Looking Back in Gaming: Metal Slug (1996)

In 1994, Irem stopped making arcade games. The company that had given the world R-Type wound down its development department, and a group of its arcade staff — fresh from In the Hunt and GunForce II — walked out and set up on their own as Nazca Corporation. Their second game reached SNK’s Neo Geo MVS on 19 April 1996. It was called Metal Slug, and it was so good that SNK bought the studio outright.

The Tank Was Supposed to Be the Game

The full title gives the original plan away: Metal Slug: Super Vehicle-001. Early in development, this was a vehicle game — you were the tank. Somewhere along the way that flipped. The heroes became two soldiers on foot, Marco Rossi and Tarma Roving, and the Metal Slug itself became something you had to find.

That reversal is the best design decision in the game. On foot, Marco and Tarma die to a single bullet. Climb into the Slug and suddenly you have armour, a rotating cannon, and a jump — and the game changes tempo completely. Because the tank is a reward rather than a given, every minute inside it feels earned, and watching it take damage feels like losing something. When it’s about to go, you bail out and keep running. Few games have made a power-up feel this much like a character.

Every Frame Drawn by Hand

The thing everyone remembers is the animation. Metal Slug’s sprites are absurdly detailed for 1996 — and absurdly detailed for any year, honestly. General Morden’s rebel soldiers don’t just stand and shoot. Catch them off guard and they’re mid-conversation; startle them and they scream and scramble. Buildings collapse in stages. Explosions have weight. Prisoners of war, tied up and bearded, salute when freed and hand you a weapon, usually with an enthusiastic voice announcing exactly which one it is.

It’s a war game, technically. But it’s a war game drawn like a cartoon and staged like slapstick, and that tone — violent, generous, and very silly — became the series’ signature. Oddly, the critics of the time weren’t fully convinced. Reviews were mixed, though nearly all of them singled out the humour and the fluid animation. Thirty years on, those are the only things anyone talks about.

A Late Masterpiece for Old Hardware

Timing makes Metal Slug’s achievement even sharper. By 1996 the Neo Geo was six years old, and the industry’s attention had moved on to polygons, PlayStation and Saturn. Metal Slug was the answer from the old guard: proof that a 2D cartridge system, pushed by artists who knew exactly what they were doing, could still produce something the new machines couldn’t touch. (The machine itself gets the full story in this month’s companion piece, Looking Back: SNK, and if you’re thinking of owning one, our Neo Geo guide covers the practical side.)

There’s a nice bit of continuity, too. Nazca’s people came from the same company that made R-Type, and you can feel that arcade discipline underneath all the jokes: tight hitboxes, readable bullet patterns, and bosses designed to be learned rather than simply survived.

Why It Still Matters

Metal Slug set the template for a run-and-gun series that peaked with Metal Slug 2, X and 3 at the turn of the century and has never really gone away. It turned 30 this April, and SNK marked the occasion with an anniversary project promising to reboot the series.

The bigger news landed in September. Metal Slug Ultimate Collection was shown at the Nintendo Direct, bringing together the mainline games from the original through Metal Slug 7, plus Metal Slug Advance — and the original game’s location test version, never officially released, which gives a rare look at the version players first got their hands on at an Osaka location test. It’s due in 2027 on Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Steam. Until then, the original is still the place to start: one bullet, one tank, and the best-drawn chaos the Neo Geo ever produced.

Looking Back is a monthly series revisiting games that mattered. Previous: Golden Axe (1989). Next: Paperboy.