Metal Slug: 1st Mission (Neo Geo Pocket Color)

The Metal Slug run and gun games are best known for their gorgeous animated pixel art and the fact you’ll die if you take a single hit, but neither of these elements are present in Metal Slug: 1st Mission. It does do its best to make some expressive enemy soldiers and large impressive war machines despite the visual limitations of the Neo Geo Pocket Color, but taking away the one hit kills on the player was perhaps a change for the better. A Metal Slug game to be played on your own rather than at the arcade and one with more to do than fight your way through everything in your path, Metal Slug: 1st Mission may deviate from the mold, but it does so in an effective manner.

Metal Slug: 1st Mission looks like it would star the familiar soldier Marco from other entries, he even looks like the guy on the box, but officially he is just a rookie who looks a lot like that character. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the villain this up-and-comer is sent to face looks like regular antagonist General Morden but instead its an entirely new eyepatch-wearing warlord named Hilde Garn causing trouble. With Hilde Garn behind a slew of high end illegal weapons sales, you need to infiltrate his base and stop him before he can amass too much power. However, your path to the enemy base isn’t set in stone, your actions and choices while in levels potentially taking you through different paths with at least three playthroughs necessary to see every stage. There are 16 main missions in this side-scrolling action platformer, many of decent size, and then there are also additional Prison Camp levels where falling down a pit at certain points will find you in a wholly unique area with just a knife to defend yourself with.

The replayability is managed very well here, it not hard to figure out some of the junction points, the game packs a save feature as well as the ability to earn more continues through in-level collectibles, and beating the game even unlocks the ability to run through again with a new female soldier playable and your ranks from the previous missions retained. Ranking up by earning score will increase your health, so grabbing score items is also incentivized and when you’re running through new levels, it won’t be as difficult with that extra cushion of a larger life bar. The levels of Metal Slug: 1st Mission feel like a good fit for searching for things like score items too, the action not too fast paced as you need to mix in platforming as much as combat to clear the levels. You might be popping into doorways to search small rooms for useful goodies, riding elevators while dodging flamethrowers, scaling a junkyard, or hopping between tree tops, and the enemies are placed well to oppose you. Most regular soldiers fold to a single shot from your standard pistol, but while there are some simple infantry to take out, a lot more try to make themselves useful before they perish.

While navigating platforms, a soldier may leap towards you with a large machete to try and catch you off-guard. A smart soldier with a shield can approach blocking your shots, but if you leave him be, he’ll whip out his bazooka to bring the hurt. Some soldiers smartly only pop out of windows briefly to fire on you, but it seems wildlife is on the side of the enemy too as bats and fish will make sewer exploration more dangerous. The greater danger will come from the squat little tanks that mirror the heroic Metal Slug tank in their appearance, these taking much more damage before going down. However, Metal Slug: 1st Mission does understand your basic power level, and if you leap at the right times you can even dodge cannon fire reliably. At times though, the game will lock the screen and leave you little room to move, enemies pouring in from the sides to pressure you with numbers rather than smart placement. Helicopters above, grenadiers below, Metal Slug: 1st Mission will threaten you even though you can afford to take a few hits, but enemies do usually give you a moment to notice their presence. The health pick-ups found around stages don’t ease the difficulty too much because of the game constructing its levels to test you even when enemies often only come in small numbers.

You do have some ways to fight back better than your simple pistol. Hidden around levels or dropped as rewards from dead enemies, weapons come with limited ammo but incredible strength. Machine Gun makes it easier to handle groups, the shotgun can deal so much damage at close range it can wipe out those squat tanks in a single blast, and the rocket launcher mixes power and range well. You do carry grenades as a secondary while on foot as well, pressing Options in a way that doesn’t always seem to be clean to throw them. They are strong and you can collect them fairly often, these serving as a great tool against bosses, especially since most bosses in the game are fairly large. The first one you face is a bit of a weak showing, an enormous helicopter only fighting with rotary cannons that moves in such a predictable manner that it’s too easy to avoid injury, but later fights like a train engine slowly pushing towards you bring new things to the action. That train’s arena slowly grows more cramped as it approaches, and when you face Hilde Garn’s right hand man Lt. Colonel Macba, he leaps around the arena like a knife throwing ninja. Returning to life after a death will place you in the latest area you entered and boss fights even give you a machine gun so you’re not going back in too weak, the difficulty balance fairly good so that a loss isn’t going to lead to an uphill climb or too much repetition.

Metal Slug: 1st Mission does contain a few unique missions like one more focused on managing the handcar you’re pulling alongside the train than combat, but quite a few levels also have sections dedicated to the Metal Slug tank and the Slug Flyer. The Metal Slug is able to jump around and aim in all directions, it also packing a cannon shot for higher damage output but it is already a big step up in terms of power and it’s nice to go on a little power trip whenever you find one. The Slug Flyer is given some tougher stages despite it being a well-armed fighter plane, the sections in it featuring the screen scrolling on its own as you weave around the air firing upon whatever you’re facing. The Slug Flyer can run into the game’s somewhat common issue of boss fights just seeming to drag on without introduced variation, but in its regular levels it can actually be appropriately difficult to stay safe in the sky. In fact, aerial sections are more about staying alive, your weapons useful but they probably can’t do too much about incoming anti-aircraft fire.

If you do manage to lose your Slug Flyer, that actually doesn’t lead to your death. While sometimes finding new mission paths involves exploring the level, the most reliable divergence point is actually surviving a Slug Flyer crash. Your soldier leaps out before the aircraft blows up, the player needing to open their parachute and survive a perilous drift down to the ground below. Surviving these is actually very difficult, that anti-aircraft weaponry is now aiming at your slowly descending soldier, one hit actually taking you out here, but make it to the ground and you can start along a new path. This is different from the Prison Camp stages, those putting you back on the same path as before once cleared and focused often on avoiding traps and careful maneuvering around the guards who have your simple knife outmatched. The parachuting could have likely benefited from being less brutal to encourage seeking out additional paths, but even the expected route of the adventure is varied enough to be entertaining enough that this extra side of the game doesn’t feel too crucial to your overall enjoyment.

THE VERDICT: Metal Slug: 1st Mission gives you plenty of reasons to explore its levels, score items potentially aiding your health, new weapons always a big step up from the pistol, and hidden paths leading to new stages to give the game greater longevity. The levels themselves are willing to be a bit more involved to navigate then, the enemy soldiers positioned well to be dangerous enough to impede you but not discourage the search. Some boss battles can be a touch slow despite being quite varied and the parachuting section’s difficulty feels a bit high for the most reliable means of finding new missions, but the range of ideas and even ways to face the enemy make Metal Slug: 1st Mission an entertaining portable take on the run and gun series.

And so, I give Metal Slug: 1st Mission for Neo Geo Pocket Color…

A GOOD rating. The one hit kills of Metal Slug in the arcade were always more about getting more money out of your pockets, but Metal Slug: 1st Mission shows what the series can do when you give the player more wiggle room. Enemies can be poised for ambushes that don’t feel unfair, enemies can press in on you better, and while it is unfortunate the bosses can wear on from time to time, at least it’s not a balancing act trying to cling to a few lives before having to pay up. Metal Slug: 1st Mission gives you a life bar because that allows for it to make levels with more navigational depth, the player able to find little platforming challenges or take some risks that pay off with useful items. Your score being valuable is especially good for making any pick-up you find feel meaningful, and while a few are dangerous decoys, there is also the chance for random health drops even when you’re in a Metal Slug or Slug Flyer that can further encourage you to attack your enemies to see if they’ll give up something good. Even though the action might not be as intense or as over the top as the main series, Metal Slug: 1st Mission wisely sought to make the actions outside of combat feel more meaningful, stage design encouraging curiosity but also fairly opposing it even before you factor in the enemies who were built well to test your skills in a range of ways.

Metal Slug: 1st Mission can struggle a bit when it does try to make things tougher, the parachute drops and certain bosses feeling like they miss the mark, but there are still thrills to be found when tearing through areas in the Metal Slug while more strategic exploration arises when on foot and you’re finding out which areas in a level contain useful goodies. Some levels do feel like they end a touch abruptly, mostly because the POWs you find usually handing out pick-ups can sometimes instead shoot a flare to signal the level’s end, but even then the game feels like it has packed in enough unique levels even in a single run to make this a worthy entry in the beloved run and gun series and even one with its own ideas that helps it stand out and succeed while doing so.