Metal Slug: 1st Mission review by KnuckleS

First Impressions: When you first see this game in action you will think it's an usual 2D sidescrolling action game. But when you play it your opinion about it changes completely. Metal slug definetly a must-buy for all NGPC owners. If you don't have it, buy it!

Graphics: The game is one the most beautiful games I've ever seen! Of course, it has slowdowns, but this is not a big deal. Your character is impressively well drawn and the background it's great! The bosses are very large, large enough to make you think: "Uh, oh! Here comes trouble!". The enemies and tanks are well drawn too. But one of the most impressive thing in this game is the shadow and light effect. When you shoot with your Slug Jet his front shines because of the bullets, this happens too to the character when you are near a explosion (at the last boss, when it explodes, the ground and your character shines for a brief second). Definetly this game is a piece of art.

Sound: There is no way to say how the sound is. It's very good, but you get bored with the same music. In almost each level the music is different. Almost every music at the arcade version is in this game, but there are some new songs. Like I said before, the sound isn't that good, but is not bad.

Gameplay: Like the graphics, the gameplay is great, too! Although the game isn't anymore just a shoot 'n kill game, now it's more of a platformer game, not that you won't kill tons of enemies, you will be able to do that. The enemies are smart, sometimes they kepp searching for you and just when they see you they begin to shoot. The grenade-man puts his hand in his pocket to get the grenade and some soldiers don't even care about you They just stay reading their newspapers. SNK did a good job with the buttons functions. "A" is for firing and "B" for jumping. You may be thinking: "But what about the grenades?", Now this is the trick, if you quickly press the option button the "A" button will fire grenades, press it again and you will begin to shoot with your normal weapon. There are different kinds of weapons, they are: Knife, HandGun, MachineGun, ShotGun, RocketLauncher, Grenades and the vehicles's weapons. The game has 5 difficulty settings: Kids, Easy, Normal, Hard and VeryHard. And 23 Rank classes, to reach the 23rd level you have to play in the VeryHard mode. Another thing in this game is that you have different paths until the final boss. So if you "die"while inside your Metal Slug (the tank) you go to a Prison Camp, where you ahve to escape from there using only your mighty knife. If you "die" while inside the Slug Jet you will have to parachute, but you can do this only at the right time, or you die! After completing the Prison Camp or the Parachute Level you go to the next level (it's like you completed the tank or jet level).

Overall: Being one of the best games, Metal Slug is definetly a must-buy for the NGPC. If you have money for this game, like Shooter/Action games and if own a NGPC, GO BUY THIS GAME! If you don't have a NGPC buy one, too. But I must warn those people that are thinking this game is like GBC games: Many platform games for GBC aren't good, but Metal Slug for NGPC is almost like a Genesis os Snes game than a GBC game.