Nazca: To achieve his coup d’état, General Morden used the unethical tactic known as the “human shield.” That is, prisoners who were captured were then deliberately placed in the line of fire, and the government army couldn’t make any reckless attacks. The POWs in Metal Slug sure look like they’ve been left there for awhile… We were conscious of making something that should appeal to a wide audience, both those who are relatively used to games, and those who are not. Nazca: We wanted everything on screen to be immediately and easily understandable, with just a glance. What were some of the things you gave special care and attention to during the development? This is the first orthodox action game we’ve seen on the Neo Geo in awhile. I say comical, but for the mechs and effects, we aimed for something realistic and stylish. Nazca: Our basic concept was an action game with a good sense of speed, with somewhat comical characters. Click to expand!įeatured in the 10/96 edition of Neo Geo Freak magazine -Please tell us about what makes Metal Slug special: its basic concept, selling point, etc.

Metal Slug UFO concept art with English translation.

We’re working hard to make it something our fans will love, so thank you for your continued support. It will feature many gameplay elements that are new to the series. Right now we’re working on a new Metal Slug, actually. I still don’t think we’ve perfected it, and it’s something I want to work more on in the future. That feeling of metal scraping on metal, of threatening bullets whizzing by at a high speed, and a sense of weight and force to all the destruction… that was the hardest thing for us to express in Metal Slug. We hope players feel like all the different enemies, big and small, have a life of their own. Metal Slug is known for featuring an abundance of character animation that has no direct relation to the game, but that’s why we do that. We really fussed over the details of the mechs, but the thing we probably paid the most attention to was making sure all the characters felt alive, and that it would feel like they really inhabited that world. Then, once we made them jump, crouch, and move around, they seemed like living creatures, and we thought this would grab players’ attention. That was when we hit upon the idea for the tanks. But we thought having normal player characters would be boring, and we wracked our brains for awhile to come up with something different. “Let’s make an action game!” - getting that far was relatively easy. Those were our major themes for the development. use comical characters, but make their actions and effects realistic/cool a refreshing game overflowing with flash and extravagance that would relieve daily stress Some of our concepts for the Metal Slug series:

Metal slug characters