Metal Black (Saturn) [Archive] - Retrogaming Roundtable

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Iron Draggon

03-08-2006, 03:00 PM

FINALLY! After many months of what I thought was a futile search, I actually found myself a factory sealed copy of the ORIGINAL version of this game, and NOT the very common Saturn Collection reissue! And it didn't cost me any more than a factory sealed copy of the reissue usually goes for!

I can't believe that I was on ebay searching for it again at the right time to catch this baby right after it was posted! And I even had more than enough money to jump all over the BIN on it too! I always thought that if it ever did finally show up for me, I would be flat broke and have to decide what to sell to be able to get it, but I had plenty of money!

OK, on to the game itself now, this has to be the most unusual SHMUP that I've ever played in my life. It's very obvious that the developers didn't quite know what to do with it, so they just went wild with experimental ideas for it.

It's hard to believe that this game began its existence as Darius 3, and ended up as Gun Frontier 2, when it has so little in common with either Darius or Gun Frontier. I can see the Darius influence in it, and even a little bit of Gradius and R-Type and BioMetal thrown in for good measure, but aside from the storyline, this game has nothing at all in common with Gun Frontier. I guess they just thought that it would do better as a sequel to a previous game than it would do on its own, and as unusual as it is, they were probably right. I probably wouldn't have bought it if it wasn't supposed to be the sequel to Gun Frontier myself.

Anyhow, the Newalone collecting feature is a neat idea, but rather distracting, especially with so many enemies coming at you with cheap shots that are hard to discern from the Newalone molecules when there's alot of things onscreen, which is most of the time. So it's a very strategic SHMUP to say the least. I ran out of continues before I even got halfway through the game. So it will be a long time before I ever finish it, if I can even do so with limited continues.

But, at least now I've finally filled in what I considered to be a huge gaping hole in my Saturn import collection. Now the only other huge gaping hole that I still need to fill in is the one where Radiant Silvergun goes, but unfortunately that may take me years of saving up for before I'm finally able to spend the amount of money required to obtain a factory sealed copy. So for now, I'm done with Saturn SHMUPS.

Captain Wrong

03-09-2006, 11:48 AM

Nice one. I've been wating to check this one out for a while.

devilman

03-09-2006, 07:43 PM

Just out of interest, why do your Saturn games need to be factory sealed if you're going to open them up anyway? Or do you have two copies of the game?

Iron Draggon

03-09-2006, 08:49 PM

Just out of interest, why do your Saturn games need to be factory sealed if you're going to open them up anyway? Or do you have two copies of the game?

Because I'm very anal that way. All my games for all my systems were all bought brand new, with the exception of very few Genesis games that I simply couldn't find new, so I don't want to break my tradition. Plus that's the only way to make sure that mint complete is indeed mint complete, and also to make sure that my discs will have no scratches.

Yes, I know I'm crazy to pay way more than original retail for old factory sealed games, just to open them up and play them, but I look at it this way: If I had bought them brand new way back in the day, I would've opened them up and played them anyhow, so I'm not really doing anything any differently than I would've done it years ago, it just costs me alot more to do it now. But there are very few games that I wanted to buy way back in the day that I still haven't gotten around to buying yet, so it all evens out.

Plus, only allowing myself to buy them brand new makes it alot harder to find them, which makes collecting them alot more fun and alot more satisfying. I could've gotten a used copy of the original version of this game years ago, or I could've gotten a new copy of the reissue years ago, but where's the challenge in that? This was alot harder to do.

devilman

03-09-2006, 09:13 PM

Heh, fair enough - I had to ask. :) At least this way, you can ensure that your games stay in top condition.

Spartacus

03-10-2006, 06:30 AM

Nice find Iron Draggon!
I was never able to make Metal Black's connection to Gun & Frontier, but it's easy to see some Darius in it with the fish and crab looking aliens. And it did come out in 1991, putting it between 1989 Darius II and 1993 Darius Gaiden, giving the theory that it was intended to be Darius III plausability.

Is the re-release by Ving as well and is it easy to tell the difference by the cover art?

Metal Black was included in PS2's Taito Memories Vol. 1 along with several other pretty good games. I wonder if that game will ever make it over here.

They definately had a sense of humor with the game! LOL
http://i2.tinypic.com/r22vep.jpg

Iron Draggon

03-10-2006, 10:50 AM

The only connection between Metal Black and Gun Frontier is in the storyline. When the intro begins, the first thing it says is "Project: Gun Frontier 2" After that it all scrolls by too fast to read it all at one time, so I'm not really sure what else it says after that, but some site that I went to somewhere said that it says something about Wild Lizard, which of course is what the enemies in Gun Frontier were. So as far as I know, Wild Lizard are the enemies in Metal Black too, but that is the only connection to Gun Frontier.

The reissue is made by Ving, and it's easy to distinguish from the original. It has a large white border all the way around the cover art, and the background on the spine where it says Sega Saturn is red instead of gold. This makes it look alot more like the cover art for Gun Frontier, but the manual for Gun Frontier has the gold spine without the white border, so I wanted the manual for Metal Black to match it. Yes, I'm very nitpicky about little things like that.

BTW, I haven't gotten to the Demon Kitten end-boss yet, but I'm looking forward to it, if I can ever get that far. This game is damn hard! I keep running out of continues on Stage 3! Cheap shots everywhere. I wonder if there's a cheat for unlimited continues. I can't believe that a game this hard has no way to keep on going despite how much you suck at it. Stage 3 for crying out loud! Not even halfway through the game yet. And I am pretty good at SHMUPS, so it's not that I suck at all SHMUPs, just this one.

Oh and that fancy beam weapon that's supposed to be so cool? More often than not, the bosses' beam weapons overpower mine and end up killing me, so I actually end up doing alot better against the bosses by not using it. It takes alot longer to kill them that way, but they don't end up killing me several times in the process like they do when I try to beam them to death. So much for the fancy beam.

klausien

03-11-2006, 04:39 PM

Oh and that fancy beam weapon that's supposed to be so cool? More often than not, the bosses' beam weapons overpower mine and end up killing me, so I actually end up doing alot better against the bosses by not using it. It takes alot longer to kill them that way, but they don't end up killing me several times in the process like they do when I try to beam them to death. So much for the fancy beam.

The Beam weapon is so much better implemented in G-Darius.

Metal Black is very cool though. It has lots of those psychedelic swirling backgrounds like Darius, as well as a similar sound track. There are lots of cool effects going on all the time. Just cut and paste in a Silver Hawk and you've got Darius III. Much better than Super Nova/Darius Force. Has that quarter-muncher thing going though. Even so, I am definitely a fan.

As a side note, I love the Taito stuff from this era and before. Starting with Darius and moving though greats like Night Striker & The NinjaWarriors, that Taito/Zuntata era produced some pretty atmospheric and unique experiences.

Iron Draggon

03-14-2006, 01:06 AM

Yeah, that's the other cool thing about it, it was the last Taito SHMUP that I needed to complete my collection. :D

Iron Draggon

03-21-2006, 12:46 AM

fishsandwich

03-21-2006, 02:02 PM

Spartacus

03-21-2006, 05:27 PM

OK, I'm sick and tired of running out of continues on level 3 of this game! Does anybody know any cheat codes for it? Unlimited continues or infinite lives would work. Otherwise I'll never see anything that lies beyond level 3 of this game!

When you get to level 6 with that demonic cat, see if you don't see any similarities to the movie "The Abyss".

PRO ACTION REPLAY CODES:

Master Code (Must Be On)
F6000914 C305
B6002800 0000

Invincibility (player 1) 160B23AC 0005
Invincibility (player 2) 160B242C 0005
Maximum Beam (player 1) 160B2394 2800
Maximum Beam (player 2) 160B2414 2800
Unlimited Lives (player 1) 160B2396 0009
Unlimited Lives (player 2) 160B2416 0009
Bonus Time Set to 99 160B21FA 0063

:D ENJOY!

Iron Draggon

03-22-2006, 06:27 PM

DAMN, I don't have a PAR yet, I only have a Game Shark. Will these codes work on that? I found some codes that say they're for the Game Shark, but they look the same.

So the Demon Kitten is on level 6? I thought this game had 8 levels. I guess they're counting the two bonus stages.

Night Striker is a great game. Very trippy and very cool. I'd like to see it on the Sega CD, so I could compare them.

I still like Gun Frontier the best though. I think it's way better than Metal Black. It's pretty hard too, but nowhere near as hard as Metal Black. Maybe it's just more my style.

Iron Draggon

03-22-2006, 08:52 PM

Well thank God for the Game Shark! I would NEVER have gotten through all that without it! I don't think that even TWO players could've gotten through all that without it!

So the codes worked just fine on it, but DAMN Taito, do you think you made it hard enough, without giving us all unlimited continues, so we could at least play through it?

I really hate to use a cheat device to play a game, but I don't see how I would ever get through all that without one. The difficulty level is not like any Darius game at all. And I was playing on the "easy" setting! I'd hate to see the "hard" setting! What on earth were they thinking?

Anyhow, I barely saw the Demon Kitten before I finally killed the final boss. What a BITCH! I thought that it was gonna turn into the Demon Kitten or something, but as far as I could tell, the Demon Kitten was just part of the scene.

Well, so much for you, Metal Black. I prefer to play games that I actually have a realistic chance of winning through practice, not games that no ordinary human could ever defeat without using a cheat device. But it's still very cool.

Oh yeah, the final boss was very much like something from The Abyss. Probably the best Darius boss that never was a Darius boss. It was like a big phantom orca or something!

WARNING!

A huge battleship "Phantom Orca" is approaching fast!

Be on your guard!

klausien

03-22-2006, 10:24 PM

As a side note, I love the Taito stuff from this era and before. Starting with Darius and moving though greats like Night Striker & The NinjaWarriors, that Taito/Zuntata era produced some pretty atmospheric and unique experiences.

I LOVE Night Striker S for the Saturn. I just dig that old-school fake 3-D coming at you. I have the original Night Striker for the MegaCD but I can't coax it to play in my X'Eye. Ah, well. I heard it's not that great anyway and doesn't take advantage of the MegaCD's special hardware for scaling and rotation and such. Ah, well. The Saturn game is awesome.

Agreed! I was able to get the Sega CD Night Striker to work fine on my X'Eye with some region patching. Not the greatest, but worth checking out if you have the means. It runs and plays ok, but the graphics are some of the most pixellated I have ever seen. I like the game better than Core's Soul Star for gameplay reasons, but it really looks like ass.

I have been meaning to track down Night Striker S for some time. I have the PSX version and it is incredible, so I can only imagine how good the Saturn version is. It is supposedly the best one.

Spartacus

03-23-2006, 06:48 PM

Anyhow, I barely saw the Demon Kitten before I finally killed the final boss. What a BITCH! I thought that it was gonna turn into the Demon Kitten or something, but as far as I could tell, the Demon Kitten was just part of the scene.
The 6th stage looked like somebody's acid trip! The "Demon Kitten" and the guy shouldering a portable surface to air missile launcher in the background looked like hallucinogenic weirdness!

Well, so much for you, Metal Black. I prefer to play games that I actually have a realistic chance of winning through practice, not games that no ordinary human could ever defeat without using a cheat device. But it's still very cool.
I agree. The game is cool and some of the endboss's were really neat to see. I also liked the red things that latched onto your ship and slowed you down. Nice trick. But there were so many ways to get killed it wasn't funny. Ships coming from behind you, vertical lasers blocking your path, and on top of everything you were expected to dart around collecting newalone energy to power up your beam weapon in the middle of getting hit from every direction! I found more use for my beam when it expended about half of it's energy and turned into lightning bolts that arced across the screen. At least that could help you deal with screenfulls of enemies!

Oh yeah, the final boss was very much like something from The Abyss. Probably the best Darius boss that never was a Darius boss. It was like a big phantom orca or something!
I just looked to me like the "orca" could control columns of water like in "The Abyss". The column would fire a beam weapon that swept across the entire screen and if you didn't have enough newalone to fire your beam back into it, you were screwed! Thank goodness it would disgorge newalone after it had finished firing to help you get powered back up again!