Of all the arcade franchises that have come out in the last 10 years, Metal Slug seems to be one of the most sought-after games for home play. People have been known to shell out hundreds for an SNK Neo Geo AES console and then over a thousand dollars for the cartridge just to play it. All this for a 2-D, side-scrolling shooter. Luckily, Xbox owners can now experience an excellent Metal Slug arcade game for only about $40 with SNK’s Metal Slug 3.

Since its 1996 debut, there have been six Metal Slug games. Metal Slug 3 is actually the fourth in the series – after Metal Slug X. All the games are somewhat similar. Once you’ve played one you’ve seen most of what the games are going to throw at you. Only some details change. Metal Slug 3 is a very good example of the series. It has the Vulcan-gun-equipped camel. What more could you want?

That brings us to what really makes the Metal Slug series so wonderful – a sense of humor. Forget any back-story that you may have heard. Metal Slug is all about just putting out a hail of firepower to wipe out opposing enemies, whether they are animal, vegetable, mineral or seafood, and rescuing the hippy-looking POWs. Whether alive or undead … kill everything that gets in your way. In the process you’ll use guns, rockets, bombs and some seriously whacked-out vehicles – including the aforementioned cannon-firing camel. And believe it or not, the game manages to do it all with some really funny visuals, animations and sound. Of course since this game originally came out in 2000 and the arcade game was based on early ‘90s hardware, the Xbox can handle this game with one chip tied behind its back. It looks carbon copy. This is great because the sheer variety of well-drawn enemies and their individualized attacks and death animations really make this game a feast for the player. Actually it is more a feast for the spectator. The player is so busy battling the maelstrom of stuff coming at him that he has little time to admire the scenery.

In the arcade Metal Slug 3 could be completed rather quickly if the player had enough quarters in his pocket and was willing to keep shoveling them into the machine when he died. There are only five levels. In the Xbox version SNK has altered the continue system and has created one of the few dark spots in this otherwise stellar title. At the beginning of each game the player is given a user-selectable number of lives (up to five) and four continues. If the player loses all of his lives and must use one of his continues, he is put back at the beginning of the level rather than continuing from where he died as in the arcade game. This can be very frustrating since a lot of deaths occur in this very hard game. I can see why SNK altered the continue system for the home version to extend the play value, but there has to be a better way than this extremely maddening system. On the bright side SNK did make it possible to skip levels once they were beaten and they did add a little extra content in the form of a couple of levels that can be played once the arcade game is complete. I’m just not sure it is enough to get players to not throw the game aside in disgust before they get to the end.

Talk about your pick-up-and-play games, Metal Slug 3 is the best. The left stick to move, one button to shoot, one button to jump/leap in and out of vehicles, and a button to chuck explosives. It is fun for both experienced and novice players and represents what made the arcades such a joy to go to at one time. Some serious hours of fun can be had when you add a friend to the mix and take the game on with two players.

Metal Slug 3 is Xbox Live enabled, but only for leader boards. I guess there is way too much going on for a two-player game of Metal Slug 3 to be possible online. It would have been fun though.

If not for the frustration that accompanies the new continue system, Metal Slug 3 for the Xbox would have been a perfect execution of one of the best 2-D scrolling shooters ever to grace an arcade. As it is, it must settle for merely great. While it may at first appear dated, Xbox gamers should look beyond the 2-D graphics and simple gameplay to the outstanding, skill-based game this is. A must-buy for anyone who has not had the serious green to get that Neo Geo console system they’ve been wanting.