Game:

Metal Slug (1996)

Duration: 8:52

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87

First there was Black Finger Jet from the original devs of the Nazca team (minus kujo and max d) then came along division's Aqua Ippan.

Right off the bat the graphics alone are already reminiscent of the 1st metal slug except now it has an underwater theme (makes me thing division fused metal slug with in the hunt.) Their composer also managed to capture Hiya!'s jazz style of music!

The plot of the game is pretty simple, our divers Itou and Yena find a strange artifact buried at a nearby lake when suddenly a small armed group named "Vigilanti" steals it! Now Itou and Yena must retrieve the stolen artifact and bring it back to their school.

The game controls exactly like MS so I don't have much to say for the controls. A neat feature is they added the unused backward shooting sprite in the MS1 prototype. Anyways I'll just be going through the new stuff.

1st main difference is weapon pick ups are now gone and your grenades have been swapped with oxytanks and bricks (kinda like the stone). It also added a 1up item in the form of a can of soda, this is super helpful for anyone who isn't great with run n' guns or those looking to 1cc it.

A new feature it did add is the combo system, a bit of a weird addition since that's one thing you'd never see in a run n' gun, there's ms4 but the combo system there is a bit different since it runs on a timer (still, you'd normally expect a combo system in a beat em' up). The combo meter reaches up to 99, if you hit anything else that isn't an enemy or hidden item then the combo drops. One inclusion is your oxytanks or bricks, it won't affect the meter if you throw one at nothing.

POWs have now been swapped for kids who are part of the local "spray gang." Apparently they were caught vandalizing the armies materials so it's up to Itou and Yena to save them. I really like how they can stun and even knock out enemies. A really neat addition to the POW rescue system is that if you die, you lose the kid you save BUT another kid will pop up to help at the cost of deducting the amount of kids you've rescued. It's a fair exchange really since these kids are risking their lives to help two young divers.

Overall, this is a great MS clone that pays homage to the original game. It's got butter smooth animation, great sprites and visuals, it still retains a bit of the humor as well (in the opening cutscene at least.) The games music capture's Hiya!'s jazz style as well! Looking forward to for this game to be complete!

Link to Division's game:
https://division6.itch.io/aqua-ippan

If you like my runs be sure to check out the group I'm in if you want to see us play more good ol fashion retro games!
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