At this point, though, it's likely that only those players who have already acquired a taste for Metal Slug's rich blend of crazy, manic violence and goofy humor will fully appreciate this package.
Though SNK's new package of Metal Slug 4 & 5, the two most recent entries in the series, does not command the same cache of cool that owning a functional NeoGeo home system or, even better, a stand-up MVS arcade machine does, it makes these throwback titles much more accessible. With arcades regrettably scarce, fans would have to fork over the hundreds of dollars that the NeoGeo versions of the Metal Slug games command. But in recent years, the tricky part has gone from having enough quarters to finish the game to simply finding it.
Fans of the 2D side-scrolling shooter have long known SNK's Metal Slug series as a last bastion for what has roughly become the video game equivalent of Latin.
