Sprite work in titles like Metal Slug will always overshadow their release date in history. While consoles continue to get more powerful, detailed sprite work will often age quite well. SNK knew going in with the Neo Geo that arcades were going to be important. Arcades represented the largest market share for the console, and the best exposure. Metal Slug is a game which bucked the trend at the time of one-on-one fighting games. Instead it returned to the roots of gaming. 2D side scrolling action games that brought a sense of humor, hand drawn sprites and animation and two player anarchy. This is a title that spawned more than a few, well deserved, sequels.

Political events and gaming

Gaming has never shied away from topics that were politically polarizing events in history. As long as those events were related to war. Gaming has ostensibly avoided the more carnal events in history. Metal Slug takes the war motif, particularly jungle warfare, and runs with it in the various levels. Prisoners of War (P.O.W.’s) need to be freed as you traverse the level. In return they will leave supplies of some sort for you. The enemies are animated in a hilarious manner that is over the top and plays to the comedy angle.

Overly detailed action

Wait till you encounter the bosses. They are completely out there and amazingly animated and give a great sense of accomplishment when you defeat them.

The enemies, levels, and just about everything about Metal Slug is super detailed. No wonder this was never ported to the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis.

Send in the ports of Metal Slug

Metal Slug has been ported to many consoles including the PSOne, Sega Saturn, PSP, Playstation Network, iOS and Android, Neo Geo X and Nintendo Virtual Console. That is a lot of platforms and that is just the original Metal Slug. SNK Playmore has spent a lot of time keeping their classic releases alive. Mostly on mobile devices such as the iPhone or Android devices. Alive and well is better than dead and forgotten.

Options for grabbing a physical copy are listed below:

Amazon
Ebay

For more arcade game fun, check out our coverage.

Carl Williams

It is time gaming journalism takes its rightful place as proper sources and not fanboys giving free advertising. If you wish to support writers like Carl please use the links below. https://www.paypal.me/WCW https://www.patreon.com/CarlWilliams