The other difference is that Metal Slug feels like a fully realized world. You will destroy everything just to see it fall apart in beautiful chunks. Everything blows up in a shower of debris including large chunks of the background. What has changed is the level of spectacle. The action is heavy and consistent but not above the 16-bit Contra titles. As the first game in the series Metal Slug shows restraint. That won’t happen on the first run however. Gas can be replenished and with skill you can ride the Metal Slug through an entire level. The tank runs on gas which also serves as a faux life bar. In addition its artillery shells trivialize boss battles. Its Vulcan cannon covers a nearly every attack angle and is very strong. The Metal Slug appears in almost every level and is pure awesome on wheels. The titular Metal Slug is an armored tank you can commandeer. Sadly it is rare but oh so worth it when it drops.

My personal favorite is the shotgun which is possibly the strongest weapon in the game. The flamethrower is strong and the funniest the animation of soldiers burning never gets old. The rocket launcher is very powerful but has the lowest ammo and appears at points where its power is needed. It lacks power but has rapid fire and can be shot in sixty-four directions which is awesome. The heavy machine gun is the most common, to the point it almost should have been the default. The game has a large variety of power-ups that drop literally every few seconds from POWs. It is less than ideal but does not break the game.Īs an action game Metal Slug is Contra on steroids. At first it only happens once but later stages stop two or three times to load. The biggest concession is the mid-level load breaks in every stage. But as a whole the game still looks fantastic. There are a good number of animation frames that are missing as well as slowdown. How has the PlayStation version turned out? All things considered they have done a good job. It was definitely beyond the SNES and Genesis, leaving the upcoming 32-bit systems as the only reasonable way to play them at home. Metal Slug is known for its detailed art and exquisite animation.

The PlayStation version retains the action but loses a little something in the conversion. Metal Slug was a welcome respite from the never ending stream of fighting games on the system and a great action game in general. But if fighting games were the main selling point for the Neo Geo Metal Slug would be the other. I’ll be damned if the fighting game renaissance didn’t make that sound appealing for a hot second though. But it was not so good that I would rob a bank to afford a $600 Neo Geo. When combined with the system’s horsepower SNK’s games looked a cut above what we had at home. The early years of the Neo Geo saw a fairly diverse lineup of arcade titles that covered most genres. Developer: Nazca Publisher: SNK Released: AugGenre: Action

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