Game of the Day 4/11/2016: Metal Slug: 1st Mission

[celerystalker]

With the Neo Geo Pocket Color, SNK really backed up the statement that they were not trying to directly compete with other handhelds, but rather create a product for fans of their style of games and the Neo Geo arcade experience. One of the early games was Metal Slug: 1st Mission, which embodied the concept of the handheld perfectly. As a side story in the Slug universe, 1st Mission is not a port of any arcade game, but a re-imagining of the core concept to preserve the spirit ofthe arcade franchise while making it more suitable for portable gaming.

What this really means is that your characters control just like their arcade counterparts, drive vehicles just like them, and fight nice, big bosses like them... but the stage design and mechanics have been tweaked to work better on a handheld. For instance, you now have a life bar, but only one life and limited continues. Enemies still have lots of great animation, but there are fewer on screen at once and fewer projectiles that would be difficult to see on a smaller, unlit screen. To compensate for the reduces challenge on that front, levels are longer and more vertical, with more platforming hazards and segmented to implement flying and parachuting concepts. You can also put the system in standby mode, adding to the portability with the option to play in smaller chunks as needed.

1st Mission is also substantially longer than any of the arcade games, and filled with hidden items and easter eggs. There are branching paths and more than thirty possible stages, giving a ton of replay value to boot. It's all pretty great for a handheld Metal Slug, even though it does get shown up a bit by its own sequel, 2nd Mission, which I'll save for another day.

Sorry that I have trouble taking a good picture of the NGPC with my phone, but I tried. HG101 has a few nicer screens here:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/met...metalslug4.htm

Played this one?

[Emperor Megas]

30 possible stages? Wow. So it's a Darius sort of deal?

[celerystalker]

30 possible stages? Wow. So it's a Darius sort of deal?

Sort of, but not as by the numbers. A little more like Dracula X for how it's implemented. Stuff like getting shot down while in your plane will trigger a parachuting segment leading into a different next stage than if you had completed your flight successfully.

[Steve W]

I've got a copy but I never got into the Neo•Geo Pocket Color. My first portable was the Lynx, and therefore every portable seemed primitive and underpowered until the GBA came along. I don't think I managed to get very far into the game back in the day, but then like I said I didn't put a lot of time into the games. I think the only NGPC game I ever finished to the end was Sonic.

I managed to pick up a couple of those blister multipacks of repackaged cartridges when SNK's new owners dumped their remaining stock. The second pack (the one with Metal Slug in it) I bought was in a GameStop, and the guy behind the counter started talking about the Neo•Geo with me. Turns out he was a classic game collector too, and he told me about how excited he was to pick up a Sylvania/GTE branded Intellivision to round off his collection. It was a great talk with a knowledgable person, and I never saw that guy working there again. It was nice to meet an intelligent GameStop employee, at least once.

[otaku]

i had this game for my neo geo pocket color love that lil system though this wasnt my fave game last blade 2 was. gotta love metal slug though. i'll never forget seeing this console in a catalog as a kid or playing my cousins neo geo pocket took me a decade but i got one of my own

[celerystalker]

i had this game for my neo geo pocket color love that lil system though this wasnt my fave game last blade 2 was. gotta love metal slug though. i'll never forget seeing this console in a catalog as a kid or playing my cousins neo geo pocket took me a decade but i got one of my own

Last Blade 2 is pretty sweet. Mine is japanese, as I never ran across a US Last Blade 2 in the wild, but it does have the awesome Neo Geo clam shell packaging at least! I wish the US games had come packaged that way, as the boxes we got were extremely flimsy.