From Ikari Warriors to Metal Slug
I was looking at the great NES game Iron Tank the other day and it occured to me how the lineage of SNK's shoot-em-up games (like Contra) came to be.
It all started with a top-down arcade game called Ikari Warriors, which was translated to the NES early on. It had an unusual joystick that could be rotated to control what direction you fired in. Anyway, it had the machine gun and grenades, plus the tanks you can enter which explode shortly after losing their short life bar, taking you with them if you don't bail out. These traits are the foundation of these games.
There were some sequels to Ikari Warriors, which are not important to this essay; however, I feel I should stop a moment to mock Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road's NES version. First, it had some rare voice on the NES, with baddies proclaiming, "C'mon! Let's fight!" in a voice not dissimilar to a nail on a chalkboard. The instructions tell us that our villian is "Zang Zip the War Dog," proving that SNK has never cared about English translations.
There was a third Ikari Warriors game for the arcade only, but it was pretty mediocre, with more melee than shooting. The Ikari Warriors games gave us Vince and Paul, who are actually the mistranslated Clark and Ralf of King of Fighters fame. I guess that's it.
The aforementioned Iron Tank on the NES basically asks, "What if you never left your tank in Ikari Warriors?" and the whole game is spent with you piloting a tank. It has an awkward system for rotating your cannon by holding down the other button and pressing a direction. It has cool music and is pretty fun, but very hard. How can you not love a game where you refill your life bar by running over infantry?
This brings us to Guerilla Warriors. This game is stupid fun on the NES, because SNK decided that tear-inducing difficulty wasn't the way to go, for once, and made it stupid easy, with infinite continues right where you died. It goes back to Ikari Warriors in basic gameply, but is a bit more silly. Much like in real life you can get bonus points for shooting pigs or grabbing nurses, but lose points for shooting nurses.
When the 24-bit era -- was there a 24-bit era? -- came, SNK decided that they would never make another game that wasn't either a Street Fighter knock-off or a Metal Slug game. (Actually, they recently decided that making dating sims and top-down auto-scrolling shooters was okay, not to mention witch-groping games on the DS.) The Metal Slug games are great. They are basically the Ikari Warriors lineage translated to a side-scroller with graphics with a level of graphical detail comparable to a fighting game. The amount of animations on the generic soldiers is staggering, with various death animations, depending on what weapon you have, sleeping, warming their hands at campfires, sneaking, fleeing, etc. The basic gun/grenade layout remains, with limited grenades this time around. (Actually Ikari Warriors had limited ammo all around, but it was the exception.) Freeing hostages gives you bonus items or special weapons. The tanks are now called "Metal Slugs" and work more or less as in Ikari Warriors. There is a shirtless guy with a heavy machine gun who likes to yell, "Come on, boy!" who serves as a mini-boss in every game, I think, sometimes getting eaten by an orca after you defeat him. The series consistently has some of the greatest boss battles in video games.
I'd like to talk about Metal Slug 3 for a moment. I have added it to my short list of "Best Games Ever." It is awesome, surely being the peak of the series. It has it all: barfing zombies, mummies, aliens, giant insects, kamehameha-firing POWs, jets, submarines, diaper-wearing orangatans with uzis that assist you, and more, more, more. Just as you think the game is over, you're only half-way done.
I've talked about in-game storytelling that doesn't break immersion, forcing you to watch slow-paced cut scenes, and Metal Slug 3 is a good source of good in-game storytelling. There are four selectable characters, but only two joysticks. Hmm! You fight a battle that's like the final battle in the original Metal Slug, only to find that the last boss is an alien! They not only have the villain captive, but they abduct your two characters, forcing the two characters you haven't selected to mount a rescue! The bad guy army and your dudes all rush to rockets and blast into space in hot pursuit of the alien bastiches! (Sort of like the Mars Attacks! bubblegum cards or X-Com.) After a fierce space battle, you infiltrate the alien base and fight your way to the abducted. As you flee, you find that they have been cloned into armies of barfing zombies that pursue you through the halls. Your former enemy soldiers can be seen (ineffectively) aiding you throughout, dying in droves. Even Mr. Shirtless-Heavy-Machine-Gun-Man lays down a suppressive fire for you. Finally, you get into a Metal Slug and drop, only to have your Metal Slug get snatched out of the air by a giant alien, which you have to fight while falling through the atmosphere. Whew! Good times! Exciting without ever causing you to lose control of your character for more than a few seconds.
It all started with a top-down arcade game called Ikari Warriors, which was translated to the NES early on. It had an unusual joystick that could be rotated to control what direction you fired in. Anyway, it had the machine gun and grenades, plus the tanks you can enter which explode shortly after losing their short life bar, taking you with them if you don't bail out. These traits are the foundation of these games.
There were some sequels to Ikari Warriors, which are not important to this essay; however, I feel I should stop a moment to mock Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road's NES version. First, it had some rare voice on the NES, with baddies proclaiming, "C'mon! Let's fight!" in a voice not dissimilar to a nail on a chalkboard. The instructions tell us that our villian is "Zang Zip the War Dog," proving that SNK has never cared about English translations.
There was a third Ikari Warriors game for the arcade only, but it was pretty mediocre, with more melee than shooting. The Ikari Warriors games gave us Vince and Paul, who are actually the mistranslated Clark and Ralf of King of Fighters fame. I guess that's it.
The aforementioned Iron Tank on the NES basically asks, "What if you never left your tank in Ikari Warriors?" and the whole game is spent with you piloting a tank. It has an awkward system for rotating your cannon by holding down the other button and pressing a direction. It has cool music and is pretty fun, but very hard. How can you not love a game where you refill your life bar by running over infantry?
This brings us to Guerilla Warriors. This game is stupid fun on the NES, because SNK decided that tear-inducing difficulty wasn't the way to go, for once, and made it stupid easy, with infinite continues right where you died. It goes back to Ikari Warriors in basic gameply, but is a bit more silly. Much like in real life you can get bonus points for shooting pigs or grabbing nurses, but lose points for shooting nurses.
When the 24-bit era -- was there a 24-bit era? -- came, SNK decided that they would never make another game that wasn't either a Street Fighter knock-off or a Metal Slug game. (Actually, they recently decided that making dating sims and top-down auto-scrolling shooters was okay, not to mention witch-groping games on the DS.) The Metal Slug games are great. They are basically the Ikari Warriors lineage translated to a side-scroller with graphics with a level of graphical detail comparable to a fighting game. The amount of animations on the generic soldiers is staggering, with various death animations, depending on what weapon you have, sleeping, warming their hands at campfires, sneaking, fleeing, etc. The basic gun/grenade layout remains, with limited grenades this time around. (Actually Ikari Warriors had limited ammo all around, but it was the exception.) Freeing hostages gives you bonus items or special weapons. The tanks are now called "Metal Slugs" and work more or less as in Ikari Warriors. There is a shirtless guy with a heavy machine gun who likes to yell, "Come on, boy!" who serves as a mini-boss in every game, I think, sometimes getting eaten by an orca after you defeat him. The series consistently has some of the greatest boss battles in video games.
I'd like to talk about Metal Slug 3 for a moment. I have added it to my short list of "Best Games Ever." It is awesome, surely being the peak of the series. It has it all: barfing zombies, mummies, aliens, giant insects, kamehameha-firing POWs, jets, submarines, diaper-wearing orangatans with uzis that assist you, and more, more, more. Just as you think the game is over, you're only half-way done.
I've talked about in-game storytelling that doesn't break immersion, forcing you to watch slow-paced cut scenes, and Metal Slug 3 is a good source of good in-game storytelling. There are four selectable characters, but only two joysticks. Hmm! You fight a battle that's like the final battle in the original Metal Slug, only to find that the last boss is an alien! They not only have the villain captive, but they abduct your two characters, forcing the two characters you haven't selected to mount a rescue! The bad guy army and your dudes all rush to rockets and blast into space in hot pursuit of the alien bastiches! (Sort of like the Mars Attacks! bubblegum cards or X-Com.) After a fierce space battle, you infiltrate the alien base and fight your way to the abducted. As you flee, you find that they have been cloned into armies of barfing zombies that pursue you through the halls. Your former enemy soldiers can be seen (ineffectively) aiding you throughout, dying in droves. Even Mr. Shirtless-Heavy-Machine-Gun-Man lays down a suppressive fire for you. Finally, you get into a Metal Slug and drop, only to have your Metal Slug get snatched out of the air by a giant alien, which you have to fight while falling through the atmosphere. Whew! Good times! Exciting without ever causing you to lose control of your character for more than a few seconds.