Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 465: Metal Slug

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

MISSION START! By patron request, three brave soldiers (Diamond Feit, Stuart Gipp, and arcade expert Lord BBH) battle their way through the history of the NEO GEO's premier run-and-gun series, METAL SLUG. Cover art by Shaan Khan, edits by Greg Leahy. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.hyperx.com. This week on Retronauts, oh, big. Hello, everyone, welcome to Retronauts. We are here. We are armed and we are ready to discuss metal slug. Yes, the long-running sort of, it still exists, series of shooters began all the way back in 1986. But it's not just me.

I, you know, hello, Diamond Fight, should have said my name, but I'm not alone here. I've got squad mates. Let's start first in the UK with a retronauts regular. Oh, hello. My name is Stuart Jop, and I just want to say one thing before we move on, and that thing is, Iron Lizard. Thank you. Is that your nickname in high school, Stu?

I don't want to get into it. Okay. All right. And joining us from the United States. in, I don't know where in the United States, but somewhere in the West Side. Oregon. Hi. I'm, uh, my name is Matt Hall.

I go by Lord BBAH on the internet. This is my first time on a, on our Retrodots podcast. So thank you very much for, for having me. Yeah. Thank you. I did not realize we'd be pulling the curtain back on your, uh, your careful identity. Oh, don't, but, no, don't worry about that. Okay.

You're great. It's not, it's not a big secret. All right. Please, since you're new here, uh, want you give folks a quick, uh, overview of who you are, just so people know who you are, why you're here. Okay, yeah. I'm a, I'm a huge arcade nerd. I've been going to arcades for like pretty much, pretty much in my entire life. I've always had this, uh, this fascination with, with arcade games. Um, my parents would usually, uh, my dad would take me to the arcade when I was little. And then eventually they kind of

had enough trust in me that they would just drop me off for a few hours and then pick me up. Uh, I was a little spoiled. Uh, but, uh, But I've just been, I've always had a fascination with arcade games and I love the history of arcade stuff and I ended up becoming a big Neo Geo fan too. And so nowadays I do a, I do a stream on Twitch.tv slash Lord BBAH. Most of the streams I do are usually arcade related. I did a, I did a whole series called May Merlet where I went through pretty much as many games as I could run in the Maim emulator, which was like 3,300 games that eventually. That eventually concluded, and then I've been focusing on, I have like two main series of streams I do right now. I do one thing called 1C, BBAH, where I try to finish games on one credit without continuing some of the, I've done some of the metal slug games for that.

So it works out pretty well for that because I enjoy like trying to, trying to show off a little bit. Always enjoy arcade games more when you have the capability. to finish them on one credit. And so I've been doing that for the last year and a half and we're up to like 450 games or so and still, so I'm still finding more games to try to do. And the other stream I've been doing

is called NeoRankmasters, where I'm going through the entire NeoGeo library, kind of playing every game again, not necessarily going for one Cs, but just like playing them, talking about the history of those games. And then like after each game is played, I ask,

where to like rank them like we're putting them on a big spreadsheet and trying to figure out like what the what the best and the worst games than the neo ge are we haven't gotten to the metal slug games yet like we're still uh i might be able to help you out with this actually i think i can help out with this the best one is kowf 98 and the worst one is magician lord you're welcome you don't that's a spicy take that's a spicy take but no we haven't uh like we're going i'm going chronologically through it and like we just finished all the games in 1993, I think the next, at the time I're recording this, like the next one we're going to do is, like, in games in 94. But so metal slugs a couple of years off, but it's definitely going to, the first one's definitely going to be up there. I think some of the games are going to be up there. I have my, my own takes on, uh, on what, uh, on where the slug games rank. But like I said, it's a, it's a collaborative effort. I'll try to get like stream chat involved. And I don't know, it's a fun time. So Twitch.tv slash lord bbh. Sorry, that was a long plug. It does sound really, phone. I was a little disappointed by the reaction to Singoku. I'm personally a Senoku fan, but I understand. It's definitely a... It's an ambitious game.

I understand. It's an ambitious game. I just, it just doesn't... You have to memorize so much of it, and I just feel like that holds it back. And Sen Goku, too. Like, it plays way better. Maybe it doesn't have the same, like, theme-wise. I definitely understand, like, if you enjoy Senoku-1's theme more.

But, you know, there's going to be disagreements with this whole, this whole ranking thing. so, but it's, it's unavoidable. So, the topic for today is metal slug, and probably the first and most important question is, can you remember where you first saw a metal slug? Oh, I can. Okay. I actually, I played the very first metal slug when it was relatively new. I do remember the local arcade where I live.

They got it around, I want to say it was, it was in the summer. So it had to be either, like, June or July. So I did start with the first game. And obviously, like, the first time I played it, I was really bad at it. I had to, I used a lot of continues trying to get through it. But, like, over that summer, like, I just kind of went back to the, I mean, I was just kind of going to the arcade, like, maybe a couple times a week. It was summer. And I was, I had my driver's license, so I could actually drive there.

Oh, yeah. I'm that old that I was able to drive in 1996. But I just kind of kept playing. it and kept learning things about it, tried to, like, make it a... Like, even back then, I was making a challenge to myself to try to finish games on one credit, and eventually I was able to do it, like, before the summer was over. Wow. And I had, like, all...

I had all ten high scores on the cabinet, and nobody had ever beaten those. So, yeah. Stu? Oh, yeah. Okay, I probably did play the original mudslug somewhere, but the one that is most vivid in my memory is the old laser quest. in Cambridge on the old Bradwell's Court, that's going to

be nothing to anyone, but I'm saying it anyway. That's all right. Down in the basement and Bradwell's Court, which has now been bulldozed over, none of it's there anymore. There was a Laser Quest, and in the lobby of the Laser Quest, you have Laser Quest, right? Not by name. I don't know the name.

You shoot fake lasers at people. Laser Tag. It's called Laser Tag. It's called... Yeah, the brand is Laser Quest here. It's the same exact thing, though. and in the lobby there were some arcade cabinets and one of them was one of those white what I now know well there were multi-boards basically or multiple games loaded on one board

I don't know how exactly it works but they were all NeoGeo games and I remember that because I've got the the track mode for Robo Army burned into my mind of all games but one of them was made of Slug 2 and the reason I remember it so vividly

is in the attract mode now I'm going to dance around this a bit because I don't want to be un-p-e-C, but the villains that you shoot, they are quite in the track mode, are quite stereotypical they are stereotypical of the sort of tin, tin breed of like bad foreigner sort of

thing, you know? And when you shoot them in the attract mode, when they were shot, they would kneel and keel over spewing viscous white fluid out of them. a stream of unknown disgustingness and I just remember thinking like what the hell is that supposed to be

and then when you put a coin in that viscous white fluid turns into blood and you're like oh it's blood as a kid you know it was just like oh why are they spewing milk out of their wounds this is bizarre but now I know what it was so that's what stuck with me really I don't as for actually playing it god knows I have absolutely no idea probably oh no yes i used to volunteer at this youth club for like uh for kids when i was a little bit

older and they had a metal slug ex cabinet in there on which i used to play instead of letting the kids play it so yeah that's the first one i played most vividly thus undermining the entire boring story i just told it's all right you got to say the phrase you know viscous white fluid on retronauts so that's that's well in on yeah i mean as if that's going to be the last time, you know? I just love hearing recollections of, like, vivid arcade memories, because that's always, that's one of the things that always, like, I find so fascinating about arcade games is that you remember, like, where you were when you played them and, like, what the

experience was, and that's why, yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, my most vivid Meadow Slug arcade memory is one of the later ones, so I do not know where I first, where I first encountered Metal Slug. I wish I could remember this, but I know that me personally, the first game that I put a lot of time into because I bought the cartridge was X. So that's kind of like my first metal slug, quote-unquote, even though that's not the first metal slug. But we'll get into that later. That's fine.

We can talk about that later. So overall, let's paint a big picture here overall. What is Metal Slug? Well, it's 2D action. You're running along. Very straightforward game. You got a shoot button. You got a jump button and you got a grenade button.

NeoGeo had four buttons. You know what? D button doesn't do anything. It's okay. Three buttons covers everything. So it's kind of like, you know, I guess to people who maybe didn't, you know, didn't see it, didn't play it themselves. I guess you can compare it to Contra,

because it's similar to Contra. More or less. Yeah. Yeah, it's similar and yet plays completely differently in every way, almost in terms of feel. But I do agree it is similar. There's a bit Mega Man to it as well, I think. Yeah, well, I guess one of the key factors is your character can only take one hit.

You know, if they get by anything, then that's it. They're out. Although, in one thing that I really appreciate is, in most cases, you have to be attacked by something, you know? Like, if you just touch a, if your soldier touch another soldier, you don't explode. I appreciate that so much, yeah. Yeah, right? You bounce off vehicles as well if you land on top of them, I think.

You can walk on some things. Some things are, yeah, some things are deadly if you touch them, but a lot of stuff. Enemy tanks can, like, run you over if they're actually, like, moving forward. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so if you die, it's your own fault. Like, it's not some BS contact damage. Like, it has to be an enemy, like, pulling out a knife and

stabbing you. Like, yeah, that would kill me. Okay, I accept that. Sure. And speaking of knives, there's a fun feature where if you are close to the enemy, you also have a knife or some other local, some other melee weapon that you can wield. And I didn't even know this, but in doing quick research, apparently, if you kill, if you kill enemies with the melee weapon, you get much more points. So that's like a secret high score technique. If you just, yeah, usually 500 points. And then shooting them is usually 100 points. So that's a big difference. There is, like, one weird exception, but we can probably talk about that later. Right.

And there are special weapons, you know, just like in contrary, the special weapons. However, any special weapon you pick up has limited amount of ammunition. So it's not just a matter of, oh, get the spread gun and now the game is over. It's like, no, no. Whatever you pick up, you get to use that until it's gone. You can get more bullets, of course. You can switch them out. Later games actually let you trade, like, hold stocks of different weapons.

But that was much, much later. The basic game is, here's your gun. if you get a special weapon, great. Enjoy it while at less. Likewise, grenades, very finite amount of grenades, but of course, if you die, you get more. So if you're, you know, if you're credit feeding, like I often did, you know, most of my credits were come in, mash grenade button, and then I die, okay, mash grenades some more. It is a way to brute force it. Yeah. I mean, when you're fighting these bosses, and I would say one of the things that's famous about the series, that these boss characters are often, you know, these characters, these boss machines are often, you know, gigantic.

You throw a grenade, it's going to hit something. So, you know, better than nothing. Most of them, anyway. And, so, of course, Metal Slug, what is, what the hell is the name Metal Slug? So apparently it just comes, it was direct translation for the Japanese. Someone decided it was, they called it, uh, Tetsununun Amakuji, which is just like literally a metal slug. And the quote is, despite being a tank, it moves across the ground like a creature, a bit like a slug. And we added metal as a blunt way

of saying it's hard as iron. So that's what they came up with. And, you know, that's the name stuck. Because yeah, you're a little guy running along, but yes, you get to pick up these vehicles. And in the first game, there is only the eponymous metal slug. But later games would add camels and donkeys and hoppers and planes and all kinds of things. Apparently they said they had a list of things they wrote down. They had some ideas didn't make the cut. Apparently there was a metal desk at one point. There was a dino slug that was like a giant thing that covered almost the entire screen. Oh, man. These guys, you know, they certainly, they never had no shortage of ideas over at NASCA. But the other thing to look up for is POWs. As you're playing, I don't

know how much we're going to get into the lore of Metal Slug, but basically, this is oh, I don't know. Does anyone actually know the lore of Metal Slug? Maybe you can just drop a bit. It's usually just been about them, like the first one, you're just fighting General Morden, right?

But yeah, I don't really... Not really too up on the lore. Is there like actual... Is there like complex law to the games? I mean, I know there are things that are recurring, like there's special POWs like you can meet one that can shoot a hello

can I forget that name Yokoata or something Yes, yeah There's also Rumiakawa I think is her name Who is like your I don't know what her role is But she's always there and you can break You can get her objects out of a backpack By shooting it

Right I don't know I'm sure this is all law stuff But I don't know who they are exactly And I should do And the fact all the POWs are name is interesting I don't know if they recur to Or if there's a story behind them I think it's just a matter of basically the POWs are there to like they're basically an item box except they're you know they're a person so you have to free them usually and once you touch them they just give you something and sometimes it's just points but often it's more weapons more ammo or in the case of Hyaktaro he hangs out with you and basically yeah he throws like Hadoken but like they're like they chase enemies like they seek a different attack so he's he's very useful there are special prisoners like um there's a guy a metal slug three who

who looks like a sort of a CEO type guy who's got bodyguards that give you two items from like it's Asher cases when you rescue it. And there's just lots of weird stuff like that that I wonder if it means more that I don't know

or if it's just for flavor. Because a lot of these games are very much just kind of we thought this would be cool as a detail. But yeah, I mean, I do not know the specifics. I apologize.

But basically, yeah, there has been a world war and the idea is like, yeah, you're fighting, you're part of a rebel army fighting against General Morden and this sort of force that is, I think, if not conquered the world, it certainly has been around the world fighting all these armies. So, yeah, when you look at the list of POWs who all have names, you can see it's not, it's an international, you know,

there's Japanese names, there's European names, there's, you know, I think you occasionally see some, like, you know, African names, like, even though the POW always looks like just one guy with this big, bushy beard, the names, the list of names is always, you know, gives a sense that this is a global conflict. Yeah, all the names of all. all the other POWs are just pulled randomly. Like, they just have a list of, like, ranks and names, and they just pull those randomly. The only ones that are, like, consistent are, of course, Hiakutaro and Rumiakawa.

Right. So it's different every game. One of the interviews has suggested that they just, you know, they try to challenge themselves to come up with as many names as possible. And apparently at one point, they tried to make 10,000 names and they couldn't do it. They were very disappointed themselves. Just taking full advantage of the max 330 mega on the Neo Geo. Just have a giant list of names.

It might be worth mentioning that you only rescue P.A. Doubles if you manage to clear the stage without dying. Denying drops that you lose them, essentially. I'm not sure exactly sure how it works, but you don't get credit for rescuing them unless you beat the boss with them still banked, so to speak. Yeah. Which is most heartbreaking thing when you have loads of P.A.Ws and then you die in a silly mistake. It sucks.

Yeah, and usually that's like the key or one of the keys to high school. scores, because if you, uh, if you pick up, uh, at least 10 of them, like, you get a 100,000 point bonus. Like, the later games, like, kind of changed the scoring a bit and made it like more important to like keep your vehicle when you kill the boss and they just kind of, like, some some vehicles give you like 300,000 or whatever and they just kind of kept the, the 100,000 great bonus. And like to like, get the, the 100,000 point great bonus in like the first game, you have to, some stages you actually have to find hidden prisoners in certain spots. Like, there's not going to be enough if you just run through the level normally.

Like, you've got to find the little secrets. And if you can find those, like, you'll have enough for the, for the big bonus. And that's, that's always satisfying if you can get the, if you can get the great bonus. It didn't, it didn't say you're great in the first game, but they, they added that later. The, I don't know if they, I mean, we'll get to it, obviously, but the secrets are a big thing about these games for me. Because I don't think that the first game really had them, or if it did, there weren't many. it's from 2 and X onwards they start to add the little really or at least i mean i might be completely wrong about this they might be in the game first game and i've just never bothered

looking for them but 2 and x have the little contact points you can shoot the drop secrets and things is my understanding no the first game definitely has like hidden spots where if you shoot them like extra extra hostage or drop like on the like on the first stage if you just if you go through the first stage in metal slug one without like uh shooting anything else you're only going to have six hostages at the end. But there's two waterfalls, like at the very end, like when the screen goes up a little bit, like right before the boss, there's like two

giant waterfalls. And if you start shooting up at the waterfalls, two drops from each of those, and those give you the four you need for the 10 hostage bonus. So, yeah, they've kept the secret thing going through the entire series. Awesome. Yeah. But yeah, there are there's sort of a feature of the game where,

yeah, you can just shoot it to just random spots and there's nothing to indicate that there is a secret there. It's just like, you know, it's a wall. But if you shoot, you the wall enough times, you know, maybe a monkey will come out of it. It's all this, this is wild, you know, if you see your bullets like stopping when they, they hit something instead of going off the screen, it might be like, ah, there's, there might be something there. I'm going to keep shooting that. Exactly. But if you don't shoot there and sometimes it's like, you know, you just

stand somewhere and you shoot straight up at nothing. But it's like, oh, you shoot in this one particular spot and like poop comes out, but the poop is worth points. It's, it doesn't make any sense. But that's part of the charm. Like, it's, it's full of stuff. The most, I think the most, I think the iconic one, and again, if I got this strong please shoot me. At the beginning of X, you can sort of go left and shoot up, and that's like a free one, basically. Or is it shoot the ground? God, it's been a while since I played X. I think it's chewed up, yeah. I've just, I've come on this podcast and I'm just spreading complete lies. It's embarrassing.

It's all right. We're all here together. We're all here lying together, Stu. We're not judging you. I watched a video before I came on to refresh my memory of like the secrets of metal slug X. And it turns out I don't know like a third of them. There's just like a 33% more sequence I never found in this game that I absolutely rinsed. And it's shocking to me, just how much stuff they've packed in there. What turns me up is they changed like some secrets from 2 to X and I forget which one, which game has what?

And it gets me all confused. Well, no slug exists in a vacuum. So we should probably to quickly mention some... This is going to be hard because we know the names of some of the people behind Metal Slug. But we also don't know the names of most of the people behind Metal Slug. Because even though it came out in 1986, it was still the sort of late era of, oh, everyone here is just using nicknames in the credits. Like the credits have almost... There's almost no real names in any of these credits for the early games.

Yep. So we just don't know. We do know about Kazamakujo because he was, you know, he was already a known factor from IREM, and he was planner on the original metal slug. He was never officially part of the team, but he was part of that first game, and then he went back to IREM, and then he's the grandzella, and now these days he's mostly involved in, like, bringing back our type. But he's a guy who's been around. He does a lot of interviews.

You see his name a lot, Kazimakujo. We got Takashi Hiyamuta. So if you see the guy credited a sound as Haya or Hia, that's him. It's Iyamuta. Very clever pseudonym there. And he did all the sound and music for the original trilogy. Well, the trilogy of four games. Yeah.

And after that, you have Toshkazu Tanaka, who picks up sound duties. And he does sort of the latter games, including starting with four and doing some of the spinoffs. But most importantly, there is the man named Miher, or Mihai. in Japanese, we don't know who he is, but we know he was a planner in all the original games. Wikipedia says that after Metal Sug 3, he stopped working in video games. So whoever he is, he's just, he might just be living the Settler Man life out there now, or maybe he's retired, I don't know, probably he. We're assuming a he.

Basically, the interviews, it sounds like a guy, but we don't know who Meeher is. He's out there. God bless you, Meher. Their work was done on this planet. Yes. But we don't know more than that. We do know that most of these folks came from IREM. They were working at IREM, and kids, IRM used to make a lot of video games.

Off top of my head, our type. Our type's a big one. It was more than R-R-Type. BBA, you probably know more IREM games off top of your head. Yeah, they made, well, obviously, they made gun force in the hunt. Like some of these guys, yeah, they worked on some of the games that, like, defined, like, the graphic style. Undercover Cops, that's a beat-em-up. Ninja Baseball Batman.

Oh, yeah. Kind of a, kind of a fan favorite. Like, they made the, they made some beat them up. Like, they made a, they made a hook themed beat them up off the, off the movie, which was a lot of people did, a lot of people didn't even know existed. Like, it didn't really get much distribution. But yeah, they also made, they made, they made some older stuff. Like, uh, they made the original Kung Fu master, which became Kung Fu on the NES. Yes.

Uh, that was a big one. They, they made Moon Patrol, which was like licensed to Williams in the, in the United States. Thank you. I just, you know, I just wrote about Moon Patrol. I think I would have remembered that one. But, yes, Moon Patrol, that just turned 40. Oh, my God. Yeah, it has been 40 years, hasn't it?

Did they make Gansand, Hammer and Harry? They did make Hammer and Harry, yes. Yeah. And did they also make Spelunker? I think. Spelunker, or at least publish it or something. Yeah, they licensed it from Rotterbund and made, they made Arcade Spelunker and Spelunker, too. They were a bit different from, like, the, the original. The original versions, the console versions, but, like, it kind of has, like, similar gameplay.

Right, okay. But, yeah, they did release arcade versions of that. Kid Nicky was another one. Oh, okay, that's IRM too. All right, yeah, that's great. So, yeah, they've been around, the company's been around, they made a lot of games, but based on the, the quotes I've seen, I guess they didn't make enough games because you had this members of IRM staff who wanted to make more games and wanted to do more stuff.

And so they splintered off and became a group called NASCA, NASCA Corporation. And the NASCA team is responsible for the original Meadow Slug. Although I'm not sure the timeline exactly, but it sounds like after a metal slug was released and before Metal Slug 2, NASCA just sort of got absorbed into S&K. That's my understanding of the situation. NASCA also made Neo-Turf Masters, which is a big fan favorite on the internet. So I guess like they put out Neo-Turf Masters. And then Metal Slog and S&K is like, hey, these guys are good.

We got to get us some of that. Quite a lot of this podcast is going to be me yelling sound effects from these games. I apologize for that. It's all right. It's worth it. Yeah, if you play NeoTuff Masters, the music alone, it sounds like Metal Slug, you know. Yeah. Definitely has that same sound to it.

You can tell it was the same guy. Sadly, we never got a Fio. crossover in the golf game, unfortunately. That's a huge shame. But yeah, so speaking to which, so before Metal Slug exists, there were, there were a couple of IRM games that have, have some similar names in the credits, and you can see, if you go back and watch them today, you can see this definitely, there's bits and pieces of Metal Slug in them, and I think it starts with Gunforce, and, you know, I wrote in the

notes here, GunForce, we have Contra at Home energy. It's just like, it's, it's a, it's a shooter, but it's like, it's kind of like generic sci-fi looking, and, you know, and, you know, I wrote in the notes here, and, like, your guy is, like, he can shoot in eight different directions and ride some vehicles, but just it doesn't really, I don't know. It does. It feels a little funky. Yeah, I've played it a bit.

Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's all right for what it is. Uh, the, I haven't played the, the Super Nintendo version, which I hear is an awful, awful port, but I don't know, the arcade version, like, yeah, you might like throw a few tokens into it and be like, yeah, yeah, this is all right. Like, you won't come away, like hating it, but you might, it might not be. it's not like the most memorable game. I think much more memorable will be 93 into the hunt,

sorry, in the hunt, which is entirely, it's a submarine scrolling shooter. And I think that's the kind of game. When you look at that game, you're like, oh, you know, because it has some really fantastic animation. And like every, you know, every shot you fire is like a torpedo out of your, you know, out of your submarine, all the enemies, you know, some of the enemies are gigantic, all these big boss.

I know the end boss is like this long sequence of like, It's like a chase sequence. Like, in the hunt is a pretty spectacular looking game. And that also, I remember, got, I think got a PlayStation port. So that got around, I think a lot of people, probably a lot of people know in the hunt. Yeah, I never saw like an actual cabinet of it back in the day. Like, I don't think like, because I live in the United States, I don't think like a lot of IRM games around like the early 90s other than like after gun force, it felt like a lot of those, a lot of the IRM. games that were put out didn't really

like get much distribution outside Japan like I remember hearing that like Ninja Baseball Batman only sold like 40 kits in the entire United States. So there were not very many arcades you could actually find one in. Not 40K 40 kits. 40

upgrade kits, yeah. Yes. So you could only find it in one of like 40 different arcades across the entire country. That's what I heard. I could be misremembering, but But it did feel like there was, I don't know, like IRM games weren't getting the same level of distribution as other stuff. It's also like a lot of these games being released after Street Fighter 2 kind of took over and arcades were focusing on fighting games and stuff like that.

Yes, definitely after, by this point, the pendulum was swinging from beat them ups and shoot them ups to the fighting games sort of boom. But people still made these, you know, people still make them today. So, yeah, they still exist in the 90s. indeed gun force got a sequel gun force two although in some regions it's called geostorm also never saw this one yeah but if you if you look it up today and you look up you look up the the rom or you watch a video you can hear it sounds this it sounds like metal slug there's lots of enemy screams and explosions but the characters just the characters aren't there yet like there's not as much personality but definitely i remember you know if you

if you play through it you can see some some exciting boss battles so like It definitely looks and sounds better than Gunforce 1, but it's just, you know, it's not there yet. It definitely has, it's, it's got big slug energy. Like, I've streamed it before, and I've had people come into, come into chat and say, like, what is this? A metal slug rip off? And it's like, no, these are the same guys. This is before metal slug. Yes.

It's got the, it's got the intricacy of the visuals down pat. Like, it's, the thing that I remember most from this game is, I played this on Maine, I think, back in the day. And the first level, I think you're on the back of a train or something, and every single individual court, like, floorboard of that or slat of that train can be destroyed. And it just slows the game down to an absolute cruel instantly as soon as you start firing. Because everything is destructible. There's no need to put this much detail into it, but they did anyway. And I respect that.

And then you've got the first boss who's in this, like, it's this one guy in a cockpit, like controlling everything, shooting missiles at you, shooting Gatling gun bullets at you, and when you do enough damage, like the cockpit becomes exposed and the guy in the cockpit just grabs a giant missile and tosses it at you. So, like, they were putting, like, a lot of detail into things,

like even back then. So within, yeah, within a year after that, they start working on Metal Slug. There's been some, there's some video online. If you look at it, there's actually, there's location testing of the original, like, prototype metal slug in late 1995, although it looked very different than what actually came out in 96. But yeah, the original Metal Slug, 96. So, the very first Metal Slug, what do you get? Well, you get these two characters.

There's not, you don't get to pick them. There's two characters. We got Marco, you got Tarma, one of those player, one, player two. I forget which one's which. but you get four super we have four special weapons heavy machine gun rocket launcher flamethrower shotgun bbh you are on record as saying flamethrers are either the best weapon or the worst weapon what's what's your opinion of a metal slug flamethrower metal slug one flamethrer bad like they actually changed it in part two like the the flamethrer in part one

is just this little little tiny shot that goes forward like it's okay for taking out like I think the first one they give you is in stage two when the soldiers are like parachuting in. And like it's okay for that, but for like anything, anything that's like a tank or anything that actually has hit points, yeah, it's not good and you don't want to pick it up. Flame shot ended up changing a lot in part two. But part one, yeah, bad. Thank you for keeping the gag going. I didn't even ask you to do that. It's important.

I've watched a few streams. I know what happens. Thank you. I just love that shotgun. I can't get enough of that shotgun. You pull the trigger and enemies are just gone. They disappear. They vanish.

You switch them off. It's absolutely magical. Magical. It kind of causes a big screen flash, too, which people aren't really a fan of nowadays, but, you know. It's worth it. They watch them disappear. That is a big feature, though. Yeah, because in shooting, you know, all these enemies come out of there.

And as you mentioned, the fluid before, it's too, like, yeah, they don't just, they don't just, you don't just, you don't just shoot them and they don't just blip out. They fall down, they fall over. If you use a shotgun, yeah, they sort of explode into a little... It vaporized. Yeah. It's so good. The flamethrower lights them on fire, and they sort of stumble around a little bit.

Everything in this game, you know, you can... You throw grenades and things, they blow up. I think the first game in sandbags, but I always think of, like, the pile of sandbags where you shoot them, and you can see each bag in the pile sort of like shakes a little bit, and then you shoot them enough, and they'll break. you know, soldiers of shields, you can shoot the shield off of them, or if you're getting close, you can basically knock it away of your melee weapon.

It's just every, you know, every attack in the game is very carefully thought about. The enemies have all these little patterns they run through. They parachute in from the sky. They run along. They might crawl up, like, if you're walking along a sort of, like, cliff or whatever, they might crawl up along the side of the cliff and try to jump out at you. Like, everything, you have to always be attention, to pay attention to every part of the game, because everyone's out there to kill you, but you can see them coming.

you can only see them coming for somewhere. Other than like, there's enemies in the final stage. They're just kind of like right before the final boss. It just kind of drop down from the sky and do like an immediate, immediate knife stab. Those are, those are kind of cheap. But if you actually, you actually might have the metal slug at that point, in which point they'll just like fly right past you.

But for the most part, yeah, you can, you can see enemies coming. This first one, I mean, for that reason, I mean, I think this is my favorite one of the lot. I think like what it right, I feel they absolutely, nailed it the first time because it's just on one hand it is feasible to play and finish on one credit not that I mean anyone you know they're all feasible

with they're all within human like parameters but for someone who's not not super hardcore arcade or gaming in general this one's probably my favorite simply because I love how breezy it is I can't one credit clear this game but when I think about it it's I do believe that I could do

if I applied myself I think it's got a nice spectacle to it while also balancing it with gameplay that doesn't feel sluggish, and there's no pun intended. You know, kind of lead in sort of like

we'll get to it, but a problem I have with the later games is they're too much, you know, they're too much. What if Smell or Slug but too much kind of thing? It's like, we'll get the, but well, it's like eating cake. It's like, cake is delicious, but then you eat too much cake and you just start to feel sick and you wish that you weren't eating

cake anymore. Even though the cake is delicious, it's killing you. And that's what the leader metal slugs are. But no, I love this game. Quick, breezy, great spectacle like the part, and I want to say stage three, where the building collapses around you. Oh, yeah. It's still one of the coolest things I've ever seen in an arcade game. And I just think it's awesome. I just think it's a really great game. I think it ramps up the intensity and drama really well without getting really just stupid.

Not that there's anything wrong with stupid, of course, but we'll get to it. We'll get to it. Oh, I 100% agree. Like, I've thought about this a lot. And my, it's still, like, the first one is still, like, by far my favorite, because for a lot of the reasons that you said, like, it's just, it works the best as an arcade game

because it's a very, uh, it doesn't, it doesn't overstay its welcome. Like, it's a very, uh, tight experience. I, I could see, people preferring like the, I guess, the variety in the enemies on the later games, because in the first game, like, it's mostly just, you know, the enemy soldiers and tanks and planes and all that. But I think, like, it really works in this game that you have, you have this consistent, uh, theming going on. But at the same time, it doesn't feel like, it doesn't feel repetitive. It doesn't feel boring because the levels are still are still very distinct. And like, there's enough, there is enough variety like, and like how the game, like, presents the enemies. Like, There's so many different types of vehicles and different types of enemy formations. And so you really get that feeling of you against, like, an entire army. And so I think it works great in that regard.

And, yeah, it definitely has a good difficulty curve for, like, one credit purposes. Like, the game, obviously, it becomes a lot easier when you figure out, like, where, like, some of the secret locations are for, like, picking up POWs because sometimes they're going to have extra grenades. you can pick up and when you can stockpile grenades like some bosses you can just like deplete them out of existence by just you know staying in the slug and because when you're in a slug if you hold down and start mashing the C button you throw a grenades out faster because when you're when you're on foot you can only throw out throw them like one at a time you can only have two on screen at once and you can't really throw them out as quickly but when you're in the slug like you can just chuck them out nonstop and like you can if you just want to go

for speed runs like that. Yeah, you can just kill bosses really fast once you know what you're doing. And with some of the later games, it feels like the developers didn't like that people were doing that and started inflating the hit points on

a lot of bosses, but we'll talk about those later. I think we're going to have like the same feelings on one particular game, Stuart. This excites me because I honestly thought that was going to be my spiciest take ever. I might be an agreement with you on it. We'll see.

emphasized, so even though the metal slug, the tank, is just a vehicle you pick up, it really is a character into itself. Indeed, at one point, according to Kazamakujo, he said, originally the combat vehicle was the only character you controlled. However, when we did

location tests, we did not get a good response from customers playing. So we changed the game so the soldiers were the central characters you controlled. But I think you can still see that when you play the game and you jump into a metal slug, it's not just a tank You know, because, I mean, let's face, S&K in particular, if you go back before the NeoGeo, they had a lot of tank games, you know? You know, you had a game just called tank.

They had a game called tank, you know? You can't get more tank than that, can you? Right. But in like Akari Warriors, it was, you know, one of the keys of Karri Warriors is you get the tank, it makes a big difference. But the metal slug itself, it's like, it, every tread, I guess, its tread is like a bunch of, like, flopping little feet. It looks like it. You know, it can jump. It can, like, the tank can duck.

It's, it's, it's this really impressive little, you know, just a really impressive looking thing to behold. You can, it's, it's sort of, I mean, I might be really off base with this, but it really kind of looks like the tanks from, I might mispronounced this, my someone is sure I was Dominion. Yeah, people have made that comparison before. Dominion tank police. It looks like it's very, yeah, it must have been inspired at least to some degree.

Or if not, it's just a coincidence. Pretty sure it was. similar. Okay. Yeah. See, I've just realized when you said, when you mentioned Akari Warriors, there's now a direct connection

from Akari Warriors to Metal Slug, isn't there? Because they brought in Ralph and Clark in the later games, who are the Akari Warriors. They weren't going to make a new Akari Warriors game. I mean, they were still putting Ralph and Clark

in King of Fighters, but they weren't going to, I guess like they just weren't going to make a new Akari Warriors game. So it's like, all right, screw it. We'll just put them in Metal Slug. Much later.

Yes. Yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves. But a feature that I always got screwed up is that you can get in the tank and you can also get out of the tank. If the tank takes enough damage, you have to get the tank because it's going to explode. But you can also set the tank to self-destruct, which I've done a lot when I didn't want it to self-destruct. Yeah, same. Me too, yeah. Yeah, they had to, for some reason, they decided we're going to make it A and B together when you're probably going to be spending a lot of time jumping and firing. And so sometimes your fingers are going to slip and hit both of them to.

together. They actually did change this in Metal Slug 5. Like, they finally decided, hey, we've got this D button on the NeoGeo we're not doing anything with. What if we just assign the self-destruct to the button we haven't been using through the entire friggin series? Oh, God. You know, speaking of not using, though, I do remember that when I had Metal Slug X on cartridge and I got into the dip switches, I remember you could set it so that pushing the D button would just destroy everything on screen. So that was one fun way when I just, whenever I decided to cheat my way through the last game, I would just play through it. You know, I'd run and I'd jump and I'd shoot. Then if I was out a grenade, it's like, oh, I'll just push the D button. And then the boss dies. I don't think

you're supposed to do that. It's all right. When I'm at home, there's no, there's no quarters involved. It's fine. You cheated. You didn't just cheat the game. You cheated yourself. But there are some characters appear in Mel Slug 1 who would become recurring characters. One of them is a guy and, so I guess B.B.H. You guess you know this guy's name, huh? Alan O'Neill? Alan O'Neill, yeah. Or as everybody calls him, the C.U. and Hell guy. Yep.

Oh, come on, boy. Right. He shows up, and he's this big muscular guy. He's got a big gun. He's got, like, the sort of, I forget the word for it, the string of bullets on his chest. And he jumps around the stage, and you have to, it's basically, it's a duel. It's like a one-on-one duel where he's very mobile, and you're a mobile, and it's, you know, one of you wins. And as you shoot him, he gets angrier and angrier and turns redder and redder.

And he comes back in later games. And what's kind of funny is considering how a lot of these, a lot of the bosses you fight in Metal Slug are these very elaborate machines that, honestly, in going through and watching videos lately, it made me think of Rube Goldberg devices. Like, you can see these giant machines and you can often see, like, parts in the machines that are working together. You know, like, you'll see, like, gears turning and you'll see guys in cockpits.

And you'll see hatches that open up and cannons come out and the cannon goes back in. Like, you can tell they've spent a lot of time imagining what this machine might possibly look like or who made this machine. The level of detail is just so ridiculous. Yeah. And this goes in hand with the world building in general. Like, as you go through these stages and, you know, Stu, you mentioned some anime before, I feel like a lot of these stages are designed after sort of like Miyazaki-style anime because, like, all the environments are kind of like they're vaguely European, you know? you'll see signs in the background for like bakeries and like coffee shops and it's not always

in English. So it's like I get the sense of like someone fighting their way across Europe, you know. Yeah. Lots of, lots of brick and cobblestone streets. But then you have this, you know, then you have like a giant, a giant airplane comes out of nowhere with like, you know, jets that fire down. So like it's, it's sort of this weird sort of slightly futuristic, but also like an old world, old world feel. Does this make any sense to anybody? Yeah. Well, yeah, it's not grounded in any specific war, so to speak.

Like, obviously, it's not based on a real war, but there are elements taken from iconography, I guess, is the word, from sort of the various wars that have existed in human history. Like, there's quite a lot of Vietnam sort of stuff, exaggerated Vietnam stuff, I think. I mean, Alan O'Neill feels almost like a numb, a disgusting sort of. character you know right um marco himself is like a kind of i don't know he's he almost seems like a kind of a i don't know what you'd call him tarma always gives me vibes of like some kind of weird joey joish kind of guy with the shades and such you know he just feels kind of unreal and like a parody of you know like military bravado uh i don't know maybe i'm off base with this but uh it all just feels like, yeah, basically parodying military sort of like visuals and things.

I mean, I sort of come back to, I think it's the first game that has this ending where it pans back across the re-carriage that you've brought across the entire world. That's the first game, yeah. Of just, yeah, just corpses all over the place. And it's genuinely quite upsetting, in my opinion, just because it's the stark contrast of just like dead twitching bodies everywhere. instead of things constantly trying to kill you and then you suddenly are almost just like

oh yeah the sort of human cost kind of thing you know I mean I know it's just played for laughs I know it's played up as a joke but I can't help but think that ending is quite effective in that respect because it's the only one in the series that really goes for that I mean

in X they more sort of humanized the enemy soldiers they show the enemy soldiers in like down the downtime right am I imagining that I don't remember exactly it's been a while but I think one is the one with the paper airplane, isn't it? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a really striking ending, I think, for the game. Well, it should be pointed out that there's actually like two different endings on Metal Slug 1. Like, if you play it single player, yeah, you get the ending where everybody's dead. But if you play it, if you clear it with two players, like, it shows all the soldiers, like, dancing and going through weird animation frames and stuff like that. It's a completely different ending. paper playing like going through the stages but everybody's alive just having a having a dance party or something that's I don't know why they have like a separate two-player

ending but yeah that's weird because I've definitely cleared it with two before I don't remember that so maybe I'm just focusing on the yeah I'm going to do that and see that again yeah well the airplane sequence is definitely more memorable I think because it is it is sort of shocking when you look at when you look at you know as you're playing the game all you're thinking about is okay I've got to get past this I've got to get past this oh I've got to jump here but then if you you know if you were to look back, it's like, I really did. I did, I wiped out an entire army by myself. I did that. I kind of, I mean, this is a ridiculous comparison, so I apologize, but it kind of reminds me of

when you clear a level in Hotline, Miami, and you have to walk back to the door through all this mountain of blood and corpses everywhere. I can see that. But for all the over the topness of Metal Slug, it kind of ends with just, it's just a showdown with you and, you know, the the General Morden character, who would also be a recurring character, he's in a helicopter shooting at you, and that's kind of it. I mean, I think other soldiers appear, but, you know, considering how where this series would go, it's kind of funny when you look back at the first game, and the last boss is just, it's just you versus a guy in a helicopter.

Like, there's not a lot to it. It is kind of weird in retrospect that, like, that final boss battle, like, doesn't feel like this big, dramatic battle compared to what would happen in later games. Because you, I mean, you see, you see Morden in stage two. Like, he's on the, he's on this, this helicopter or something, some flying, some, the flying boss in stage two. And like, he actually, like, gets out at one point and starts shooting with his bazooka at you. And then when the, when you destroy the, the boss, like, he falls out of it. And then a plane catches him and takes him away.

So you've seen him at this point. But, like, it's, it's kind of a, it's kind of a similar battle to stage two. And, like, yeah, it does, it does feel a little weird that that's the, the final battle, but you know, you do see them, like, actually fall out at the end and hit the ground. You can actually, like, run up to his corpse and start stabbing them, too, for and make blood come out for extra

points if you can, if you're really fast on it too, which is kind of funny. Well, that must be non-canon, then, because, you know, he does come back, so he's not, he can't be dead dead. Well, Alan O'Neill keeps coming back, too. Nobody ever stays dead for long. He gets eaten and all the bones slay out

of the whale's mouth, and he's fine, isn't in the next game? Yeah. I mean, I feel like the final boss of Metal Slug 1, as much as it's not as spectacular as the later games, it does kind of come in line with the sort of breeziness that I mentioned. Right. To have a boss that doesn't bring the game to a grinding hole, you know? It's just like, this is the end. You've caught more than what's essentially his escape vehicle, and he's going to have this one final.

He doesn't have like a second phase or anything, like once you destroy the vehicle. And I'm very, and I am very. grateful for that I know where this is going yeah but no it's a cool it's a cool fight I think it's it does it lacks spectacle but only by comparison to games that went out yet yeah Prime Day is coming. Check out to the HyperX store on Amazon.com to find great Prime Day deals on July 12 and 13. Stock up on the latest gaming gear from HyperX, so you'll be ready for all the new launches and content drops this summer.

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Sequelcast 2 and Friends looks at movies and video games and franchises one movie and game at a time. Hosted by Matt Bradley Shurge, Thrasher and Alex Miller, been going since 2009, and we're part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find inflation the old-fashioned way by spending less money. Check out the HyperX store at Amazon.com to find great primed day deals on July 12th and 13th. Stock up on new gaming gears so you'll be equipped for the new launching. and content drops. Mark your calendars and set your alarms. Deals like this won't stick around long. Well, speaking of which, there was the very next game. In 1998, we got Metal Slug, too.

And I think from the start, one of the most important changes is they've added, there's now four characters, and you get to pick which one there is. And, of course, I think everyone picks Fio. We all agree Fio. Fio. Hell yeah. Fio is my goal to end of time. My girlfriend says Ari is better, but I don't know.

I don't know why we're still together, but, yeah, feel all day. As, there's a new weapon, you got a laser. It's just a hot beam, hot beam of death. Yeah. And I think really from the start, they've, they go out of their way to make this game feel like is more of a, you know, as I mentioned before, the POWs always have like different names. So to imply that this is being fought all over the world. Well, when they made metal slug, too, they decided, okay, never mind the European aesthetic, we want all these stages to look like different places. So the very first.

Yeah. The very first stage is kind of this sort of generic Middle East. I think it's Arabian. Like there's lots of writing in the background, which I think is Arabian. I couldn't be sure. I'm sorry, I don't speak Arabic. I think it is. Yeah. Stu, I think you mentioned, you know, you mentioned the enemies in Metal Slug, too. The first stage of the enemies are like sword-wielding guys and turbans. Yeah, it's not great. But it is great, I'm afraid. No, the racism isn't great. Everything else is fine, I guess. If there was one element of these games I would remove, it would be anything that approached that kind of, I don't know, it's not great. And the first vehicle you get is, in fact, the camel. You get a camel with the metal slug gun on it. And, yeah, but then as you're running along, you fight, oh, my God, I forgot the name, is it the, those sort of dome structures you see in the Middle East.

You come to a building with three of those sort of towers on them, and then those towers lift up and start shooting. shooting at you. Like, even the backgrounds themselves are now, like, have become bosses. Like, it's really from the, from the get-go, you can tell they really wanted, they really wanted to top themselves and they went, they went huge. They absolutely, they really pushed the boat out even immediately for two. In fact, they pushed it out so much that they ever taxed the hardware big time and the game runs like the same speed as an actual slug. So that's fun. Yes, they did run into hardware limitations. And, I guess...

Has there ever been a port of this game that removes the slowdown? Like, did this Arcadarko's version remove it? There is a hack of it in MAME. Like, somebody made a hack that, like, corrected the problem. I guess what happened? It's something like the game is, like, coded to run at, like, 30 frames per second. And, like, get... There was something going on where, like, the game was, like, you know,

supposed to have have slowdown in dramatic spots but like it's it's coding the slowdown wrong on on the wrong frame so it's like skipping two frames on every every slowdown frame instead of one or something like that yeah and i guess and i guess what happened with it uh i think this is what happened i i could be misremembering uh this this bug was like apparently not present on the development kits that they they programmed the game on right and so they did they didn't test it on the actual hardware, and so they started, like, you know, producing the, uh, producing the ROMs, producing the cartridges and put it out there. I guess, oh, shit.

Because most of the port, or the ports would generally be of the revision of X, and I call it a revision. That's doing it a little bit of a disservice, I think. Um, but the problem is I like, I like metal slug to, and I think fighting the opening stage in broad, in sunlight is more fun than in the dark. So I wish that I could play this. game, but without the slowdown, and apparently I can. So thanks, Piracy.

Once again, you've saved the day. Yeah. Yeah, well, I guess we'll get into the whole, the whole two versus X thing, but I actually agree that, like, some of the changes they ended up, like, later making an X, like, in the, in Metal's like, too, like, the first boss is that, uh, that, that flying Harrier that's like, uh, you know, has the, uh, the engines and, and stuff is shooting at you. They took that out and, like, move that to stage three, I think, in Metal Slug X. It's like a mid-boss.

It's a mid-boss in the stage three, yeah. And so they brought back the stage five boss from Metal Slug 1 and just made it the boss in X. And it's like, uh, okay. Really? Why did you do that? Really weird. Yeah. Yeah. Like, there's definitely things I prefer about two.

I don't really, I never really jelled with all the changes in X, even though it runs better. It's not eating inputs all the time during slowdown. and that's great, but doing things like that. It's just like, yeah, okay. I think, too, it was the last time the series felt even slightly breezy. Because X, while it's not that different, it did introduce a few more button-mashing parts, I think, or a few more things that just take longer are more difficult.

I feel like two kind of becomes less breezy just by virtue of having so much slowdown, though, that it becomes a longer game. That is true. That is true. I suppose I meant outside of technical problems. That is fair enough. What you say. Yeah. I mean, I sometimes run through two just because I do

like to, it's weird because I spent so much time with X. 2 is now kind of the weird one to me. It's kind of the novelty to me to be like, oh, it's that stage I like, except the boss is different and the background is different. The color, the color scheme is different. But, I mean, I'm not going to lie, if I'm going to play a game

it's probably more likely to be X than two at this point. Just because of the speed of the damn thing. But, yeah, I mean, I've got more to say by X and I have about two for that reason, I guess. Yeah, I was definitely, like, anxious to play, like, when I heard they were making Metal Slug 2. And, you know, I was really excited to play it. And, you know, obviously the slowdown was like, oh, this is kind of bad. But I still, like, kind of stuck with it in the arcade and wanted to, like, like get the one CC on it, get the one credit clear on it.

But it's a, uh, it's a much longer game. Like a, a run through of metal slug one usually, usually takes about like half an hour depending on, I mean, you can, you can do it way faster than that. If you're just, uh, spamming bombs on bosses and all that, but like a run on metal slug too, like usually took like 45, maybe 50 minutes for me. I was like kind of going out of my way for like some of the secrets, like there's a, there's a thing on stage two where you have to get the the genie lamp and all that. Oh, my God, the genie lamp. And then you've got the second genie lamp as well. Yeah, that's... Or is that only an X.

I think that's in both games. Yeah, that genie lamp's secret is just ridiculous. That damn jump, yeah. Well, you make that jump, then you get to this lamp and you know your instinct. No, I mean, I know this now, but my instinct is to jump over and grab the lamp. You don't do that. You wait for the genius to appear. Then you wait for it to just a right exact second to jump over from coins it turns into.

Then you jump back. right time. Then you jump back to the first platform and you shoot the air, which causes one of those dangerous pot things to drop onto you, so you have to move. Then you jump back and do it again, which causes another lamp to appear. And then you do the same thing. And if you want to get max score, you're going to do this every single goddamn run. And if you screw it up, it's like, okay, back to stage one now. I'm not getting, not getting the hostage bonus now. And I say that like I don't like it, even though stage two of metal slag like X is one of my favorite. metal slug stages ever, period.

Mm-hmm. Even though it does exhibit some of the things I have problems with in this, as this series went on, like the mummies and such to take a lot of bullets to go down. Mm-hmm. Basically, mowing through a load of soldiers that all die in one shot is usually a lot more fun for me than mowing through a load of mummies that take about 20 shots down, especially if you're down to the pistol. Yeah.

Yeah, and two obviously introduced the thing where you can get turned into a mummy if you get hit by certain shots that the mummies do, and that just, like, it makes you slower. Like, you just... The first 25 times it happens, it's kind of cool. Until you find the item that turns you back, yeah. Yeah, you're like, oh, cool, I'm a mummy. And then from every time when you're like,

oh, damn it, my mummy, why can't I just died? Yeah, like, it's cool they put in the extra effort to, like, animate your character turning into a mummy and all that. Like, the artist had a great time animating that. But from a gameplay perspective, like, it just kind of drags everything down. Yeah. Like, you don't really gain anything from becoming a mummy. You just throw bombs really slowly.

You move and jump really slowly. Like, it just kind of, in a game that's already filled with so much slowdown. Yeah. It just kind of drags things down. Like, it's, I guess it's cool. They included it, but I could have done without it. Yeah. It's the tip of the iceberg compared to three.

Oh, boy. That's not the only transformation, though. We should also mention in Minnesota, too. I think it's once you get to Hong Kong, if you pick up too much food, you gain weight. And I'm sure, I'm sure this is, I have a hunch to someone on the art team just thought it would be really sexy

to draw these characters as balloons. It was somebody's fetish. The absolute best thing about that, and I will never stop finding this funny, even though, you know, fat phobia, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. The fact their melee gets replaced with the knife and fork is the funniest thing. Oh, yeah.

But yeah, that's the point. The mummy stuff is, it's visually very interesting, but also it's kind of frustrating because it makes it harder. It makes it harder to move around. When you become a fat version of yourself, you still move and run, but like your bullets are usually bigger. Yeah. You have, you actually, it actually is advantageous, even like, does hitbox actually change, or is it just, Oh, it changes things.

Like the flame shot becomes like a fiery orb of death. Yeah, I guess it's easier to get hit, but also you're dealing more damage. Does your character take up more space? Do you take damage more easily? Yeah. It does. Yeah, I do think you have a bigger hitbox, yeah. Okay.

But also, if you die when you're fat, you just pop like a balloon, which is funny. That too. It's kind of gross. It's kind of gross, in a way. It is. Oh, did they have the items in this game, which would, like, called diet that make you thin again? Yes.

Mm, that's hilarious. Whoa. Big. But yeah, you've got the mummies, you've got the food, yeah, it's a Hong Kong stage, then you're in a subway tunnel, you actually have to fight like a subway train that comes at you, or they can run you over.

I hate that stupid subway train. Time to mess. You sit there, mashing the button, and then the second time it happens, it happens again immediately afterwards. Or is that only an X? I don't know. There's more than one train. There's probably more, at least one too many,

trains, I think. There's two directly, one after the other, and if you're already got the pistol, it's just pain. It's just pure pain, and it's boring. It's not fun to do that. It's just a bad obstacle we shouldn't have put in the game. It's kind of cool once, and then after that, it's like, oh, come on. Yeah, I get it from the spectacle of like, oh, crap, I'm going to get run over by the subway

car. Like, what do I do? I've destroyed, like, I've shut down an entire. Well, that's awesome. And then it's like, okay, here comes another one. It's the exact same thing. And then I guess like near the end of the tunnel, like, they start like bringing in soldiers that drop in from the top to like get in the way or try to jump down and stab you to make it tougher, which at that point, they want you to use bombs or something. Like, this is what we did to make it new and exciting, I guess.

But yeah, it just kind of, it's another thing that kind of brings things to a halt. And behind the subway is the tunnel full of mutants. I've, I'm never quite sure what that means, but it definitely, it adds to, you know, I guess you've already fought soldiers and you've already fought mummies, and now you're fighting these creatures that crawl on the ceiling, and there's those cranks, you got, like, the cranks are sort of a weird mechanic. You've got to, more mashing. Yeah.

More standing around. Did you know that the, uh, the, uh, the segments where you have to mash the crank, the male characters actually take less repetitions. The female characters have to do more because. they're girls and they're weak. Oh, dear. Yeah. So if you're always picking Fio, yeah, you've got to do more,

more mashing on the crank to get the items or the slug. Oh, don't say that. That's, it was innocent. It was innocent contest. I mean, it was. First, I'm playing as Fio, transforming into a fat version and then mashing on the crank, all in the same level. That's it.

The worst joke ever on Retronauts. Thank you. I'm sure it, I'd like to take cool credit for that joke. And if you'd like to hear more like it, please stay tuned. But the big finale, the big finale is aliens, the Mars people.

It turns out that General Morton is working with aliens and the aliens betray him. So then you end up fighting a bunch of aliens in little spacecraft. They've got little UFOs. The aliens themselves, I must say, they take a lot of hits unless you use like a flamethrower or the shotgun. But I do love how they fall apart, you know? If you burn them up, they sort of sizzle in a little like calamari, and if you shoot them, they sort of like, they fall down and their skin peels off and they, like, vomit. It's really impressive. Yeah.

The Mars people are iconic. I love them. I also, I think this might be X only. I might be wrong. I also love the fact that it's foreshadowed when you destroy that wall in the first stage and you get one Mars person corpse, and you're like, what was that? Yeah, that was added in next. If indeed you even notice it. Yeah, you don't see the Mars people at all in part two until the final stage.

Oh, wow. Well, that's actually better because I thought that was in two as well. But in X, they also have a Mars person fly past on the first screen just to case you don't get it. I think there's a little tiny spaceship on the first screen going from right to left. I think they do show up in stage four after the Hong Pong part part where you're like going down the... X added more aliens. I don't know if part two is alien free until you get to the last stage, but certainly X, added more aliens. Like definitely the

like, Stu, the one you mentioned in the very first stage, that's definitely an ex-edition. You see, you see it like fly behind the background in the spin space. I thought it was into as well. There's a part where there's like almost a mid-boss where you destroy a guy on the back of a camel and once you destroy him

the wall explodes behind him and one of the, there's one Mars person corpse in this fire that you see for like a split second and I thought that was in two as well. But if if not, then I take it back. It wasn't clever. and I'm not praising them for it. Yeah, it was only an X.

It's hard to remember which one's which. Yeah, I get the stages mixed up in my head, too, like which one is two and which one is X. They're not all Slug 2 finale, though. We haven't said that. There must be more to say about that, because that's something. Definitely. One thing I do appreciate, even though I don't know the deep lore of Metal Slug,

I do appreciate how this game goes to great efforts to tell stories. You know, when you finally, you come to, you meet General Morton, and he's in sort of like this hybrid tank slash UFO thing and he's with the aliens and he's laughing at you but then this is like a little in-game cutscene basically then the aliens shoot his soldiers destroy his tank kidnap him and then you've got to fight a UFO

which is hard but then you destroy the UFO and you think oh great it crashes but then a bigger ship appears suction that up and then you have to fight this sort of basically a mother ship that covers the entire top of the screen. Yeah, let's not undersell this as a bigger ship. It's the biggest ship ever in any video game to this point.

Because you can't see it. You can't see the whole ship. Yeah, it literally does cover the entire top screen. And then I love, is what happens is in the background, you start seeing the soldiers fighting the UFOs in the background, and then soldiers actually come on screen with you, and they start shooting up at the UFO with you. And you really get this in-game sense of,

oh, the tides of turn, now we're all united against this alien force. That's so cool. It's awesome. It rolls. They also bring you a metal slug tank if you wait long enough, I believe. Yeah. Wait around. They do give you tank.

You don't get it in that entire final stage. It's like, oh, they didn't, why didn't they give us any vehicles? And then, like, right at the end for the dramatic, like, final half of the mothership battle, yeah, they bring out the slug. Which also, I do love that when you get to the very, very end, if you weren't, if you weren't sure about it, they implicitly turn it into the finale of Independence Day. Not even trying to hide it. Yeah. The alien ship opens its weapon and then one single plane that I think is a custom animation

because you can see the pilot's face. He looks like he's drunk. Not sure if it is. You can see a pilot come in, flies plane into the weapon, it explodes. You know, the world celebrates, happy day. We win. The general falls down. He's okay until he falls flat in his face and gets crushed,

which is just hilarious. That's so funny. Yeah, he's tied to like a probing table, isn't he? He's like, tied to a probe, like. He's in his underwear. Experimental, like when Mulder got captured in season eight of the X-Files. You're spoiling me. I haven't gotten there yet, Stu.

Oh, damn. Sorry. It's okay. I mean, when something happened, I don't know. Who knows? Statue of Limitations. It was probably 1999 or 2001 or something. Sorry, I'm not, I can't anymore.

It's okay. It's okay, Stu. I kind of figured eventually he would meet the aliens. It's all right. But yeah, I think as you said, so this game is, you know, it's a spectacle and a half, but yeah, the hardware limitations and just the general, I think, fatigue of playing through the entire game certainly takes its toll if you, you know, if you want to enjoy it, I don't think you, I don't know how many times you can enjoy it in a row, you know? Yeah. And like going for like a one credit clear on it, like just the entire. final stage is, it's pretty lengthy. It's not, it's not as lengthy as what would happen later, but it's, it's kind of a long final stage. And, like, the general strategy for, like, fighting the last boss is that you want

as many grenades as you can, you can get through the entire stage. Like, you can build up to, like, 50 or so. Like, there's a, there's a bunch of grenade pickups you can get. And so that means you've got to go through the entire final stage without, like, dying halfway through and having it, like, get reset to 10, because if you go

into it with, uh, without, like a full stock of bombs. It becomes much harder to deal with the little saucers flying around because usually you don't have a special weapon for them. So you've got to throw a grenade at them to kill them. And it's a bit much. It's a lot. There's also the fact that because

the mothership is above you, it's kind of hard to hit with the grenades. Yeah, you have to be on top platform and actually, yeah, jump and throw them. And if you don't throw them at the top of the jump, then they just kind of whiff and hit the ground and you waste them. Yeah. So it's a challenge. It's a challenge.

I mean, you can shoot your gun straight up, but you can't shoot grenades straight up. Yeah, and you can only throw, like, a couple at a time in each jump. Like, you can't just unload all your grenades at once. So either way, it's going to be a pretty lengthy battle. And, yeah, slow-ed-issues. So, unfortunately, this is, you know, it's like an 88, so you can't just put on a patch online. So one year later, they issue a sort of make-good, improved, question-mark version, Metal Slug X. which is, this was my, again, I think you said this on stream,

so I think BBAH, like your first metal sub is your favorite. Like, this is the one that I played the most. So this is the one that's closest to my heart. But yeah, it is very much, like, it's Metal Sol 2 again. So if you played Metal Sol 2 a lot, there's not that much new here, although they did add, they added three weapons, which is neat. I don't know if they're great weapons, but... Excuse me, one of them, I believe, is the Iron Lizard as the best weapon ever.

There is the Iron Lizard. There's the Drop Shop. which is like a bunch of bouncing bombs. Useless. Useless weapons. It's okay on the train stage where you have enemies like hiding behind. That is like maybe the only time like you're ever intended to use the drop shot. But there's definitely like troll placements of it in later games where they give you the drop shot.

It's like, okay. I should have picked up something else. I should have stuck with my default shot. I do like the enemy chaser. I like the enemy chaser. It chases the enemies. It's good against, you know, some of the flying enemies. but did they also add the souped-up versions of the regular weapons to this game

like the flashing heavy machine gun like the big heavy machine gun and the big I think they did yeah the big laser yeah there's a big laser for sure big laser is awesome I forget how you get is it just is just a different pickup or do you have to like pick up two in a row I forget how you get the super versions no there were versions of them that just have bigger moving letters they're like bulging it's just a better version of the weapon basically Hmm, bigger throbbing guns, gotcha. Yeah.

But I do think, you know, I don't know if this was intentional or just they wanted to change it up, but I do notice when you play a Metal Slog X, even though you do start in the same sort of Arabian stage, which leads to the Egyptian stage, I notice there are a lot fewer of these sort of stereotypical bad guys. It's mostly soldiers now. And I don't know if that was due to complaints or if they just felt like they just wanted to change it, but I thought I did appreciate that change. It's a welcome change, although it does lead to a degree to slightly less, of enemy variety, I suppose.

And I think, doesn't X introduce the zombie, the mummy dogs? The mummy dogs are unique to X, right? I think so. And two. I think they're unique to X, where you fight mummy dogs and bark at you. It all just mushes together, yeah. I don't know. I think it wasn't. When you get the mummy dogs, if you

get the shotgun and then you get the line of mummy dogs, you can make them all disappear. Yep, and they have little bones fly out of them. Yeah. We should probably mention that the boss of that stage is like, you're like a giant tower, there's an infinite tower, and the boss is coming up from underneath you. Oh, so

good. Yeah. It's the coolest thing ever, and it's scary as hell. When the first time you see that is a moment, as far as I'm concerned, that is like a gaming moment. The first time you see that boss and it just comes up from underneath you, you're just like, the least expected. Well, I mean, you expect

something to happen on that towel, but not that fast and from underneath you, and to be made of what appears to be discarded second-hand vehicles. It rules. And then, you know, you know, self-destructing your slug walker or whatever it's called into it is really cool. It's a little slugnoid, isn't it? I forget what it's called that slug, but the one that's like an exoskeleton almost.

Right. And I think the cannon placement is a little unfortunate in that thing. Man, this is a sexy episode. I think, like, one of the changes in X is that, like, they brought back the slugnoid for the stage five boss after the mutants where you fight that boat boss. like in two you had a slug and it was uh i don't know i felt like it was easier to to deal with the boss with the slug but the regular slug tank but they they changed it to the slugnoid and the slugnoid's kind of annoying because when you it has a health bar like everything else but when you take a hit you'll lose one of the cannons it has two arm cannons and so you lose one of the arm cannons so

your your rate of fire goes down and if you get hit again all you can do is fire the fire bombs so it's kind of it's kind of worthless it's also a lot even easier to lose than the slug tank because you're always going to be hitting jump and hitting shoot when you're using that so it's very easy to accidentally come a car's here well the whole thing with playing for like survival is that when you hold down and press jump to to jump out of the vehicle you're completely invincible yeah like you're completely invincible when you jump out and you have like a second invulnerability. So you can use that to avoid, like, certain bullet patterns that seem kind of unfair.

And then you can get back in, and the vehicle hasn't taken any damage. And that's pretty much instant when you're in the slug. But in the slugnoid, like, there's this extra animation of, like, the arm cannons, like, moving out of the way before you can jump out. So it kind of screws up the timing on that boss, and I never, I never liked that. That's just another one of those changes in X that I wasn't really, wasn't really on board with. Can we talk about the most upsetting thing you might as a slug? Decks briefly, because I think he might be

in two as well, but it upsets me so much that I don't want to do a Metal Slug podcast or not mention it. You know the guy on the, at the beginning of the train level, who's just laying in a deck chair, reading a newspaper, and you stab the shit out of him. But you, for some reason,

you can just keep stabbing him. And he drops items. No other enemy in the game does that, but you can just absolutely slap. I didn't even know he dropped items. How many times must you stab him. What kind of monster would do that? He'll drop like an apple or something.

Pulling. He killed him in his thing and lunch. He was just living his best life. It's really horrible. He looks, he's just like corpse just lying there and you're just absolutely going to town on it. It's just appalling stuff.

It's something like I hate metal. It's like X, but I actually would like it. I don't know. My perception of X is like kind of, uh, it's, it's kind of weird because like I played I played too a lot when it was new and I kind of got kind of got tired of it because it was kind of you know a bit lengthier drags on a bit had the slowdown and all that and like I kind of uh it was around that time that I started becoming obsessed with another game on the Neo Geo called shock troopers I could do a whole podcast about that

oh yeah and I was I was enjoying the hell out of shock troopers at the time and like I just kind of became I was playing that game so much I was like trying to go for go for high higher, higher scores on that. And when, when Metal Slug X came out, like, I just kind of played it. And it's like, oh, it's just a new version of two. I don't really want to play two again. I want to play more shocktroopers. So, like, I kind of didn't play Slug X that much when it was, when it was brand new.

Like, it's not a, it's not a bad game. But, like, it kind of came out, like, at a weird time for me in the arcade, I guess. And I just, I didn't really, like I said, I didn't really gel with a lot of the changes that they made to some levels. And I felt like I'd had enough of what two and X, like, provided. And like, I understand, like, if you, if you, if you, if you didn't play two and like you, you came into the series like playing, playing X more, like, yeah, it definitely, it definitely holds up better if, if, uh, if you didn't already play to, like, yeah, maybe, maybe you like

you like X more if you didn't play to first is what I'm saying. I don't know. I, that was the case for me, for sure. What I like about X is the depth of the secrets rather than as a coherent arcade game experience. It's fun to see some of the weird shit in the game for me rather than actually sort of enjoyed. Like the bit, what we talked about at the lab, the fact that there is a secret in that same level where you jump between those jets of gas and you shoot down at the floor and it starts like spewing gems at you. obtuse bizarre little secrets like that the miners digging stuff up

and then you shoot where they were digging and more stuff comes out the same level this is all in the same level shooting okay the best one of the lot standing on the barrel and jumping and throwing grenades to make invisible prisoners appear stuff like that like weird

shit that you wouldn't find without someone telling you or without just stumbling across it and being like hey it's a deep gap on this thing yeah It's, I love stuff like that. I always have loved secrets like that. So this is probably the only metal slug game that really provides that for me.

Three to an extent, but three doesn't for me have that same depth, but mostly because it's just a pain to play. Well, let's talk about three. It's time for Metal Slug 3. Oh, boy. Metal Slug 3 discourse, my favorite. It's time for Metal Slug 3.

I love it. Let's show that this is me rubbing my hands together. 2000 NeoGeo originally released. And definitely, you can tell going into it, like, okay, well, two had a lot of ideas. What if we had even more ideas? What if we had all the ideas in the world and no one took us aside and went, no, stop. You're ruining the. the game. You're ruining the game.

Metal Sog 3 is kind of gigantic. It's definitely, you know, I made the big joke at the start, but I definitely, this is, this is, oh, this is too big. Oh, yeah, yeah, nice. It's, it's a lot. It's, I mean, I respect it because

there's so much here, and there's so much that in certain places, if you don't, if you don't go to a certain way, because now it has branching paths. That's not pretty cool. If you don't go a certain way, you won't see, certain enemies at all in the game. They're only

exist in one corner of the game and you don't go there, you don't see them. Oh, I played it today and I saw the ostrich slug for the first time in my entire life. I've been playing this game since it was out on like PS2. I played it a fair amount. I only just saw the ostrich slug. Oh, can I please be a little bit mean? Would it be okay with everyone if I was a bit mean and said something

slightly mean? It's okay. Not to me, though. Okay, not to you, no. But I'm going to make a very sweeping statement which I believe with all my heart, okay? I think you speak to people and you say, what's your favourite medal slug? A lot of people will say three. And I think that those people don't care about, like, games that much,

or having fun. Like, no, I'm serious. When you say to someone like, oh, it's the same kind of thing when you say to someone, like, what do you think of Sonic CD? And they say, oh, it's a load of rum hacky crap. You just know there and then to write them off, you know. Like, you say to someone, what's your favorite,

Metal Slug, they say three, I will go, oh, okay. And, you know, nothing wrong with them as a person, but I will file away in my head. I will file them. I'll compartmentalize them into a little draw that says, don't talk to them about video games anymore, because they don't understand video games. Like, they don't actually like playing games. They like looking at them, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Because Metal Slug 3 is one of the most beautiful, most impressive, most boring, I nearly said the F word, games. Like, I don't hate it. I would give it a six out of ten, okay?

Maybe a five. But it's so tedious for me. It's so tedious to play this game, to actually play it. It's boring. I don't like it. Okay. I have a theory that if you, if three was like the first slug game you played, like if you came into the series late and three was the one like you saw at an arcade,

and that's the first one you played, It might end up being your favorite if you started with that one. If you play the other games first, yeah, you might not have as favorable opinion of it because I hate Metal Slug 3. I don't like this game. Oh, that's harsh. Maybe I shouldn't say I hate it, but. Well, if you hate it, you hate it. I mean, it's fine to hate it.

Yeah. For me, there's, I kind of hate it, but there's a lot of stuff about it I like. I just would like not have to play it to see that stuff. I think the problem I have is, well, like I said, with the other games, like the first game was such, you know, such a fine experience. Metal Slug 2, you know, drags on a little bit, had the slowdown problems. X was just kind of kind of the same thing with some weird changes. And like I felt like after X, like I had kind of gotten enough of like the,

the base engine of the game. Like, I want to see, if I'm going to play a slug game, like, it needs to give me an experience that does something better than the original. And there's, like, pretty much nothing in three that just makes me want to play it over the first one. Because, like, like, okay, the thing, like, whenever, whenever Slug 3 discourse comes up on my stream or something, I'm not even talking about the game and people just start talking about it. Or anywhere in the internet, I see people talking about three. like the one thing everybody brings up is like oh the final stage is too long if they split it into like two or three parts like that would that would fix things or if they just made it made it shorter i don't think that's the only problem with the game i think one of the problems is there's just a lot of uh hit point bloat on on enemies and bosses like they just made they made they gave a lot of the bosses way too much health that even like there's no there's no fast way to do

certain bosses, like unless you have some speed run tactics that skip using like a special weapon like the shotgun or the flame shot or whatever and can stockpile like 50 bombs. But even then, like it feels like they made this conscious effort to prevent people from just like bomb spamming

because like the worst part of the game is not, to me, it's not the final stage. It's the boss on stage four, Sol Day Rocker. Yeah. It's this weird alien, alien creature thing alien contraption that's like floating in the sky and you can't hit it with

grenades like your grenades do not reach like it's always just out of reach so any grenades you have are completely worthless and this boss has like this it goes through patterns randomly and it has this one pattern where it just fires these piercing yellow shots everywhere there is

no discernible pattern to where they're going to go like it kind of turns the game into a bullet hell but your character does not have the hit box to deal with a bullet hell schmup because it's very difficult to deal with this part and like a lot of players are just going to die here and just get stuck in this pattern where because you know your jump is a little floaty and it's hard to it's hard to dodge them so you just kind of have to guess hope you make a hope the pattern doesn't come up and then when you die like you don't have a

special weapon anymore and so you're just fighting it with the pea shooter and this and there's this very narrow hit box on it and like that boss just embodies everything that's wrong with Slug 3 right there to me and I just... That's interesting because the boss is... I think it's because I played it first on PS2 where I think the difficulty might have been lower.

Hmm. Because of Saldi Rucker, I think of as quite an easy boss with quite easy patterns. So maybe that version for some reason doesn't bust that out so much. I don't know. Maybe I'm just misremembering it, you know. Maybe. I don't know. The problem for me, like,

the problem with Slug 3 for me is... I mean, all it really is, is, as you mentioned, everything just takes too many bullets. And, like, I hear a lot of people that praise this game for think, they praise it for things that I think are bad, like the zombie stage on stage two. God, yeah. Because that gets a lot, so much love. And, you know, it's kind of a cool concept. But what it essentially amounts to is a level that is just a straight line with loads and loads of enemies that take lots and lots of hits to kill. And turning into a zombie is cool at first.

It makes you move slowly. You've got the cool vomit. zombie vomit attack, that's fun. You can turn back if you collect a thingy, you know, a little pill or whatever it is. But the fact, all it essentially amounts to is you're going to die as a zombie, and you're going to have to sit there and watch while the 10-15-7 death animation plays for your character. And then you'll respawn only to probably immediately get turned into a zombie again.

And another thing about that level that annoys me is it's got a whole side path that's completely pointless. Oh, the ice cave, yeah. Yeah, you do it if you want to get more points, which means if you're playing for score, you've got to do it. Yeah, you just go all the way to the left and then you go back. It's so pointless. It's the only way to get the elephant slug, and it's not worth the effort, as far as I'm concerned.

Elephant slug. Sorry, I forgot about that one. Yeah, but other than that, you've got the fact that they thought it might be fun to go swimming, and it's not fun to go swimming. Everyone knows that it's not fun to swim in video games. I guess they were, like, trying to pay homage. to in the hunt, I guess, have the underwater sections. I kind

of get that, but also I forgot that, like, from the very beginning of the game, like, you're not fighting soldiers or anything, you're fighting these weird crab monsters. And they take several 20 bullets, yeah. They take like at least a few shots to kill. Like, the very first enemies in the game

are not like cannon fodder enemies that die in one hit. It's, like, that's a weird first impression to make. That's the most frustrating for me about it, is the fact that they forgot to do they forgot it was supposed to be you know fun yeah it's not it's meant to be fun it's not meant to be hard work and everything about that game feels like hard work to me like it's cool that you have tolerable is to go into the dip switches and turn it down to easiest

possible mode and even then it's not really that fun i was going to say it's cool that there's like multiple routes like there's all these all these hidden routes to find but at the same time uh it also just feels like the game doesn't really have a coherent vision of what it wants to be because they're just they just like wrote down a bunch of ideas for stages and it's like okay this stage well just uh like stage one okay you can just go underwater and then and then come out and then like there's just uh these other stages like the part with the barrels and i don't it just feels like a bunch of stuff like thrown together you have the cave where you're fighting those those those those weird uh like you get into the drill slug yeah and you're fighting enemies there like like the game doesn't really, it doesn't really know what it, uh, what it's going for. Like, they just had a bunch of ideas and decided to throw them all together. And it just feels kind of, it's kind of, kind of scattershot. Like, I don't know what they were going for. And then you get to the final stage and, oh boy.

I mean, for me, I've got to be fair to the game and say, yes, I'm suitably impressed by the visuals. There's so many enemy types. They all look amazing. All of the bosses look amazing, in my opinion, which doesn't make them fun to fight, but it does go a long way. the final stage the first few times you play it or whatever the spectacle and the idea is really cool like your playable character gets abducted and you have to take on the other soldiers that you didn't pick

to come now that's cool that's a really cool idea they did something like that in a game called Mystic Warriors by Konami they did a very similar gag at the end but here you know respect to that the epicness the fact you go into space and you fly up there and then you take down the mothership and then you go the final boss is absolutely spectacular, if incredibly easy and stupid.

But unfortunately, it's too long. There's too much of every stage. Every enemy has too many hit points. And as a result, the crucial X factor, it isn't fun to play for me. I don't enjoy it. Therefore, I'm not going to say it's the worst metal slug

because I don't think it is. But it's definitely worse than... I mean, I don't like... I think six is worse. I think seven is... probably worse. But that's just my opinion. For me, I wouldn't call it the worst one, but I do think it's the most overrated one. And I hate saying that because that sounds stupid. But it's true because, again, people who say it's their favorite don't know what they're talking

about. Like when you get to the point... I hope that Diamond doesn't now say it's their favorite. I would make this really awkward. I think Diamond likes X the best. Yeah. There you said that. Yeah. But like, no, when you get to the part where like, yeah, your original character is abduct and you have to take over as the other character, like, okay, yeah, that's clever. And then they throw you into the section where, like, it's scrolling vertically and they're turning it into a shoot-em-up.

It's like, okay, yeah. This is cool for the first minute, the first couple of minutes, yeah. And then it's just, you're shooting more rocks, you're shooting more aliens, the screen transitions, and, oh, it's another, it's another shoot-em-up part. They haven't really, they're not really doing anything different.

Like, it's just, and yeah, like, I get it, like, the entire final, stages, um, uh, wanting to like, like, already like the end of, of two and two slash X was just, you know, this, this big spectacle of, you know, fighting, fighting an alien ship and then it turns into a mothership. And that was, that was really cool. And they're trying to, trying to outdo themselves. And so I guess the whole, the whole running thing here is that they just keep the, the final mission going on. And, you know, you fight, you fight one, one boss. And then it leads into something else, and it just keeps going to give you a feeling of, you know, where's, you

know, how far is it going to keep going? What's the, what's the final boss going to be? And then it's just this, this thing that's falling from the sky for, like, way too long. And you don't even get to, like, ride the slug. It actually has the slug captured in its claw. And, like, you can jump into it to, like, fire the missile. But at the same time, you don't get to have a normal vehicle. And there's, like, you don't have much room to maneuver. And it's just an awful, awful final boss. I did the trick there of jumping into the slug to avoid the big mind beam ring thing that it does and then jumping out when it's launching. I think that the spectacle of that boss with the music, the name of the track, I forget, but the classic

final mission music in the background while you're in free fall and the giant Mars person has your slug in its grip, the spectacle of that is extremely cool and it goes a long way for But, again, as we've discussed at length, the game just doesn't just, it's just too much. It's too much delicious cake. And anyway, if any of the listeners want to talk in the comments about how I'm wrong about metal slug, don't bother. I'm not going to read them. I am going to read them, really.

And I'm going to downvote them if there's a lot of listening to do that. I mean, like I said, I like to, I like to. like try to finish arcade games on one credit i haven't done three yet because i just can't bring myself to play it like i've done one two x four and five i haven't done six either but congratulations on doing a five by the way yeah that one was kind of nasty it was it was i see one two and x i can while they wouldn't be easy i can see doing them i mean i on x i can do the first three stages on one life um but after that the gloves come off as far as i'm concerned yeah the final stage of x is like the worst part because like I said it's really important to stockpile grenades and have

and just have them all for the boss and it doesn't help that like they changed the the mars people patterns in in X like all the bars people that you have to fight before the boss and there's some really nasty patterns I think there's like some new some new shot types that like they introduced in X like the like those shots that like start slow and speed up oh boy another thing that they they introduced in X and like I don't know it's another one of those things I have to, like, keep clear in my mind, like, which, which game it is when I play it. Well, one credit clearing Motus 2 doesn't sound like it would even be fun to try. I mean, a lot of people have done it.

Having to do that zombie stage over and over again just doesn't sound fun to me. It's a bad stage. What can I say? Yeah. Like, I've seen, like, speed runners, like, they actually do take the zombie because you can use the blood, the big blood rush bomb thing to, like, take out all the aliens at once. and like apparently it's good for that but you have to like set it up very very specifically

because you have to like do a very careful amount of damage on those aliens that are like circling around because if you destroy one early like it starts the rest get more aggressive so you have to kill them all at the same time and I just didn't I didn't like that design like well yeah like when I started like trying to play it on one credit like yeah the zombie stage just kind of

kind of broke me like I could I could do it but it just wasn't fun well it's just yeah I mean that for me, it's like, I don't want to repeat myself too much, but I feel like it needs it at this point. When I see people praising that stage, it's one of the reasons why it's the best one. I just get in my head. I'm just like, you don't know what you're talking about. You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't even like video games at all to say something like this. This is an insane opinion. That's pretty harsh, but probably true.

I sincerely hope that the generous patron who requested this episode does not I think middle slug three is your favorite. We'll find out. I hope that they do think that and that they've wasted their Patreon money on the episode is upset. No, I don't want that, obviously. You know what? I'll tell you what. Editor, find out

whether it is or not. And if it is their favorite, please edit in the following clip. Oh, I love middle slug three. I think it's great. It's great. It's great. There we go. Anyway, Meadow Slote 3 was, in a lot of ways, the end of the series, because what happened? Well, in 2001, S&K goes bankrupt. I think, like, the reason, like, three has so much shit is in it that, like, S&K knew the writing was on the wall.

So they just decided to, like, put everything in there. It was this and the King of Fighters 2000, which is not the most, like, well-liked K-OF. Like, it definitely has its fans, but, like, the amount of, like, stuff they put into KF 2000, like, all the, all the guest characters, because that's one of the games that has the striker system where you call in another character as an assist, like, in Marvel versus Capcom 2. Yeah. And so, like, they just, they just went all out on those two games to, like, put as much stuff as possible into them. And, I don't know, it didn't really work for three, but, yeah. I believe that.

They just wanted to go out with a bang. I believe that wholeheartedly. I think if you look at, yeah, you look at Metal Sug 3 and King of Fries 2000, they're both overstuffed. And if you go across the aisle to Capcom, 2000 is also Marvel's Capcom 2, which is also like a game that's like, there's too much stuff in Marvel Capcom. You know, this is just too much. It's beautiful, but it's also too much. much. I see, I don't agree with that because it doesn't fundamentally, like, damage the game

like it does this, but maybe it does in, in like, I don't know, competition level, which I'm not familiar with, to be fair. It's all I know is I picked cable, trombone, and the wiser world card slot, and I had the most fun ever. I mean, that's a game like a lot of people can have fun with, but that's a different topic. S&K essentially ceases to exist for like a week, and then everyone buys the IP keep back. It's a long story. But when they go out of business, if they go bankrupt, the games continue to exist. There's still more NeoGeo games that are made. But what happens is the development goes

to Noise Factory. So starting with Metal Slog 4, which came out in 2002. And Mega Enterprise, which was a Korean-based company. Yes. If you watch the credits in the starting Metal Sunk 4, you'll notice that a lot of the pseudonyms are gone and instead of just actually see Korean names. And aren't they now owned by a Saudi Arabian company? Am I imagining that? S&K? S&K. There's a, I think there's a prince has a large percentage of the stock at this point.

Yes. Okay, a prince. Okay. So, Metal Slug 4, what changes? Well, they take out Marco and Tarma. They put in, I want to say Trevor and Nadia. I believe that's the names. Yeah.

Wait, I thought they took out Tarma and Theo. Is Fio going? Was it Tarma? Wait, yeah, I'm misremembering. Like, they took out one of the male characters and one of the female characters. I imagine taking up Theo bastards

and I don't know I just feel like when you play this game when you look at this game you can recognize that there are new things certainly it sounds different the music sounds totally different

as we mentioned that you know a new music guy takes over so the music sounds very different okay I'm wrong it was it was Tarma and Erie Theo is in the game

okay oh thank God since prevails but I feel like when you go through this and you play it I don't know it just it feels like this something's missing.

Yeah. I don't know. Maybe you can elaborate, but I just, I remember trying this and being immediately like, oh, this isn't working for me. I've been shouted out online for saying this, but I kind of like metals look for. Okay. Mostly because I find, even though there is almost

nothing new in it, I kind of appreciate how breezy it is, again compared to three. Like, it's really quite an easy game if I find. And I just kind of appreciate that. It's not the blowout that three is by any means, by any respect. And that means I can enjoy it as a kind of running gun. I don't think it's as good as one at all.

I don't think it's as good as X even. But I kind of like the Slug 4. I think it's fine. I play it again and I probably have a good time. Yeah, I think it kind of gets a bad rap because, yeah, like, I mean, yeah, the new S&K, or not S&K, or Playmore, they're like under this this new pressure to like

keep making games for the Neo Geo which is why they kind of had to farm it out to noise factory and mega so like there's a lot of reused stuff in the game and that's like the big the big problem people have is that there's there's so much reuse stuff but

I mean like the reason is like you know these these games are so elaborately like detailed and drawn and it's hard to like get a new staff in to like mimic that style. So you kind of have to, you kind of have to reuse some stuff to like actually like meet the, meet the deadlines that were set because they wanted to, you know, they wanted to keep putting out stuff on the Neo Geo. They wanted to have a new game out,

have a new metal slug game out. And it's not, uh, it probably could have taken a little more time to produce more new assets for it. But they just wanted to to get something out. But no, I actually agree like it it does have uh it has better flow than three i guess like it's not it's definitely not uh yeah it doesn't it still doesn't hold a candle to one two or x but yeah like i kind of i kind of wrote it off in the first place like it's just oh it's just uh it's just a slug engine again and it it kind of is but i mean it's uh for what it is it's it's all right does it's correct me correct me if i'm wrong is Isn't this the game that has the bit where you drive the little loop on third car?

No, that's five. Oh, well, that's a shame. Well, it's still good, despite the fact that there's no loop on the third car. It does have a final stage that's not as bad as three, but it is kind of lengthy. I have to say, I have to say as well, it has the least spectacular final boss in the series. That's a weird final boss. It's very odd. It honestly, to me, feels like a rhythm game almost, like, because these lasers are coming down.

It kind of is, duck, duck, jumps. Yeah. Yeah. Like, there's a definite pattern to it if you're paying attention, but it's, yeah, it's, it just goes on for so long. And so boss in multiple phases, like you destroy the, the thing on the right, and then the thing on the left, and then you're shooting the thing in the background, and that, that's the whole rhythm game part.

Mm-hmm. It's also got that, that big, that big robot boss with the face that's, like, shooting out, like, poison balloons or whatever, which is kind of weird. Yeah, you break its face off and then, like, it has an arm that comes out. it's yeah there's some spectacle to it but yeah there's also like an elevator level which like oh elevator level okay but isn't isn't that the this again this might be five again in which case shoot me but isn't that when you've got the enemies kind of coming down the wall that are almost driving on the wall down towards you and you shoot and they fly off and explode on

the elevator because i thought that was cool they give you a shotgun right before it and you can just take them out really quickly i think this is actually five again now that I think about it. Why is all this cool stuff is in five? Yeah, I think that's five. Yeah, damn, I'm wrong again. Now, four is a fine

a fine game. It's just not nothing. It's not special, but it's, I like it better than three, and, you know, people are going to get mad about that. So bring it on. It's all right. It's okay, but at the same time,

like, I had just, I felt like general fatigue with the series and it doesn't really, like, do anything better than the original. So it's like one of those games that I'm not really Jones into play again. They bring back Alan O'Neill as an android. That's true. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, you fight

you fight him again, and then once you think he's dead, like half his skin comes off, and you realize he's got a metal endoskeleton, so. That's actually great. I forgot. I remember that happened, but I thought I was in one of the other games. That's awesome. I think Morton also appears as like, there's a robot Morton, I think.

But the real, yeah, the real bad guy is like this weird sort of side character who was like just seen in the background and other games, like a Dr. Wiley type almost. Yeah, he shows up in 2 and X at the beginning of the Hong Kong stage. Like the kid shows up and he starts yelling at the kid when he notices, like, if you pick up his briefcase. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's that guy. He was just a background character and now he's the big bad guy. Like they're just looking for, well, we got to make a new villain. Oh, there's this sprite. Well, they use that. They used every part of the metal slug. You got to appreciate that. Yeah.

So I guess we should move on to what Stu really wants to talk about, which is Metal Song 5. Let's say goodbye to Trevor and Nadia. They're never coming back. I don't think so. Well, we like Nadia Oxford. She'll be back on the podcast, but not Nadia from Metal Song 4. Metalsote 5 is 2003, NeoGeo. We get the original characters back.

We get a new slide mechanic. You can slide now. Is that good or bad, B.B. Oh, God. It's, it's, oh, sorry, I'll not be bad. It's not great. Like, it doesn't get used that much. They force you to use it in the first stage when you get into the temple.

Like, yeah, there's just this wall you can't get past. It's like, oh, they can slide. Like, some people might have been, like, skipping the how-to-play screen or didn't read the, the, the little instruction on the mini marquee but like for the one CC I didn't feel like it gets used that much like on the final boss it gets used a bit to like dodge stuff but like the problem

to slide is it has it has way too much recovery like it doesn't really feel good. I was I was going to say I'm convinced that last boss has some patterns that require you to slide the last second. Pretty much because I can't see how else you could beat them. Oh man that last boss I can't wait to

talk about that. I also mentioned this earlier. Metal Sug 5 is the game that introduced using the D button to actually self-destruct the metal slug. It took them this many games to figure out. Like, don't have A and B together be the command that actually destroys the slug because it kept happening to people. They had this fourth button on the Neo Geo the whole time for the last seven years, and they just figured it out.

Metal Slug 5 has a lot about it that I like, that I appreciate. I don't think it's a great game. I think it's quite flawed, but... People love the music. The big bosses have a chunkiness to them that's almost high-definition chunkiness. Does that make sense? Sure. Like the graphic style is slightly different.

The bosses seem to pop that tank that kind of rives up on its back, kind of on the back of its treads on the first stage. It looks chunkier than anything that's ever appeared in a metal slug game before. There's like that boss that's a big walker climbing down the side of a building that you're that's so cool the final boss is one of the most insane things I've ever seen it's ridiculous how impressive it is also one of the most inexplicable

because there's no real explanation for it there's plot at the end of the first stage and he just sort of stopped doing it well because yeah five was kind it's another game that was kind of rushed like they were under this deadline to get it out and they were

trying to do some new stuff like they drew a bunch of new enemies. I guess they were like edits of the soldiers, but kind of re-drew them a bit. Like, you have a bunch of new enemies. And yeah, like, I guess they wanted like some, some plot thing with the, uh, with the guy who finds the mask at the end of stage one. Like I've, I think like people found like unused sprites of him piloting whatever that that big dragon thing is at the end or whatever. Like they were going to do something with that, but they just kind of, they just kind of ran out of time. So you have this this big final boss. It's this, this giant. dragon that turns into a skull face

and then, you know, you shoot it a bunch and then it just takes off and that's it. What did I do? There's no death animation. There's no, oh, I've been defeated. It just leaves. It just leaves. It just goes away. I like me. I have a soft spot for media that's about demons summoning and things like that.

You know, satanic rituals and things like that to summon demons. And I always interpreted this as the guy with the masks summons this thing at the end. They don't show that. It's just total head cannon. But then when you beat it, what you're actually doing is driving it off.

So it's like, no, it's not worth this. I'll go back where I came from. And that's my interpretation of it. So for me, I kind of dig it because I'm into that kind of thing. But not, I want to say into that kind of thing, I don't mean actually summoning them that would be absurd. So I really like

that final boss, especially the fact when you see it in the background and it's like got a big, it's got like a big side, hasn't it? like almost death from Castlevania. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then you get the huge projectiles come down with, again, with the, and then

when it comes up in the foreground and there's that big skull in its body, almost like the cosmos, it's almost like something out of it's like a kind of, I hate to say it, but it's like a catholic thing almost, you know, it's, it's like something for another world, and I kind of think that's really cool. And the fact that don't explain it

almost makes it cooler. I can see that. It's just like, no, here we go. you go here's the final boss it's a demon not explaining it and at the end it flies off and not explain that either it's really good for people who like to formulate their own stories in their heads like I do

but I know I like this game I love the look of the visuals I thought that the slide while underused was a cool kind of thing to add and I thought the difficulty of this one while it was higher than four didn't reach the heights of success

that three did so yeah I dig a of Slug 5. It's fun. I just feel like it's another game that doesn't really have like a coherent vision of what it wants to be. Like it's kind of all over the place. It's always felt weird to me that it starts with an auto

scroller. Like you're on a boat shooting that stuff. It just feels weird that you're, you start the game in an auto scroller where you can actually fall off the canoe and die in the water, of course. And that just feels like another weird way to start the game. I thought it was cool that they had,

And, instantly, don't correct me because I know, they'd made a new entrance for the soldiers to have them swinging in on vines. Then I found out that's actually in Metal Slub 3 on the first stage, and a route I never take. So, yeah, that was a disappointing discovery. I don't know. There are some cool things, but at the same time, like, it has one really awful boss that's some of those really awful for. from 1CC runs, the sand submarine on stage four. Oh, yeah, that sucks. That sucks. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. It's like a bad version of that one from X,

I think, that shoots the mines up onto the land. Yeah, but it takes up so much room and just fills the screen with missiles falling down, and there's kind of some randomness to it. It's, it's, I don't like that boss. Nobody likes that boss. Yeah, it wouldn't be a most of a game if there wasn't at least one completely unfair boss. So at the top of the show, I mentioned I had, I only had specific arcade memories of one of the metal slugs. And it turns out it's Metal Slug 6. Metal Slug 6 came out in arcades in 2006.

So it's the first post-Neo-Geo Metal Slug. I think it's on a Thomas Wave, probably. It is, yeah. One of the few games there is, yeah. And the big move was, yeah, they brought back Ralph and Clark from K-O-F, and they even have the special moves from K-O-F. So as Clark, you can do the Super Argentinian Backbreaker on just random guys, to throw up in the air and back-break them, which is cute, you know?

He looks really happy doing it. Yeah. They added special things for every character. The characters now had different properties. They added different moves to them and stuff and stuff like that. So I, in particular, I saw this at a round one here in Osaka. I was actually there in Spocha, which is like they're sort of like pay once and just play all you want kind of plans. So this was a machine, was on free play.

And I was there with my son, who was very young at the time. And we just, we just sort of messed around a little bit. And I was like, oh, cool, the Air Warriors are back. And then I was like kind of playing. I was like, well, these specials. moves aren't that useful in a game where you have to, like, shoot things, you know? Like, I know doing this, doing the moves, like, builds it your combo me really, really fast, but ultimately, this is a game about shooting things, so I can't, it's really hard to focus on,

I can't back break a tank, you know what I'm saying? I can't break a tank. I forget which one it is, but either Ralph or Clark has an extra hit point, which is very useful. Ralph. Ralph does? Yeah, that makes sense. They're very useful in, like, particular circumstances.

is like Ralph has the Vulcan punch where it's like the mash punch in K-O-F and like using that against like certain tanks can do a lot of damage and so it's useful for that Clark's backbreaker is it yeah it's not very it's not very useful

in terms of like destroying stuff but for but for playing for score like you can only use Clark like Clark like completely breaks the scoring system in that game because if you keep doing the backbreaker on enemies the the amount of points you get keeps going up and the game has this new thing where there's like a multiplier at the bottom

where like when you keep killing enemies it goes up from like times one to two four eight and maxes at 16 and they start throwing coins everywhere there's like a whole thing in stage one like there's this very specific secret you have to activate like by killing these these bats that are on the screen and nothing else and if you do that like all these soldiers come down and you can just keep tossing them into the air with Clark because he has eye frames after it so he can't be killed So you just keep doing that and you completely break the scoring apart. So, yeah, it's cool that, like, they differentiated, like, every character. Like, each character is, like, a completely different experience.

Like, yeah, Clark has the backbreaker. Ralph has the Vulcan Punch and he can take one hit before dying, which is pretty major. But, like, the big thing is, like, they reduce the amount of ammo you get for, like, most weapons, unless you're playing Fio because she gets, like, more ammo. Hmm. And she gets a free every machine gun. And then like Ari gets more powerful grenades And she tosses them like a fastball

They just like fly across the screen Oh yeah you can throw them in direction they can't You're up straight up and indirectly dragling stuff Marco gets like a more powerful pistol He basically has a cannon for a pistol So when you don't have a weapon He can do a lot of damage It feels like Tarma has like the least useful thing

Which is like vehicles can take more damage Or like they can take more damage And they can do more damage And he also has the ability to hold down the button and lock the firing direction in place instead of having to move it around or whatever. That's pretty good. I don't know. It felt like Tarma was like the worst choice. I've heard like Marco might be the easiest to once you see the game with once you've, I haven't once you see it yet.

But like Marco like just kind of does more damage with his base shot. Because like at first I thought, well, pick Ralph because he can take two hits. But like he doesn't have any of the other buffs. Like he doesn't get more ammo or he doesn't have more more powerful gun. He just has the Vulcan punch. But it's nice that you have all these options. Like they finally differentiated the characters after all this time. Oh, and that's the other thing.

Like they, because it runs on a Thomas Wave hardware, the Thomas Wave has five buttons instead of four. And whenever S&K like made games on the Atomis Wave, they were like determined to use all five buttons. And so like there's one button that's like a, if you hold it down, it's like a dedicated melee attack button. So if you hold down the D button, which is like the light kick button,

if you're thinking in like street fighter terms, you hold that button down and then you press the A button. That's like locks it so you only do melee attacks instead of, instead of punches or instead of shots, I mean. And therefore get more points, I guess. And then you have a button for like weapon switching.

So you can actually like store two different weapons and switch between them on the fly. And I, I'm not really, yeah, I'm not really a fan of that because that like, it makes you feel like you have to spend more time, memorizing, like, which weapons you need for certain spots. Because, like, there's that new weapon, the Zibatsu, that sword thing that's really powerful.

And, like, it gives you more, like, room to, like, experiment and figure out, like, do I want to save this weapon and use it on a boss or this mid-boss or whatever? But it just becomes this extra layer of complexity that I'm not, wasn't really a fan of at the time. I didn't really like this one for various reasons. I think that there's something about the autonomous wave that makes the backgrounds and terrain look uninteresting. Oh, it looks, yeah. If you look at this, the whole thing this looks flat.

I feel like, you know, there's a flying stage, and it looks like you're just flying past this gif of just, like, you know, some waves in the background and like a cloud pattern. Like, it's totally, yeah. There is stuff I do like, like some of the hidden alternate routes are fun to find. Like, there's one, I think, on the first level where you climb, You almost have to climb a sort of mesa in the background, and it's actually quite

difficult, but it's rewarding if you do and it's fun. Mostly because you've got a tank by then, so you're platforming in a tank, which is always fun. But other than that, it just feels like here's another metal slug game, unfortunately it's, I feel like

they've gone back into the kind of credit-munching difficulty of three, a little bit. But then again, I am no expert. I do not play to one credit clear, so I can only get by my own experience. And for me, I thought this game was just kind of too hard and in a not fun way, but nowhere near as bad as six, sorry, as three was.

Yeah, it's weird because I haven't, like, spent the time, like, trying to learn to one CC this yet, because, like, I respect the game for, like, actually, like, differentiating the characters and all that. But, uh, yeah, like, there's just something about, like, the levels that just make it, there's a there's some weird secrets in this game you have to learn to like make certain items appear like i don't even i don't even know all the details i've i've watched replays and i don't even remember them but like it doesn't it hasn't really clicked with me and like i keep meaning to like go back and and play it some more to like try to try to see if it clicks but it it it still hasn't

yet i don't know it's it's a weird game and it's also um if we're not talking emulation here I think it's one of the more difficult ones to actually play, if only because I think that when it was first brought over it was on the Metal Slug Anthology and that isn't an ideal way to play any Metal Slug game

is my understanding. I think Six may have been slightly better in terms of input lag because it was actually a direct port. Am I wrong about this? I don't know. Because you can buy Metal Slug 6 for PS2

on PS3, on Japanese PS3, or you can buy the Metal Slug Anthology that has it on, but the Metal Slug Anthology has horrifying input luck on the PS2 version. And especially if you're playing it through a PS4

or 5, it's a nightmare. So to play Metal Slug 6, you can either emulate it, which isn't that easy because of the whole atomus wave thing. It genuinely is not that easy to do. Or you can buy one of the obscure other versions of it, So it's not as accessible as many of the other games, unfortunately, which are on Arcade archives.

Atomus Wave emulation's kind of gotten better, like, the version of Flycast that that Fightcade uses is pretty good for, like, playing it, I guess. It's been ported to Dreamcast as well, which is, you know. I was just going to say, I was thinking of all the, the Atomswave games that have been ported to Dreamcast lately. I was like, surely Metal Slug 6 is on their list, so yes. Yeah, it is on the list. So there is that, that is one way to do it, yeah. I only say it's not as easy because you can't just get it on maim, you can't just get it like... Yeah, and they don't sell it on the arcade...

That's an arcade Classics Archives port on the PSN or Switch and all that. No, and I wish they did, because I'd like to have that on the Switch. All the Neo GeoSlog games are there and can be purchased, but not that one. And they run, I think they run really, really well as well, really good ports. Yeah, they do good work on the ports. Well, Metal Slug 6 was the end of the arcades for Metal Slug because Metal Slug 7 debuted on the Nintendo DS in 2008. Well, a load of old crap.

And then it got a quick, it got a quick rebrand remake as Metal Slug XX on PSP, which has since been ported to XBLA. So it's probably, you could probably still buy it on Xbox if you want it. This is easily the one I've played the least of, and I think the least about. Stuart, help us. Oh, I don't like it. I think it sucks even. I mean, the fact they launched it,

although the fact they launched it on the DS was just a kind of a, what are you doing moment, really. It's single player, right? It's fine, but I don't, I'm not sure about that. I think it probably is. All I know is it looks like, it looks like garbage, because they've squashed all the graphics up to fit the DS. And, you know, on the one hand,

it's a relatively full-futured metal slug game that runs on the DS. that's kind of cool, you know. On the other hand, it's really boring. Like, it's really uninteresting, and there's nothing about it that stands out to me. And even the XX version, where you're playing it on your PC or Xbox or whatever, it's essentially just kind of polishing a turd. It's a nicer looking version of the DS game, therefore it's still the DS game, therefore it's not that fun to me.

It's not terrible. Like all the amount of Slug games, even the worst ones, I think, have something about them that I like. but I don't see why I should be nice to it for belonging to a series that I like. It's not very good. I don't recommend it at all. I still, you know, I'd play three over it, I think, just because it's got some visual invention to it,

and this one, XX doesn't. There's nothing new at all. It's all from six, except it's not even as impressive looking as six, so I don't even know why it's a direct sequel. I don't know why they just didn't call it out of Slug DS or something. Yeah, or make a fun. It's like the Sonic Force situation, you know?

Like, oh yeah, this is the superior sequel to Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Is it, Sega? Is it really? That's, anyway, I'll save that for my episode, which is just me yelling at Sega for two hours. I look forward to being on that and just listening and laughing in the background. Oh, no one else will be on it. It will just be me.

Just you? Just you in the voice. Yeah, I'm screaming. Well, I think we've reached the end of the slugs, honestly. Metal slug didn't die, of course. Metal slugs still exists. But honestly, at this point, it's sort of this weird sort of property they bandy about there's metal there's metal slug uh smartphone games there are metal slug tactics

games there's a metal slug facebook game isn't one of them really lucrative isn't one of them being really popular and lucrative metal slug defense maybe i think i think that one's doing pretty well i see a lot of updates about it so it was yeah they started with like metal slug defense and then they they stopped that and made a new game that was basically metal slug attack which was basically the same thing, but they made it way grindier that you had to, like, grind for materials to get stuff. And then they, they started introducing, like, all these new, like, they were, like, usually these female characters,

Wifu bait to, like, get people to... I see. To spend money for those. And I guess it was doing well for them. I don't know. I tried it. It wasn't really for, I don't know. It was too grinding.

They are making a new metal slug, aren't they? A new 2D metal slug is supposed to spend the way. No, wait. It's not 2D. I think we've seen footage of it, and they've made it like 2.5D or something. Am I imagining that? I'm sure I remember seeing a trailer for a 2.5. Well, they're making some kind of new game.

I know there's Metal Slug Tactics coming from Dot Emu. It says TBA on Steam, so it has a Steam page, but it doesn't have a date. But you've got to figure that given what's going on with S&K recently, the fact that they, you know, they made KOF15, they made a new Samurai shoutdown a few years ago. They seem to be getting back, you know, after years of just licensing out their names, they seem to be getting back into the dev business, at least. So you've got to figure Metal Slug is going to be on whatever list of things they have to bring back, you know? I'm certain that I've seen a 2.5D. Well, maybe it was not a mobile game or something. I know I've certainly seen plenty of indie games that look like Meadow Slug.

You know, people like to make Contra games. People also like to make Otel Slug games. Obviously, they can't compete with the level of animation and art detail. But I've seen my share at Bits Summit of games that are like, oh, this person clearly loves Metal Slug, and they made this game that looks like it. So I definitely appreciate the fact that, you know, we may never see a Metal Slug 8, but in other hand,

I don't know that we need a Metal Slug 8 because we can play something else. Yeah. As far as legacies go, I mean, some of these characters appear, I know, is it Marco or Tarma, who's in NeoGeo Battle Coliseum? Marco.

Marco. Marco. And I feel like Fio is, is she one of the another strikers in K.O. 2000? I think Fio was in MaxxM. K-O-F maximum impact, too, as well. Impact. Oh, right. Those games.

Which also had a training stage where you beat up a metal slug tank. Ha! That is good. That's a good idea. I am the only personal planet who thinks maximum impact two is awesome. And I only think it's awesome because of all the NeoGeo fan service in there, which is lots. I enjoy the cover of the S-Saka, the stage, the stage music. But I think we've reached the end of the battle here. Um, so... Mission all over?

The end, mission, all over. You're still in my outro bit, but no. As far as, if you wanted to play metal song today, you actually have a lot of options. Six is maybe the hardest one, but yeah, there's been a variety of compilations. Most of them are being sold a la carte on arcade archives or Steam. Uh, I think depending on what region you're in, the NeoGeo Mini has them. Uh, that NeoGeo arcade stick, that big thing they sell on Amazon, that has some, Net metal slug games on it.

Hold up, quick word of warning. Do not buy any Steam port that's sold by DotMU because they made some awful, awful ports of the, of NeoGeo games. Like, they're, the, I think the Metal Slug and Metal Slug 3, like, they just have, they don't run at the right frame rate. The sound chops up. They're not good ports. Yeah, like, I actually have like the Steam port of Shock Troopers and it's just like one of the worst things. I tried to

write a review for it, and it was so scathing that I had to, like, cut it down four times to get it into the Steam, like, character limit. Anything that's, like, published by DotMU for the NeoGeo on Steam is bad, and you should not buy it. I mean, they've got in there.

They're kind of turning things around. Like, they published, like, they just published the TMNT Shredders Revenge, and that's pretty fun. I was playing that. That was pretty good, but didn't they publish streets of range four? as well. That too. Yeah. Windjammers too, also. And they're also, I think they're behind the upcoming Metal Slug

Tactics game. Yes. We mentioned that. Yeah, but if you're but if you want to buy and support the original NeoGeo games, look for the arcade class archives versions, the ACA ports that are on Switch, PSN, Xbox. I think they're on the Windows store also. Those are the

ones you want. If you want to play... They just don't have online play, which is a problem. If you want to play Metal Slug 6, it's easy. Simply get a PS3, create a Japanese account for it, buy some yen, buy a time cards, attach the end to your console, buy a Metal Slug 6, and it's standalone port. What's the problem? Just go and do it now. Anyone could. So our final thoughts, it sounds like you two both agree that Metal Slug 1 is the best Metal Slug. Is that how you feel about that? Oh, hell yeah. Hell yes. Yeah. King. Best game in the series by far for me.

Well, I'm still partial to X because, like you said, that's the one that struck me the most, and I've spent the most time with it, but certainly I do appreciate, you know, the cohesiveness of one, you know, they had an idea, they went all out for it, they made this incredible-looking 2D game at a time when 2D was already sort of being looked at

with side eyes, so I really respect them for that. I hope, you know, part of me hopes Metal Sunk returns, but I also know that in this day and age, I don't know that if it came back it would necessarily look or feel the same. So maybe it's okay to let it go.

You know, I let go of a lot of things. Yeah. It's like I said, I just felt like a lot of general fatigue of the engine they were using for all the 2D games. So if they do something new in like 2.5D or whatever, and like it ends up being pretty, if it feels good, yeah, I'm all for it. But that remains to be seen. Before we go, can I say one more thing really quickly? Yes. The Neo-Juio pocket color, the metal slug games are awesome and you should play them. Thanks. Yes, I'm sorry. We didn't have time to get into all the other games, the spinoff games.

You know, there was a 3D version of the PS2. There are a lot of other metal slugs out there. Oh, man. This core series, this core series, as we know it, was the focus of our episode today. Oh, I should mention my name. The patron, Alan Berry. Patron Alan Berry requested this episode. Thank you so much, Alan, for supporting retronauts. And we appreciate that. And we hope this about your satisfaction. We hope you don't love Metal Slug 3. So you can write to Stu. Stu will read all your messages and respond to them in longhand. I will, yes. And he'll make judgments about you.

Dear Alan, oh, I love middle slug three. I think it's great. I love Stuart Chip. All right, actual ending time. Let's start. Please, Lord VBH, tell people one last time about you on the internet where people can find you. Twitch.tv slash Lord BBAH. Yeah, I do a stream of at least a few times a week, usually our kids.

games. I like to go for one-credit clears on stuff, and I also do that Neo-Rankmasters stream where I'm just going through the entire NeoGeo library. That's usually every Monday at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern, I kind of alternate between the 1CCBH and the Neo-Rankmasters,

and I'll do some other streams during the week usually, but that's kind of my thing. I also put like all the archives on YouTube if you just search for Lord BBAH, you'll probably be able to find them. And are you also on Twitter. I am on Twitter. Lord B.B.H. All right.

Stu? Yes. Sorry. On Twitter at Stupacabra. You can find my writing on Rattronauts on Nintendo Life Push Square, Rock Paper, Shotgun, Retro Magazine, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And also, because I'm not going to get another chance to plug this, my webcomic, Maryheller, is about the start again. Maryhillcom.com.com.

Please go and read it. Thanks. Thank you, Stu. And this has been a Retronauts. So if you, please, again, thank you to Alan Barry. If you'd like to be more like Alan Barry, you can support us on patreon.com slash Retronauts for $3 a month. You get episodes one week early and they're at a higher audio quality. If you pay $5 a month, which is just $2 more, you get two bonus episodes every month

and you get weekly columns from me. And I read you the columns, not in person. I record them. but you can play them in bed if it makes you feel better. Oh, I do. Speaking of which, me, if you like me or you just want to listen to me more, you can follow me on Twitter and Twitch. I need to get back into Twitch, but F-E-I-T, it's my last name,

CLU-B, it's a regular English word, Fight Club. And I think we should just, yeah, let's throw a gun in the water and call this a podcast. So good night, everybody. Good night. Rocket launch, yeah. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.