The ideal 6 slot neo geo lineup?

Evan

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Metal Slug X
Kof 2002
Puzzle Bobble
Neo Turf Masters
Shock Troopers
Neo Mr. Do
 
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cr8zykuban0

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My choices would be
Ultimate 11
Kof 98
Blazing star
Metal slug
Bubble bobble
Top hunter
 

ForeverSublime

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Everyone's going to feel pressure to include Metal Slug "just because" but here's the reality about those games: the gameplay in them blows and could be massively improved,

Hot take. Expand? I'm more interested to hear your ideas on improvements, but if you want to throw in some specifics on what blows, I'm down to read that, too.
 

MidnightMonkey

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Would rather play Gunstar Heroes or Contra 3 over any Neo Metal Slug. Metal Slug's gameplay needs a redo. Doesn't help that it runs at 5fps.

Slowdown on 1 wasn't bad. 2 Turbo is way, WAY better than OG 2. Contra sucks. Gunstar Heroes is legit though. I'm a Sunset Riders fan, myself.
 

HeavyMachineGoob

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My hot take is that Metal Slug 1 isn't as good as the sequels, it feels too plain and the controls feel stiff and unresponsive at times. I will even play Metal Slug 2 OG and Metal Slug 4 over the first one.

Uh, maybe the one exception is Metal Slug 5. It's fine in every way except the music. It sounds so horrible and dampens the whole experience. Metal Slug 1 at least has really nice music.

2T > 3 > X = 4 > 2OG > 1 > 5
 

Massive Urethra Chode

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Uh, maybe the one exception is Metal Slug 5. It's fine in every way except the music. It sounds so horrible and dampens the whole experience. Metal Slug 1 at least has really nice music.

I dont think Metal Slug 5's gameplay is really that good. I hate that thing where you get fat and walk slow, and the level design is very lackluster IMO. Slug 1's music and level design is very memorable and fun to play. I dont find the controls to be a problem. X and 1 are my favorites. oh, and i also really dislike turning into a zombie in metal slug 3. it's just annoying and not fun, just like that fat ass mechanic in 5.
 

HeavyMachineGoob

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I dont think Metal Slug 5's gameplay is really that good. I hate that thing where you get fat and walk slow, and the level design is very lackluster IMO. Slug 1's music and level design is very memorable and fun to play. I dont find the controls to be a problem. X and 1 are my favorites. oh, and i also really dislike turning into a zombie in metal slug 3. it's just annoying and not fun, just like that fat ass mechanic in 5.

The fat mode is also in 2 and X. I don't remember it in 3. You do know the zombie mode has a giant zombie barf attack in place of the grenade, right? In some sections it's almost encouraged to take advantage of that attack to clear certain screens.
 

bulbousbeard

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Hot take. Expand? I'm more interested to hear your ideas on improvements, but if you want to throw in some specifics on what blows, I'm down to read that, too.

Would anyone care about Metal Slug if the gameplay was the same but it looked like Gunstar Heroes?

Face it. The game is only a thing because of the great art. That's all it has going for it.

The movement is literally sluggish and boring. You can't shoot diagonally. The normal weapon attack is so bad that the game feels like shit unless you have a powerup, so it's got the Gradius/Raiden problem of your character feeling like shit unless it's powered up somehow, which is awful. The prisoner system reinforces this. If you do everything perfectly and never die it feels good. Die once, lose everything, feel like shit.

Enemy patterns/scripts are simplistic and dull. Characters have a moveset so basic it's not much different than an 80s game. Games like Gunstar Heroes actually took the formula forward with slides, wall jumps, throws, blocks, and other mechanics.

Level design is incredibly basic. What distinguishes Contra games from pure shmups is that they're a platformer/shmup hybrid. The level design and platforming should actually matter. They don't in Metal Slug. You basically move forward along a floor and that's it. There's no wall scaling, no climbing, no jungle gyming, nothing. It's just the most standard walk and jump junk. The horizontal and vertical shooter sections of Metal Slug 3 are pretty revealing because it's completely analogous to how that developer designed the Contra clone part of the game. Look at how basic they are. There's no nuance or anything interesting going on. Just the most vanilla implementation with great art.

Metal Slug feels like a remake of an 80s game with AAA art, basically.
 

bulbousbeard

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Slowdown on 1 wasn't bad. 2 Turbo is way, WAY better than OG 2. Contra sucks. Gunstar Heroes is legit though. I'm a Sunset Riders fan, myself.

Contra 3 does not suck. The game is incredibly well paced and the levels/platforming SUCCULENTLY designed. The Metal Slug guys weren't fit to wipe 90s Konami's ass level design wise.
 

SouthtownKid

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Contra 3 does not suck. The game is incredibly well paced and the levels/platforming SUCCULENTLY designed. The Metal Slug guys weren't fit to wipe 90s Konami's ass level design wise.

You're entitled to your shitty opinion. Even if it makes you sound like a drooling imbecile.
 

bulbousbeard

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You're entitled to your shitty opinion. Even if it makes you sound like a drooling imbecile.

Yeah because it's such a fringe opinion to hold. Contra 3 is really unpopular and people hate it. You're about as dumb as a sack of bricks.
 

titchgamer

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Slug does have diagonal aiming but only with the HMG and the slugs.
I think the point was to make life easier if you have the power ups but punish you if you lost them.

Anyway I love the slug series, Its one of my fave neo games and one of the few run and guns I actually enjoy.
The controls are fine the only gripe I had was the slow down in 2 but turbo fixed that.

The game has some fun humour and is fun to play through with a friend, There is a reason its a popular game even if you dont like it plenty of others do.

And considering this is a thread to be looked at from a operators POV it would be foolish to not include it in the line up.
 

Massive Urethra Chode

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And considering this is a thread to be looked at from a operators POV it would be foolish to not include it in the line up.

My thoughts exactly. The metal slug series is one of the most recognizable NEO•GEO games to casuals. Probably even more so than KOF (which is not a very casual friendly game at all, too many characters and moves)

Out of all NEO•GEO games i hear non hardcore gamers talk about, i probably hear metal slug, samurai shodown, and perhaps baseball stars the most. Oh and the early AES pack-ins like magician lord and NAM-1975.

Overall i think a metal slug game would bring in the most quarters. I can see a customer being initially attracted by a metal slug game, then want to try out another game like a Sonic Wings title or Magical Drop or perhaps even Nightmare in the Dark after they are done playing slug... but Slug has to be there first to draw the attention
 

MetalSlugVet

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If it wasn’t for the metal slug series I never would of gotten into owning or collecting for the Neo geo, I’m sure many other people where sucked in by metal slug and I believe it’s a big part of why the Neo geo still has a cult following. It may not be everyone’s favorite series but it’s hard to take someone seriously who says the games are really bad and unworthy of their legendary status.
 
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Heinz

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MetalSlugVet you're going to have a hard time not coming off as biased in this argument but I agree completely. Most people who like video games have heard of or played Metal Slug before.

The same team made Neo Turf Masters and they literally turned the most boring fucking sport game into an addictive winner of a title.
 

bulbousbeard

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If it wasn’t for the metal slug series I never would of gotten into owning or collecting for the Neo geo, I’m sure many other people where sucked in by metal slug and I believe it’s a big part of why the Neo geo still has a cult following. It may not be everyone’s favorite series but it’s hard to take someone seriously who says the games are really bad and unworthy of their legendary status.

The art in them is legendary. The gameplay isn't.
 

redfield0009

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If it wasn’t for the metal slug series I never would of gotten into owning or collecting for the Neo geo, I’m sure many other people where sucked in by metal slug and I believe it’s a big part of why the Neo geo still has a cult following. It may not be everyone’s favorite series but it’s hard to take someone seriously who says the games are really bad and unworthy of their legendary status.

I agree 100 percent. The Metal Slug series on the Neo Geo is amazing and it drew me into the Neo Geo. Anyone can play these games and have fun.

I enjoy that the series isn't contra, or gunstar or any of that shit. People that complain about gameplay are just salty because they never hear "You're Great!" at the end of a level.
 

ForeverSublime

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Would anyone care about Metal Slug if the gameplay was the same but it looked like Gunstar Heroes?

Face it. The game is only a thing because of the great art. That's all it has going for it.

The movement is literally sluggish and boring. You can't shoot diagonally. The normal weapon attack is so bad that the game feels like shit unless you have a powerup, so it's got the Gradius/Raiden problem of your character feeling like shit unless it's powered up somehow, which is awful. The prisoner system reinforces this. If you do everything perfectly and never die it feels good. Die once, lose everything, feel like shit.

Enemy patterns/scripts are simplistic and dull. Characters have a moveset so basic it's not much different than an 80s game. Games like Gunstar Heroes actually took the formula forward with slides, wall jumps, throws, blocks, and other mechanics.

Level design is incredibly basic. What distinguishes Contra games from pure shmups is that they're a platformer/shmup hybrid. The level design and platforming should actually matter. They don't in Metal Slug. You basically move forward along a floor and that's it. There's no wall scaling, no climbing, no jungle gyming, nothing. It's just the most standard walk and jump junk. The horizontal and vertical shooter sections of Metal Slug 3 are pretty revealing because it's completely analogous to how that developer designed the Contra clone part of the game. Look at how basic they are. There's no nuance or anything interesting going on. Just the most vanilla implementation with great art.

Metal Slug feels like a remake of an 80s game with AAA art, basically.

Yeah, those gameplay issues sound like they stem from the idea prototyped that you controlled Metal Slug and not Macro/Tarma, if that were the idea all along. Maybe it would have been like Speed Rumbler or The Great Ragtime Show, where if your initial vehicle got smashed you could jump into a new one, or maybe it'd be like a land-based In The Hunt - neither of which would make us relate Slug to Contra at first glance.

Honestly, I didn't spend much time with Gunstar. Gunstar, like a lot of non-shmup Treasure games, was pretty easy to consume ("beat"). So, I sort of did that and shelved it outside of showing it off to friends. I may have cheated myself by abusing the homing shot, though I very much enjoyed the experience and think of the game fondly. I have no idea what the points system is like and I'm not typically a points guy to begin with, but in Metal Slug, knifing guys gives you 3x more points than shooting them - knifing being Metal Slug's close quarters analog to Gunstar's throwing mechanism.

The prisoners were just bonuses to me - but I liked the mechanism. All players got an immediate reward of a pickup from them, but the better players got points bonuses at the end of a level. All players got rescue totals counted toward their end of game marks. They were a way of tracking progress beyond score or lives. It's a mechanism that seemed to do the right things for players of different skill levels. Yeah, you felt bad to have a bunch of them and then lose them toward your end of level bonus if you died - but that also meant that one cared about and payed attention to their progress. Personally, without those mechanisms, sometimes I just don't care about my character's well being. It doesn't have to be about the lack of penalties, but the lack of incentives as well. Does that matter? Like I said, I enjoyed Gunstar without incentives. Do I really need these little gizmos messing with my psychology and taking up more of my time? Maybe it's only to defend that Slug may not be about controls or level design, but that doesn't mean there's a lack of game play.

It's funny. When the controls changed and Slug 5 introduced sliding, there were a lot of opinions about how un-Metal Slug that was. The 80's style controls were engrained as a mark of the franchise.
 
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bulbousbeard

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Yeah, those gameplay issues sound like they stem from the idea prototyped that you controlled Metal Slug and not Macro/Tarma, if that were the idea all along. Maybe it would have been like Speed Rumbler or The Great Ragtime Show, where if your initial vehicle got smashed you could jump into a new one, or maybe it'd be like a land-based In The Hunt - neither of which would make us relate Slug to Contra at first glance.

Honestly, I didn't spend much time with Gunstar. Gunstar, like a lot of non-shmup Treasure games, was pretty easy to consume ("beat"). So, I sort of did that and shelved it outside of showing it off to friends. I may have cheated myself by abusing the homing shot, though I very much enjoyed the experience and think of the game fondly. I have no idea what the points system is like and I'm not typically a points guy to begin with, but in Metal Slug, knifing guys gives you 3x more points than shooting them - knifing being Metal Slug's close quarters analog to Gunstar's throwing mechanism.

The prisoners were just bonuses to me - but I liked the mechanism. All players got an immediate reward of a pickup from them, but the better players got points bonuses at the end of a level. All players got rescue totals counted toward their end of game marks. They were a way of tracking progress beyond score or lives. It's a mechanism that seemed to do the right things for players of different skill levels. Yeah, you felt bad to have a bunch of them and then lose them toward your end of level bonus if you died - but that also meant that one cared about and payed attention to their progress. Personally, without those mechanisms, sometimes I just don't care about my character's well being. It doesn't have to be about the lack of penalties, but the lack of incentives as well. Does that matter? Like I said, I enjoyed Gunstar. Do I really need these little gizmos messing with my psychology and taking up more of my time? Maybe it's only to defend that the game may not be about controls or level design, but that doesn't mean there's a lack of game play.

It's funny. When the controls changed and Slug 5 introduced sliding, there were a lot of opinions about how un-Metal Slug that was. The 80's style controls were engrained as a mark of the franchise.

That's very interesting. I didn't know that it started off just being a vehicle game. But see, isn't that a problem? Without even knowing that, something feels off about the games. It FEELS like it was something that was repurposed halfway through instead of actually being a nice design.

That's fine. It's a showcase game and has good art. It gets quarters. I'm just saying that I think it has crappy gameplay. I don't play games for scores or points. I play games that are fun to play.
 

Massive Urethra Chode

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I like how the prisoners in metal slug are referred to as “recaptured prisoners” instead of “rescued prisoners”

It’s kinda fucked up lol
 

Mr Bakaboy

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1. MOTW
2. Metal Slug
3. Baseball Stars 2
4. Samurai Showdown II
5. SVC Chaos
6. King of Fighters 2002
 

Neo Alec

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I like how the prisoners in metal slug are referred to as “recaptured prisoners” instead of “rescued prisoners”

It’s kinda fucked up lol
No, that's just English, meaning to "recover." Pretty sure it's normal military speak.
 
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