A weapon to surpass Metal- uh, Slug?
Unofficial cover from an unknown source.
This article was originally going to be based on just one game I discovered by accident, except I kept finding Metal Slug bootlegs specifically on the Gameboy Color. So here’s a bunch all in the same article. There’s very little information about almost all of them online, but I’ll document what I can.
One thing that’s confusing to me is that two of the games are called some variation of “Vietnam Battle”, and are clearly from different studios. In my research, I found articles from Chinese entertainment sites that suggested the Metal Slug series is called “Vietnam Battle” in China, but I can’t back this up with evidence.
Battle of Vietnam 2001 / Metal Slug 2001
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📖 Background Link to heading
This game is a Taiwanese pirate game, but I can’t find almost any information about it online. This site claims it was designed by BBD, the same developers behind many early Sintax games. It directly rips off sprites and mechanics from Metal Slug: 1st Mission and 2nd Mission, but plenty of functionality is missing and it plays like garbage. The game has multiple versions online, going under multiple names including Tezhong Budui 2001, Yuenan Zhanyi: Chong Jian Tian Ri, Battle of Vietnam 2001, and Metal Slug 2001.
🎮 Controls Link to heading
- D-pad: Move/Aim
- B: Jump
- A: Fire
📝 Notes Link to heading
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The game lags constantly, or at least it appears to. All the motion is choppy except when you’re in the air or changing directions.
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Jumping while running makes your character lurch forward in a bizarre way, making your movement more fluid but also increasing your speed.
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You can only shoot one bullet at a time, and upgrades to your gun appear to do no additional damage. There is no knife attack, which means close-range and armour-piercing attacks don’t exist.
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Hitboxes are absolutely colossal for some reason.
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Pausing causes an annoying sound to play on repeat, as though the pause sound was flagged to end. It can only be halted by causing another sound effect to play.
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Some power-ups like the triple shot in level 3 cannot be collected.
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The level 3 moving platforms have hitboxes displaced to the left for some reason. It’s very easy to fall through them.
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It’s similarly impossible to tell what is in the background vs the foreground sometimes.
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The exit to each level is rather unclear, having no marker like in 1st Mission.
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The first boss is a giant tank in level 5. The janky hitboxes and bad movement make it rather difficult to avoid the bombs it throws.
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Sometimes, a weird interaction between shooting and the explosion sprite makes an explosion last far longer than it should and bizarrely it pulls the explosion towards you.
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Metal Slug: Vietnam Battle 3
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This is even less playable than the previous game. Sprites don’t scroll smoothly, hitboxes are absurdly large, and when you fall, you accelerate so quickly that you can clip through platforms. The game is full of cheap hits and terrible platforming. See some history here: http://hhug.me/?post=45
What’s especially strange is that this game exhibits many of the same issues as “Battle of Vietnam 2001”. Namely, your movement halts while shooting, you can only have one shot on screen at a time, and the jump is weirdly good out of context but terrible in the context of this game. However, these faults all exist in a different form from the other game. Instead of bullets respawning, your fire rate is heavily limited. The player’s sprite is fairly different from the others in the game as well.
🎮 Controls Link to heading
- D-pad: Move/Aim
- B: Jump
- A: Fire
- Select: Throw Grenade