Games of the Abstract: Metal Slug X (1998)

 

a.k.a. Metal Slug 2

Developer: SNK

Publisher: SNK

One or Two Player

Arcade / Neo Geo / Neo Geo CD / PlayStation / Saturn / PlayStation 2 / PSP / Wii / Windows / PSN /  iOS / Android

 

This, the sequel of the first Metal Slug arcade run-and-gunner from 1996, is the first game properly "made" by SNK, when fascinatingly the developer for the original is the Nazca Corporation, only published by SNK. This is a minor technicality in the history of the franchise, as the Nazca Corporation would in 1996 be acquired to become part of SNK themselves, and thus continue the franchise for the first few games by 2000 as part of the company where the franchise is marked to.

Considering this franchise managed multiple sequels even after they were bought by Playmore in 2001, a company founded by the founder who left the company beforehand, shows the company succeeded in creating something with a legacy through just these games in their catalogue. I will admit the first of these games was Metal Slug 5 (2003), which in the United Kingdom for its Playstation 2 release managed to be found at a discount even in Wilko (or "Wilkinsons" as it was named by some family), a British high-street retail chain which sells home wares and household goods. In a time among discount PS2 games they once held, even a Metal Slug sequel be superior to the shovelware that the popular console had, and I come to Metal Slug X as it would be finally known as aware that, in the era of SNK making arcade games like this to home consoles, they had a lot to put on the table in quality.

Metal Slug's title is in reference to the squat tank you can sometimes pilot in levels, part of the game franchise's world set up in the prequel of a war between two armies, which can also jump as would be hoped for a run-and-gun game not set in a flat environment. The "X" of the sequel's title, which did confuse me with less knowledge of the franchise than presumed, comes from the fact the original Metal Slug 2, when released suffered from significant problems with slow time for the arcade release¹, something which alongside other aesthetic touches SNK fixed with Metal Slug X. For the immediate sequel, you have four characters now, the two male leads, American soldier Marco and Japanese soldier Tarma, now graced with both the ability to choose any and there being two female soldiers, Eri and the character I used, the Italian soldier with glasses² Fio. In this game, there is no difference between any of them barring personality, which with the fact Fio, when you end a level, sits down calmly and even has a sandwich, immediately raises how the quality of this game is not only the game play, but also how its personality is rich and matched by exquisite animation work.

The quality of the animation and the humour are an immediate thing to point out in Metal Slug X's virtues. Metal Slug X is openly goofy, even if it manages to balance this out with some adultness, a lot of lovingly rendered gore of exploding soldiers by bullets which contrasts the cartoonish events. It manages to balance out, alongside the fact it is here, canonically, is where SNK introduces aliens into the franchise, in the last few stages, when it was a military action narrative just a game beforehand. Even when grounded, with the key way to acquire points and additional firepower found in saving hostages, who all look related as very hairy and bearded blond men here, the game has touches like these characters frolicking around and their own idiosyncrasies. Even the enemy grunts are animated to be idiosyncratic despite being one hit cannon fodder, such as being able to catch them off at a camp fire and one even lounging in a hammock in one stage.

The first level is slightly dubious, in mind to this playfulness, in hindsight that it is effectively exoticising Egypt, with its Arabia stereotypes in scimitar welding grunts alongside the usual solder characters. Thankfully that is a slight detail lost in a background to what, for the most part, is a set-up in Egypt which is not going to fall into this at all further even in that first level. You also see the virtues of this game immediately, how intuitive it is as a game even if a difficult one, with a lot of personality to add to this. The basic gameplay, as a run-and-gun, is that with standard fire and limited bombs, you need to dodge enemy fire as you can lose a life on one hit yourself. Modern releases have allowed this to have infinitive continues, which helps emphasis a better virtue that you learn, eventually, to get good and reduce continues used, maybe to the point of the ultimate challenge of finishing the game on one credit.

You have the additional weapons you can collect as in other games of this type, alongside the ability to ride vehicles. The camel you get in just the Egyptian level is, frankly, the weakest with a revolving gun but a cumbersome nature to it, especially as unlike other vehicles, the camel does not take damage for you at all. Later on, alongside the titular Metal Slug, there are vehicles that are far more interesting, and can take damage with the caveat that you just need to leave them quickly before they explode. Considering the bosses are usually huge mechanical vehicles, trying to use the camel on the first stage boss, an elaborately animated tank mass, firing giant homing missiles and shooting out flame thrower, feels like a joke and makes you happy later on the choices are more resilient.

The game, as the immediate sequel, does go for a very cartoonish adventure, as the Egyptian setup continues into the second level, into a jaunt like Indiana Jones into a pyramid. This sets up the idea that each level will have its own gimmick specific to that level, that here with mummies (and cute mummy dogs added for the Metal Slug X version) with the distinct hazard. Here, it is that if they hit you with their purple mist breath, you will be mummified. This does not kill you, and you can get an antidote, but you movement is significantly slower, which can make you a sitting duck especially as another hit of the purple mist or anything else kills you afterwards. Later on, aging less well, eating many food power ups in a market level leads to you suddenly turning huge, with bigger fire power and a fork for a melee weapon, but slow and easy to catch. In the future of Metal Slug, you will become a zombie for one level, so developers on this franchise really liked continuing this idea onwards.

The game onwards does become more "conventional", from fire fights on a train to a brawl in a Chinese market, but by then the high bar of quality in the game, as a 2D sprite arcade production, are seen. When you eventually find yourself facing mutant experiments and the staple aliens of future sequels, you also see how painstakingly put together these games by SNK were, where even the death sequences for the aliens are a macabre and carefully rendered image of them puking green blood and melting into skeletons. The virtues of the game in gameplay, whilst hard, are that you are enjoying a spectacle. It will, just for the hell of it, end a boss with them falling off the platform only to be eaten by a killer whale. There is no reason for this, but only because the creators wanted people to remember that sequence to this day. It certainly has one of the best final levels, final bosses and final moments in these types of games. Metal Slug 3 (2000), the last made before SNK's financial problems harmed them fully, almost predicted this change by ending on what is held on an ultra long conclusion. Here Metal Slug X has you and the villains from the first two games having to team together to fight the aliens, with a parody of Roland Emmerich's Independence Day (1996) transpiring, and a slapstick joke for the final moment which, personally, is one of the best finale moments for any game to have had for me.

As I returned to video games, SNK has grown in fondness for me. In 2020 and by 2022, SNK has had its controlling interests taken by the MiSK Foundation, which presents a huge moral issue of a Saudi Arabian company having economic influence on the company, with the country's human rights records being controversial. In mind that, in 2022, the country acquired 5% of Nintendo³, and this problem is going to be a constant whenever you talk of the video games industry, as any other, with whoever acquires shares, either countries or investing companies, even the management of the video game company themselves. It is sad to even have to bring this up in the review, if only because sadly this history complicates and forces conundrums on the player. In truth, a review like this and video game culture should entirely be about SNK's rich videogames history, but their financial and business history even around the time of Metal Slug X is part of their DNA and why, by 2022, the MiSK Foundation owned them.

In 1997, before the original Metal Slug 2 was released, the Neo-Geo CD and the cartridge based system it followed on from, the Neo-Geo AES, were discontinued in 1997 together. Both were hardware by SNK with the AES one of the most expensive consoles ever in the cost of the machine, its software, and how it was designed to marry the arcade and the home, even to the point you could have a memory card to save games played in an arcade and bring the data home to the console version. The Neo Geo Pocket, a handheld console, would be released in 1998 as Metal Slug X was, only to be followed by a Colour version in 1999. Considering that in October 22, 2001, SNK filed for bankruptcy⁴. Theirs is a tragic case of an arcade giant whose games were admired, and those consoles have a cult legacy, but were by the 2000s in a world of Playstations, Nintendo 64s and Gameboys. Considering they were first bought by Playmore in 2001, a company founded by the founder Eikichi Kawasaki, who left the company beforehand⁵, the franchise of Metal Slug accidentally found itself, alongside SNK's other games, within a history of a company from their earlier legacy, starting in 1978, to Chinese firm Ledo Millennium acquiring SNK in 2015⁵, and then eventually with MiSK Foundation doing so. Metal Slug X, for me, was a delightful action game, but we do have an issue that real life, whilst fascinating, also exists for a game like this to take into consideration.

For such reasons, if you wish to play the game, at least it is a great game where, yes, they animated a boss being devoured by a killer whale and lovingly rendered it to be as ridiculous as it is awesome. Moments like that sooth from the harsher truths of how any industry work.

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1) Taken from Hardcore Gaming 101's Metal Slug 2 entry.

2)  In Japanese anime and manga, there is the trope of "megane", of incredibly attractive people who wear glasses, which is unisex and definitely applies to Fio as a character design in one touch.

3) Taken from 5% Of Nintendo Is Now Owned By Saudi Arabia, published on May 18th 2022 by IGN, written by Ryan Dinsdale.

4) Taken from A Sign Of The Times: Game Over For SNK, originally published on November 3rd 2001 for IGN.

5) Taken from Chinese investors acquire SNK Playmore, published on August 7th 2015 for MCVUK.com.