This Week in Retro: Metal Slug 3 Pulls Up a Rocket Lawn Chair (Patreon)

March 23, 2000: SNK Invites Us On a Third Close Encounter (Bring Your Shotgun)

by Diamond Feit

Thanks to their arcade/home hybrid hardware system, the Neo•Geo, SNK became famous in the ’90s for embracing the fighting game boom. The platform was responsible for some of the best examples the genre ever had to offer. But to call the Neo•Geo a "fighting game system" ignores the console's impressive coverage of other genres, particularly one that remained popular in Japan throughout the ’80s and ’90s: Shooters. The standout shooter on the Neo•Geo was Metal Slug, a 1996 run-and-gun game whose over-the-top action was outdone only by its over-the-top 2D animation. Metal Slug was a rare third-party Neo•Geo game (yes, they existed), produced by Nazca Corporation... although that team would soon be assimilated into SNK, where they would turn Metal Slug into a long-running series. And it was 20 years ago this week that they produced their fourth and "final" entry, Metal Slug 3.

The Metal Slug games tell a loosely defined story of a battle against a fascist army in the not-so-distant future (#relatable); but with little in-game dialogue to speak of, it's really about shooting your way through ever-thickening waves of increasingly-dangerous enemies until the game says you can stop. In the first three installments, the battle begins with human enemies before slowly raising the stakes. In Metal Slug 3, having previously established the presence of aliens in this universe, the need for subtlety is erased. From the start of Mission One, your character of choice storms a beach shooting enemy crabs and bugs, leading to an eventual chase/battle with a massive hermit crab living inside an even more massive tank. By the time the game's fifth and final mission (which is longer than the first four put together) has ended, you've successfully fought off an alien invasion by infiltrating their orbiting vessel, destroying their cloning machine, and destroying their leader during your one-way escape to Earth via freefall.

Metal Slug 3 does not feature any new weapons or playable characters, but there is a new feature introduced to increase replayability: Alternate paths. Throughout the game, players can find portals or hidden exits which change their route through the game. This does not affect the total number of missions or skip any climactic boss battles, but it can lead to vastly different experiences. For example, a lone sub is sitting idle in the first mission after clearing the beach. Jumping into the sub leads to a unique underwater area with jellyfish and gigantic eels. If the player never hops in the sub, they bypass this path entirely and never see those enemies in the rest of the game. Considering the sheer amount of effort that must go into animating every single element in a Metal Slug game, this alternate path system makes Metal Slug 3 significantly larger than any game before it, even if a single playthrough can be completed faster than the previous games.

A staple of the Metal Slug series is special transformations that afflict the heroes which initially appear to be an impediment to the player but carry certain benefits. In past games, this included gaining weight from grabbing too much food or being mummified. In Metal Slug 3, there are zombie enemies who can withstand more firepower than normal human enemies. If a zombie infects a player character, they too turn into a zombie and can no longer run, crouch, or jump as high as before. However, zombie players can, in lieu of grenades, unleash a beam attack—of blood!—from their mouth that covers nearly the entire screen. Even with decreased mobility, the added offensive power of zombification makes deliberately getting infected a common tactic in Metal Slug 3 speedruns.

Since the most cursory glance at the internet shows that Metal Slug 3 is not the last Metal Slug game, what makes it the "final" entry? It's not a matter of storytelling canon, even though whichever character the player picks throws their gun away at the end of the game. No, Metal Slug 3 was the last game in the series made by SNK before the company went bankrupt in 2001. While Metal Slug games would continue to be made after that date, development was handled by Noise Factory, which means none of the original Nazca team were part of the process. Today the series primarily exists in the form of Metal Slug Attack, a smartphone game, and through re-releases of older games on modern systems; there has been no new entry in the series since 2009.

While the series' inertness is disappointing, the good news is that Metal Slug 3 is available on Steam, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, in addition to being bundled on SNK's Neo•Geo Mini and Arcade Stick Pro. And with SNK seemingly recovered from bankruptcy and getting back into video game development, surely Metal Slug is on the list of revival projects: Metal Slug shlooter, anyone? It would be more dignified than Metal Slug pachinko…