played Contra, you know the capsules that fly across the screen that contain different power ups. His idea is that these could fly across the stage similar to Smash balls whenever someone is playing as Bill. Only Bill could interact with these and if he shoots them down, it would drop a powerup that would change his gun. Like Mega Man, his jab and forward tilt would be his gun, although Bill would also use his gun for up and down tilts and would be able to shoot in 8 directions while moving around. The powerups he collects would change his tilts and jab to the new gun until Bill loses a stock or collects a different power up. In order to ensure that he isn't overly reliant on these powerups to be a good character, his default gun would still be very useful and the powerups would just allow him to be useful in other ways. Bill has two guns, one active at a time. He can store up to two power ups and switch his active gun with his shield special. Both guns start out as the default machine gun and the currently active gun is replaced with the power up. Bill’s guns revert back to the default machine gun when he loses a stock.
With that out of the way, let me try my hand at a sample moveset to show you what I mean
In order for this idea to work, we’d have to make sure it was balanced properly so Bill wasn’t overly reliant on the power ups but they were still useful. I think his default machine gun should still be good enough that he feels like a competent fighter without any power ups andsaid upgrades shouldn’t be so powerful that he becomes overpowered with them. With proper balancing, I think this idea could be really unique and a ton of fun while staying completely faithful to his home series.