by [name redacted] and tim rogers

I don’t know if this report even went live on the site. If so, it’s buried in the infrastructure. If not, well, that sort of thing happens at Insert Credit HQ. Either way, it’s here now.

Good gracious! How did this slip through the cracks?

At E3, SNK had a nonplayable demo up of their upcoming Metal Slug game for the GBA. For whatever reason, it seems I’m one of the few people to actually get a solid look at it. (Brandon didn’t even know what I was talking about.)

MSA is an altogether original game, supposedly from the original Metal Slug team. Rather than follow the arcade games in their straight-out sidescrolling shootyness, this game seems to more follow the model of the NGPC entries in the series. That is to say, it takes the form of a nonlinear side-story of sorts. There’s to be more of a focus on exploration and whatnot, crossed with the traditional flavour of Metal Slug action. For example, one scene that I saw reminded me a bit of the NES version of Bionic Commando.

The game hosts a new set of main characters, too. They’re not all that thrilling, from what I saw; basically, imagine a guy who looks suspiciously like Tarma but who technically isn’t Tarma. And who is wearing a blank shirt. What we’ve got here are some slight sprite edits, as in Metal Slug 4. Frankly, the new guys are… kind of bland, to my eye. For sprite edits, this shouldn’t, and doesn’t surprise me. Neither does it bother me, overly.

The reason this doesn’t bother me is that, in terms of presentation, this game just looks great. The graphics seem to be ripped more or less directly out of the original NeoGeo games, with a bit of modification. The framerate was pretty choppy (actually, that’s the element which most sticks in my mind out of the whole demo), but the build on show also had to have been darned early. I was impressed that they even had the game running.

The slowdown did made it difficult for me to get much of a grasp on the animation. It seemed pretty decent, but it’s just hard to tell; it was like watching an emulated game with the frameskip set too high. Even so, I spotted all of the typical flourishes that one associates with the series. The main characters breathed and went through their silly idle animations. Enemy soldiers didn’t like being shot. Big things blew up. All rather satisfying and comforting.

From what was shown, this looks like it’s on its way to become a rather substantial game. We’ll make an effort to absorb some more information or screens from SNK. Stay tuned.