Get to the end of the level unscathed and with plenty of freed hostages and you’ll get rewarded with lots of bonus points.Īlthough there is some re-use of previous Metal Slug backgrounds, it is nowhere near as blatant as Slug 4’s use of old graphic assets, and is usually fairly brief. If you get killed during a level you’ll lose all the hostages you’ve saved up to that point. As standard you’re armed with a pistol with infinite ammo, and ten grenades, but there are plenty of power-ups to collect on the way by destroying certain enemies, or, in the main, rescuing hostages. Each credit gives you three lives, and it’s still one-hit and you’re dead. Gameplay is straightforward run-and-gun, and anyone familiar with the previous games will feel instantly at home. Then it’s straight into the action as our heroes battle against the Ptolemaic Army who are generally up-to-no-good and have stolen plans for the Metal Slug super vehicle. The story is a bit thin, but gives us a reunion of our favourite Slug characters, meaning Player 1 and Player 2 can choose to play as either Marco, Tarma, Eri or Fio (Nadia and Trevor from Slug 4 aren’t mentioned – no great loss there). Which is a good thing, as this was the last Metal Slug game to be released on the Neo-Geo hardware, and not only did it get the standard MVS and AES releases, SNK Playmore also provided the game in a very nice JAMMA kit and produced home ports for the PlayStation 2 and X-Box. Therefore, most of the features introduced by Mega Enterprise are removed and the game looks and plays in a considerably more polished manner than Slug 4.
#Metal slug neo geo series#
The question was though, who was programming this new Slug game and would it do the series justice, unlike its predecessor?įortunately, Metal Slug 5 was programmed jointly in-house and by Noise Factory (the Japanese developer behind the brilliant Sengoku 2001 and Rage of the Dragons). Out sourced to a little known Korean developer called Mega Enterprise, Metal Slug 4 was a patched together effort which resembled more of a Mugen-style hack than a professionally accomplished product.Īfter the grandeur of Metal Slug 3, Metal Slug 4 was nothing short of disappointing.Īt 13 years old, the tried and trusted Neo-Geo MVS hardware was starting to show its age, so it came as pleasant surprise when Metal Slug 5 was announced, and launched into arcades in late 2003.
Sadly its development was caught up in the turmoil of SNK’s collapse and its re-emergence as Playmore (later to be SNK Playmore). Let’s not mess about here, Metal Slug 4 was awful.