The Video Game Critic

Here's a new set of Neo Geo reviews. Can't believe it took me so long to review Metal Slug.
The remaining Metal Slug reviews are on the way.
Treasure of the Caribbean is a lot of fun!
Comments?

I always thought Metal Slug 3 was the best in the series, if not one of the best arcade games ever. The over-the-top action is brought to its logical extreme, there's a ton of variety in just about everything up to and including the paths you can take through each stage, and the final level is a glorious celebration of the series up to that point (though it does take up a full half of the game, which is a bit grating). Reportedly, it was meant to be the grand finale of the series since SNK was going bankrupt at the time, and it shows.

Great reviews. Just looking at the image for Metal Slug made me want to kick some ass. It gets me every time I see that SNK The Future is Now screen. And I love that the game is really hard, because it's so fun to try to beat it on one continue or without dying. And really, it's great to see it for the Neo Geo, because it's really shows what a great library it had. And I'm psyched to see the other ones reviewed too. Also, I'm interested in checking out some of the Neo Geo's puzzle games like the Magical Drop series, and this Treasure of the Caribbean looks cool.

I agree that ms3 is the best in the series. I've never owned a neo geo but the Xbox port was hard. They only gave you like 3 continues and 3 lives. When you'd lose your three lives you'd have to go back to the start of a stage. That was really frustrating on the final stage which was really long. Took me months to clear it.

Anyway great reviews. It's nice to see neo geo reviews. One of the few main systems I've never owned. My goal is to get one when I get to a point where I feel like I have no other big games to collect for a majority of my older systems (it could be A while).

Metal Slug still remains an awesome game to this day, the Neo Geo had some of the best 2D artwork of all time and the Slug games are a great example of that. I know a lot of people love MS3, but really it's far too long. I've played through it before and the last stage especially is so long that you lose interest. It was made at a time when SNK as we knew it was going under, so it's a great swan song, but I really don't want to revisit the game due to its length. That all said, I think MSX is the highlight of the series. People will argue about MS2 vs MSX, but even if the slowdown in MS2 wasn't a factor, I still think MSX is the superior game. MS4 and MS5 aren't really necessary to own, but still fun games. MS4 being the weakest in the library IMO.

And for Neo CD owners, the exclusives on the MS and MS2 CDs are pretty fun even though the cost of those CDs has gotten a little nuts. Needless to say Metal Slug is one of my favorite game franchises.

jon wrote:Also, I'm interested in checking out some of the Neo Geo's puzzle games like the Magical Drop series, and this Treasure of the Caribbean looks cool.

Treasure is an interesting release, built upon unfinished source code from a prototype. It's mainly for completists as it should mostly be considered a homebrew release.

As for the Magical Drop games, all you need is MD3, I wouldn't bother with MD2. It's a good game, but MD3 is better. Puzzle Bobble/Bust A Move is a must have, it's readily available cheap even though a lot of the carts are bootlegs because it was so popular in arcades. There's a sequel available, I used to have it but don't remember it that well. Puzzle de Pon is redundant if you own Puzzle Bobble. Money Puzzle Exchanger and Twinkle Star Sprites are great games, but will cost you these days. I wish I hadn't sold my copies years ago. Puzzled/Joy Joy Kid is probably more for puzzle die hards. There's also Pop n Bounce, but I haven't played that one yet.

One thing I like about Metal Slug is that if you get hit once you're dead. I can't recall many other games like that and I'm sure we're all so used to FPS's where it takes so many shots to get killed. In a weird way it makes the Metal Slug games more realistic than other games. It's super intense trying to avoid getting hit knowing that it only takes one shot to kill you. And also, when you're playing Metal Slug, it just feels super intense and heavy, the explosions and sound effects are really crazy and it feels like you've got all that firepower. And with the WW2 vibe, it just feels kind of realistic compared to other games. I'm definitely looking forward to the other reviews.

Slight error: Metal Slug was released in 1996, not 1994.

Not sure I posted about this, but both Slug reviews allude to the fact that Metal Slug X was on the PSX in 2001. Metal Slug X was originally a Neo Geo game brought out to "fix" what was wrong with MS2, namely the slowdown. There were 6 Slug games on the Neo Geo platform: MS1, MS2, MSX, MS3, MS4 and MS5.