Retro Gamer magazine's terrible Metal Slug feature --reviewed!

[aria]

[highlight][EDITOR'S NOTE: Want to see a so-called "professional video game writer" lose all decorum when someone criticizes his poorly written article? Want to watch the editor of an English video game magazine inadvertently get caught in a web of lies? Want to see why a number of people here stopped reading Retro Gamer? Look no further.

There's a lot of side drama, so here are some summary posts of the main problems with the writer and his editor, along with Rot's wildcard, magnificent grand finale.][/highlight]

Retro Gamer (issue 62) did one of their "The Definitive" series articles (covering various games in a major game series) for the Metal Slug franchise. While I am a fan of the magazine, the resulting article was terrible... insulting even. Not just to fans of the series, but to casual gamers in general. It appears they used a freelancer, Stuart Campbell (as he's listed as a "contributor" in the masthead); and, assuming that's the case, it shows how the practice can sometimes backfire. If I didn't know any better, it appears it was rushed for a paycheck and/or deadline. You'd think this worldwide economic downturn would cause people to work harder for their bucks...

Okay --since I was so annoyed, I decided to write out, point-by-point, why the article is a mess --a truly geekish reaction on my part, I realize, but sometimes it takes serious provocation to unearth these latent tendencies. The piece doubly irks me because I used to write columns and feature pieces for various papers in my spare time in college and afterward (made some dough, not a ton --but it was better than nothing for what amounted to a hobby), so I get frustrated when I see purported professionals turning out this crap.

For those unfamiliar with Retro Gamer: its a magazine that focuses on classic games and related current and homebrew releases. The article was formatted like most "The Definitive" pieces in RG: it has a brief section introducing the series (very brief in this case), then a game-by-game description of each installment. The author presumably plays as many of the versions as he can get a hold of, or talks about the general consensus on the game if he/she can't find a copy. Its a simple format, and any writer worth their ink can probably turn out a quality article with little worry... or so I assumed. Let's take a look at this one:

• The author doesn't actually know the storyline of the series he's writing a feature on: he ends his own introductory section with "So join The Definitive one more time as we strap on an ammo belt, wade into the fray, and see if we can't get to the bottom of who that pesky Liquid Ocelot really is once and for all." Okay... any guesses what's wrong here? Thankfully RG put in an editorial note that he mistakenly mentioned a character from Metal Gear...but even that begs a question of why didn't they have him do a rewrite (answer: someone was probably shitting something out at the last second for a deadline).
  
• The write up on the original Metal Slug is dominated by completely baseless suggestion that Metal Slug was aimed for release on the Neo CD. It appears his reason was he was only able to get access to the CD version; now, while the home cart is infamously expensive --something he didn't mention-- why couldn't he grab an MVS? But back to the write up on Metal Slug: there's virtually no time spent on what made the game so interesting at the time other than the two sentence description in the introductory section (and oddly not one mention of Contra until very late in the article, but I assume this guy is pretty young since he refers to the SNES). Instead he talks entirely about what extra features were on the Neo CD "port". While that's nice, it seems you should spend at least a paragraph on the first game talking about what made it successful. Alas, no.
  
• Let's toss out another sign of poor research: not one mention of Nazca, the original developer. Ouch.
  
• The PlayStation port of Metal Slug gets its own section, mostly to discuss the addition of mini-games. Its fascinating that so much ink is spent on the additional features in the various CD versions of Metal Slug without spending much time on the actual gameplay of the original; someone made a false assumption that readers all know what Metal Slug is about --a.k.a. poor journalism.
  
• We get a weird passing mention of the Saturn version under the PlayStation version of MS1, but they never acknowledge its existence in any of the actual sections (where they parenthetically reference the releases). I don't know whose fault this is, writer, layout people or editor (well, it would fall on the last guy since he's the one in charge of QA).
  
• Metal Slug 2's section kicks off starts off with the following description: "Despite beign little more than a new set of levels for the first game (albeit six this time rather than five), and introducing two features that would go on to almost ruin the entire series, Metal Slug 2 is still pretty good fun." This begs the question: what are these two features that nearly "ruin the entire series"? If you poll people who're familiar with the game, you'll likely get "slowdown" as a popular answer, as this game was full of it. Not in this case. Mr. Campbell felt "the debut of zombies and fat mode [. . .] slowed it to a horrible grinding crawl." I admit it took me a few seconds to realize he was referring to the mummy mode when he referred to "zombies" (a forgivable error), but I must admit this is the first time I've heard anyone actually hold the two modes (particularly the mummy issue in Stage 2) as something so horrific. I'm sure most of you actual gamers have learned that a competent player can quickly get through Stage 2 without ever turning into a mummy, and his complaints seem to imply that he kept trying to finish these games --rushing through-- without trying to learn any technique, hidden secrets, etc. and kept getting hosed by the mummy/fat traps... the sort of thing that happens when you see first-timers or kids play the game (or people trying to rush an article on a series they're actually not all that familiar with). Again, there's not one mention of the slowdown.
  
• Because he somehow didn't notice the slowdown in 2, he doesn't mention the faster gameplay in Metal Slug X. He acknowledges that its popular among "aficionados", but doesn't actually take any time to reveal why. Instead he summarizes the game as "churned out quickly to squeeze more money out of gullible fans". He states this game was more loved by home players, then proceeds to spend two-thirds of the section about all the additions on the PS1 port --implying that's the reason its so popular. His research is so half-assed that he states "Interestingly, Metal Slug X didn't get a Neo-Geo CD release" ...okay, for someone who spent a big chunk of the earlier section on MS1 talking about the reasons for the CD's creation, he apparently didn't connect the dots that it wasn't being as actively supported by 1999. There's also no mention of the odd inclusion of inaccessible, half-finished underwater levels and other stuff in the coding of the cartridges, but that would be something a person who did, actual research would've discovered --not someone who neglected to mention Nazca.
  
• The author does not hide the fact that he hates Metal Slug 3, which is popularly considered one of, if not the finest in the series. He opens this section with "As any keen student of philosophy knows, there's supposedly an ancient Chinese proverb that runs: "Most people are fat-headed cretins without enough brains for even one good sandwich", and it's never better illustrated than when people say Metal Slug 3 is as good as the series got. Metal Slug 3 isn't even as good as the Black Death got." I'm not going to start on the awkward structure of the first sentence, but I do wonder how on earth this kind of statement appears in a "Definitive" retrospective on a video game series. The Editor jumps in with his second note of the article, that he loved the game. He's obviously not alone. Why does he hate it? Its hard. (Boo-hoo, now man up.) He seems crushed that the first level boss was "one of the most epically hateful first level bosses in recorded history." Okay, I'm by no means an expert at any of these games, but I will say it took me only one time facing that boss to figure out how to simply beat him without losing a life (run and shoot backwards... revolutionary, I know.). The best answer I can come up with is Mr. Campbell like his games easy (obvious jokes resisted here...). We have people on this site that can 1CC the game, so its certainly not impossible, but I will concede that the game is very tough. And while its fair to acknowledge that there are people who feel the tone and/or difficulty made it not as good as the others, this section epitomizes how unpolished the article is.
  
• His opinion linger into the section on Metal Slug 4, where he states --in what was starting to come close to a polemic-- "it was slightly less bitterly unfair than MS3, as well as being shorter. (And smaller generally, with less branching and therefore less replay value, which would normally be a bad thing but isn't when you're using something as horrible as Metal Slug 3 for your design foundation.)" He theorizes that MS4 was the most criticized in the series because "when players buy something that got good reviews but turns out to be a bad game, they take their frustrations out on the next one in the series - but we don't really have the room to go into it." Oh yeah, sure, that must be why the game was inferior --I'm so happy he spent space in the brief section to outline his personal theories rather than spend time focusing on how the state of SNK/Playmore caused the rush job. He then laments the lack of extras in the ports, since those are likely the only versions he was playing.
  
• Metal Slug 5 gets a half-paragraph, stating that it was better and pointedly celebrating that "most importantly of all it's completely zombie free! Yay!" At this point in the article I felt like I was reading a fan review in GameFAQs --though I assume he wasn't using ROMs on his PC.
  
• Just to wrap up his opinions on the main series: Metal Slug 6 is a "wholly wretched experience" because its difficult. I haven't had much experience with it, so I'll let you be the judge. Metal Slug 7 is the "finest game in the history of the series" He goes on to declare: "After a decade of disappointments, it's almost as much of a breath of fresh air the first game was all those years ago."
  
• Back to a more general comment: The author didn't even know what to call himself, he actually refers to himself as a "reporter" a few times, which is not the role he was fulfilling in writing a feature piece on a video game series --he was closer to a journalist, of which reporters are a subset, but even then he shows complete bias in his style which negates a fundamental point of journalism. While its tempting to throw out the words "amateur" or "hack", I'd settle with "someone who was too busy to do a good job, and instead did a rush job and assumed no one would notice".

I know the Editors of Retro Gamer sometimes read this site, and they've been very nice to us --even apologetic for that rather one-sided fiasco in the Last Hope article and the (now former) "journalist" who came here looking for only one opinion (his). They've mentioned this site more than once, and profiled the owner, so lets be clear that this isn't meant to target the magazine which I, by-and-large, enjoy. However, when I read something so unpolished, so rushed, so incompletely researched --titled "The Definitive", no less-- its insulting to fans of this series and this system. Only recently have "game journalists" started to get any serious cred in journalism, but then something like comes along and makes the rest look bad. Since this mag costs $12 in the States, if you're thinking about buying this issue for the feature, I'd say give it a pass.

So yeah, /review.

 

[xiao_haozi]

Nice writeup Bobak.

Have you considered sending it to them?

 

[Nesagwa]

From the little Ive seen of the magazine, it seems their editorial staff is a joke.

Missing chunks of Shawns interview, completely wrong photos for the collection story a month ago, this garbage.

Very unprofessional and embarrassing.

 

[SML]

Great post. And here I thought you only played Magical Drop.

 

[Twinkle Star]

Nice inputs there!! I think next time they should make thier articles more well researched in order to avoid these inconsistencies..

 

[Metal Slugnuts]

Damn, that is some piss-poor researching.

 

[aria]

Nice writeup Bobak.

Have you considered sending it to them?

I debated about it, so I went ahead and posted a copy, along with introductory remarks, at their feedback subforum (which they're very good about reading). The weird thing is the US is around 2 issues behind Europe, so even though I picked up the issue today, they're already preping for Issue 64

Thus there's over a week from the previous post to my bump...

http://www.retrogamer.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=14236&p=332444#p332444

 

[insaneben]

Yowza.
Thanks for saving me some dough, Bobak. You really took that article to the mat, applied a half-nelson, followed by a suplex, and then a body slam out of the ring.

I'm not sure if you have the issues, Bobak, but I was wondering what you thought of the writing quality of the one that covered KOF and the three-part "History of SNK" issues. Comparing that to the "Metal Slug" travesty, is it any better? (Stupid question, but it's probably better I get an answer from someone with serious editorial cred.)

 

[aria]

I'm not sure if you have the issues, Bobak, but I was wondering what you thought of the writing quality of the one that covered KOF and the three-part "History of SNK" issues. Comparing that to the "Metal Slug" travesty, is it any better? (Stupid question, but it's probably better I get an answer from someone with serious editorial cred.)

I like the mag, so --yeah-- I felt the other articles were better. They're not always complex dissection of the industry, and they occasionally make minor mistakes and omissions, but the other articles were certainly as enjoyable as you'd expect in a gaming mag.

In fact, this very same issue (as the Metal Slug article) has an intriguing article/interview with Tomohiro Nishikado, creator of Space Invaders. Its mostly because I enjoy the mag that this one piece threw me over the top. This Slug article feels like they author got it in to the editors so late that they had a choice to ask for a rewrite (and possibly delay it) or run with it, and they went with the latter. If they did that, I can somewhat understand in that the magazine industry is tough and they're already a niche mag with finances that probably aren't big enough to survive a smaller issue with less adverts.

 

[djdelly]

snip

Cliffsnotes version please

 

[Geddon_jt]

I like the mag, so --yeah-- I felt the other articles were better. They're not always complex dissection of the industry, and they occasionally make minor mistakes and omissions, but the other articles were certainly as enjoyable as you'd expect in a gaming mag.

In fact, this very same issue (as the Metal Slug article) has an intriguing article/interview with Tomohiro Nishikado, creator of Space Invaders. Its mostly because I enjoy the mag that this one piece threw me over the top. This Slug article feels like they author got it in to the editors so late that they had a choice to ask for a rewrite (and possibly delay it) or run with it, and they went with the latter. If they did that, I can somewhat understand in that the magazine industry is tough and they're already a niche mag with finances that probably aren't big enough to survive a smaller issue with less adverts.

Word, Bobak.
You echoed my sentiments exactly. The Metal Slug feature felt terribly rushed and felt generally very out of place for the magazine. I really got the distinct impression he missed the point entirely.

 

[Praise the Lard]

I was going to post this up a week back and even went through the effort of transcribing the MS3/MS4 summaries (since this is where the real tragedy is, everything else is nitpicking) but decided against it. :\ It seems like bait almost. Though it's surprising that it was actually printed (editor asleep at the wheel?), he's entitled to his opinions. For every downside of the article there is an upside. For instance detailing the extras on the ports of Metal Slug 1/2/X/3 is certainly going the extra mile.

The author, Stuart Campbell, is obviously a bit of an egomaniac though. Check his web site, not surprisingly titled "World of Stuart", for a short glimpse into his review of Metal Slug 7 which gives us the classic line "Metal Slug 7 is, rather startlingly, the best Metal Slug ever".

Maybe, just MAYBE, Stuart Campbell is playing us all for the fool. Maybe he wants unsuspecting new comers to be exposed to Metal Slug 7 first knowing full well that it can only get better for them as they play the other entries in the series.

I WONDER.

 

[SML]

his review of Metal Slug 7 .

RAGE.

 

[Deuce]

Cliffsnotes version please

Develop an attention span greater than that of a gnat, please.

 

[astrodan88]

Thanks for the rundown Bobak! This sounds horrific. I thought I recognized the name Stewart Campbell but Lard connected the dots for me. This guy is so hopped up on himself it's scary. I stumbled across his site once looking for reviews. What he lacks in knowledge he makes up for in hyperbole.

Retrogamer should be embarrassed. It's great that they wanted to do this article but to put so little time into finding a competent writer and getting it to press is beyond disappointing. It's clear that Stewie has only played some of these games once through, and that's probably on the weekend before deadline. I shudder to think he got paid for it.

 

[djdelly]

Develop an at.......

 

[SML]

Develop an attention span greater than that of a gnat, please.

Gnats can't read, silly.

 

[RevStu]

Hello idiots!

[*]The author doesn't actually know the storyline of the series he's writing a feature on: he ends his own introductory section with "So join The Definitive one more time as we strap on an ammo belt, wade into the fray, and see if we can't get to the bottom of who that pesky Liquid Ocelot really is once and for all." Okay... any guesses what's wrong here? Thankfully RG put in an editorial note that he mistakenly mentioned a character from Metal Gear...but even that begs a question of why didn't they have him do a rewrite (answer: someone was probably shitting something out at the last second for a deadline).

Or, if you'd done YOUR research properly, you'd know that that's a running joke that appears in lots of the Definitive features - the "comment from the editor" is in fact written by me. Even if you were reading RG for the first time and didn't know about its running jokes, though, you'd have to be epically stupid to think that the magazine would correct the "mistake" in such a way, rather than just change the text. (Or that they'd hire someone who didn't know the difference between Metal Slug and Metal Gear Solid in the first place.) I mean, Jesus, seriously? You're THAT dim? How do you get out of bed in the morning without locking yourself in the wardrobe?

[*]The write up on the original Metal Slug is dominated by completely baseless suggestion that Metal Slug was aimed for release on the Neo CD.

Where have you dreamed up this fantasy from? Where does the feature say anything like that? If English isn't your first language then it's understandable you might misinterpret some things, but if that's the case then you should probably shut up rather than bitterly attack people over things YOU'VE misunderstood. If English IS your first language, then God knows how you've arrived at such a bizarre conclusion. The feature at NO POINT suggests any such thing.

But back to the write up on Metal Slug: there's virtually no time spent on what made the game so interesting at the time other than the two sentence description in the introductory section (and oddly not one mention of Contra until very late in the article, but I assume this guy is pretty young since he refers to the SNES).

Actually I'm 41, I've been writing professionally about videogames for 20 years, and I've very likely been playing videogames since before you were born, son. The Definitive series isn't intended to be about what influenced Game X, it's about the ludography of Game X.

While that's nice, it seems you should spend at least a paragraph on the first game talking about what made it successful. Alas, no.

Er, the intro page does exactly that. Did you bother to read it at all? Let me quote it back to you.

"Your reporter and his videogame-journalist colleague did a double-take of proper disbelief at the unmarked, unassuming generic cabinet – was this //really// an old-school SNES-style 2D platform shooter? – and dropped a few coins in the slot.

An hour later we were still there, a few quid lighter in the pocket but still marvelling at the sheer character and fun of what we were playing, at a time when almost all arcade games had become incredibly po-faced and serious, increasingly concerned with “realism” over the instant-fun hit that had been traditionally the preserve of the coin-op. (The only other 2D games that had survived the industry’s excited fascination with the possibilities of polygonal 3D were fighting games - extremely serious in their own way, and jealously colonised by obsessives.) Compared to anything else that was in arcades in 1996, Metal Slug was like Robotron – an exhilarating non-stop bloodbath with beautiful pixel art and a sense of humour. (More accurately, it was the arcade equivalent of Treasure’s 1993 Megadrive masterpiece Gunstar Heroes.)

It turned out that we weren’t the only people craving some trad-style gameplay values, and Metal Slug went on to be a huge and unexpected hit, gobbling money faster than SNK could hire trucks to carry it all off in."

A bit more than a paragraph, in fact, clearly detailing the reasons for Metal Slug being a hit.

[*]Let's toss out another sign of poor research: not one mention of Nazca, the original developer. Ouch.

That's not poor research, that's not bothering to waste words telling people things they already know (and which aren't relevant to the feature's purpose in any case). Nazca's name appears on the title screen, for God's sake. Anyone who can read knows who made it.

[*]The PlayStation port of Metal Slug gets its own section, mostly to discuss the addition of mini-games. Its fascinating that so much ink is spent on the additional features in the various CD versions of Metal Slug without spending much time on the actual gameplay of the original; someone made a false assumption that readers all know what Metal Slug is about --a.k.a. poor journalism.

And on and on it goes. You evidently don't know what The Definitive is about, yet feel able to launch into outraged and offensive criticism and personal abuse anyway. The purpose of the series is to tell people about every game in a particular videogame franchise, including obscure ones they might not know about, and tell them about interesting variations in ports and the like. It is NOT supposed to be the complete history of Metal Slug, discussing the development of the game, its influences, its plotline or what its coders had for breakfast the day they started it. RG has a completely different feature-thread for that, called The Complete History Of. Clear?

[*]We get a weird passing mention of the Saturn version under the PlayStation version of MS1, but they never acknowledge its existence in any of the actual sections

What on Earth are you dribbling about, tiresome child? The mention acknowledges the existence. There is nothing unusual or interesting in gameplay terms about the Saturn version, so it doesn't get any specific coverage.

Again, there's not one mention of the slowdown.

Because nobody except dull obsessive nerds gives a rat's arse about it. Most people don't even notice, and expect games of that era to slow down at busy points anyway.

He states this game was more loved by home players, then proceeds to spend two-thirds of the section about all the additions on the PS1 port --implying that's the reason its so popular.

I didn't imply any such thing. I mention the additions on the PS port because - much as I hate to repeat myself - that's the purpose of the Definitive features. The Definitive is concerned with how the PS1 version differs from the original. If it doesn't differ, it doesn't get an entry. If it has substantial changes, omissions or additions, it does. Are you getting it yet?

...okay, for someone who spent a big chunk of the earlier section on MS1 talking about the reasons for the CD's creation, he apparently didn't connect the dots that it wasn't being as actively supported by 1999. There's also no mention of the odd inclusion of inaccessible, half-finished underwater levels and other stuff in the coding of the cartridges, but that would be something a person who did, actual research would've discovered --not someone who neglected to mention Nazca.

I'm perfectly well aware of those things, but since people can't play them there's very little point in mentioning them. It seems your main gripe is that the feature wasn't 16 pages long, which it would have had to be to include all the stuff you're dribbling on about, none of which is very interesting and which most people already know anyway.

Okay, I'm by no means an expert at any of these games, but I will say it took me only one time facing that boss to figure out how to simply beat him without losing a life (run and shoot backwards... revolutionary, I know.)

I didn't say the first boss was hard, I said it was hateful. It's tedious and repetitive and unenjoyable. Please have the courtesy to restrict your criticism to things I actually said, rather than things you've totally imagined.

[*]Back to a more general comment: The author didn't even know what to call himself, he actually refers to himself as a "reporter" a few times, which is not the role he was fulfilling in writing a feature piece on a video game series --he was closer to a journalist, of which reporters are a subset, but even then he shows complete bias in his style which negates a fundamental point of journalism.

Ha ha ha. Do please share with us your authoritative source for these "definitions". Let me help you out with the first definition of "reporter" from Encarta:

"somebody whose job is to find out facts and use the print or broadcast media to tell people about them"

...which is precisely what the feature does. The same source lists "journalist" as:

"a writer or editor for a newspaper or magazine or for television or radio"

..which is of course also entirely accurate.

While its tempting to throw out the words "amateur" or "hack", I'd settle with "someone who was too busy to do a good job, and instead did a rush job and assumed no one would notice".

My sang-froid has to take a momentary back seat here, as I have to suggest that you go fuck yourself, you pompous, arrogant, stupid little prick. The Definitive Metal Slug took over a week of non-stop work, including playing every game through to the end several times, and the feature was very well-received by readers of the magazine. It fulfils its commissioned brief completely, and the fact that you might personally have wanted an entirely different type of feature about Metal Slug is really neither here nor there. Your unwarranted insults, ignorance of the basic facts and gratuitous stupidity certainly don't make me wish I'd done anything different.

Love and kisses,
Stu.

 

[Ancient Flounder]

Too fucking long

lol You have gay hair.

I eagerly await the on-coming shit-storm that will result in either:

A) lulz
B) You being torn apart verbally
C) You making a bigger twat out of yourself
D) All of the above

I've been waiting a long time to say this and have it mean something, but here goes....

Welcome to Neo-Geo.com, motherfucker.

/in before War Room

 

[GunstarHero]

Damn, and I have to leave for work!

 

[RevStu]

Let me save some time and summarise everything that will appear below this post:

"We like Metal Slug 3 and you don't, wah wah wah wah wah wah wah."

 

[Professor Denim]

Let me save some time and summarise everything that will appear below this post:

it has nothing to do with Metal Slug 3 you stupid fuck.
it has to do with the total disrespect you treated the series,its developers (ever heard of Nazca?) and its fans. the fans can live with it becouse they know the games, but a newcomer will be fooled by your words,arrogance and lack of knowledge.
i love Retrogamer.i hate you.

 

[Mike Bevan]

it has nothing to do with Metal Slug 3 you stupid fuck.
it has to do with the total disrespect you treated the series,its developers (ever heard of Nazca?) and its fans. the fans can live with it becouse they know the games, but a newcomer will be fooled by your words,arrogance and lack of knowledge.
i love Retrogamer.i hate you.

What are you... like 12 years old? Actually, don't bother answering that.

I'm a big fan of the MS series and I didn't find the article disrespectul in the slightest. It may be a 'controversial' opinion on Metal Slug 3 among Neo-Geo fans, but to be honest it's one I happen to share. I bought all the MVS carts for the series... until 3 came at which, after playing it for a while in the arcade, baulked at shelling out $250 for such a drawn-out game stuffed to the gills with tedious, neverending boss-fights (can anyone honestly say they enjoy the laser spitting Dragon boss?) and a desperate coin-grabbing mentality (witness the inexplicable pauses to fling hundreds of kamikazee soldiers or aliens at you, far more hair-tearingly annoying and pointless than any other game in the series). Conversely I think the first game in the series is still pretty much nigh-on perfect in its quickfire mission completion times and difficulty curve. And if you think the piece is neglectful due to leaving out a few obvious facts that are plainly visible in the screenshots on the pages you must be having a laugh...

The Definitives have always been comprehensive factual breakdowns of a multi-platform game series, with a smattering of entertaining opinion, humour and personal commentary from their author. Nothing's changed in this one that's any different from any of the others. Deal with it.

 

[Professor Denim]

I'm a big fan of the MS series and I didn't find the article disrespectul in the slightest. It may be a 'controversial' opinion on Metal Slug 3 among Neo-Geo fans, but to be honest it's one I happen to share. I bought all the MVS carts for the series... until 3 came at which, after playing it for a while in the arcade, baulked at shelling out $250 for such a drawn-out game stuffed to the gills with tedious, neverending boss-fights (can anyone honestly say they enjoy the laser spitting Dragon boss?) and a desperate coin-grabbing mentality (witness the inexplicable pauses to fling hundreds of kamikazee soldiers or aliens at you, far more hair-tearingly annoying and pointless than any other game in the series). Conversely I think the first game in the series is still pretty much nigh-on perfect in it's quickfire mission completion times and difficulty curve. And if you think the piece is neglectful due to leaving out a few obvious facts that are plainly visible in the screenshots on the pages you must be having a laugh...

your comments on Slug 3 shows how poorly you know the game.But AGAIN the problem with your article has nothing to do with your taste for Metal Slug 3,its worse than that.
you should be proud for achieving the worst moment on Retrogamer´s life.

 

[kernow]

People still read printed magazines? awesome.