#METAL SLUG TACTIC SERIES#

Metal Slug Tactics and Into the BreachĪ straightforward revival probably would have won Dotemu and Leikir plenty of plaudits, but shifting it to the tactics genre provided them with a unique opportunity to put their own stamp on the series.

#METAL SLUG TACTIC SERIES#

Its stunning artwork has helped the series retain a dedicated following over the years, even as the sequels have largely dried up. Even on Dotemu’s admittedly clunky arcade emulator, it remains a sight to behold, especially when one of its enormous bosses appears on the screen. An arcade stalwart, Metal Slug was famous for crowding the screen with hordes of lavishly-animated enemies, each more elaborate than the last.

So what can you do? And doing a sequel would have meant bringing something new to the table and they were already perfect, so what can you do?'ĭotemu was intimately familiar with the challenges posed by the series, having worked with SNK to port various Metal Slug games to Steam. 'So there was no reason to do a remake of that - it's already great. I think it’s still one of the most beautiful pixel art games ever made, along with Street Fighter 3rd Strike, for example,' Imbert says. And on the other side, there was Metal Slug, but all the Metal Slugs for the Neo-Geo are very good games - very beautiful, top-notch pixel art games. Fighting games are really hard to make, and they’re high risk.

'Most are fighting games, and the fighting game market is a very hard one. It was the solution to a problem that Imbert had been wrestling with for a while: how could he adapt a retro series that he already considered to be close to perfect? SNK had originally extended an invitation to pitch a game based around one of its properties after being impressed by Dotemu’s work on Wonder Boy and Streets of Rage 4, which Imbert found daunting. The notion of turning Metal Slug into a tactics game first came up over drinks, says Dotemu CEO Cyrille Imbert. He also says that it will be a tribute to all things Metal Slug, with plenty of bosses, characters, and concepts being pulled directly from the series. But in a new interview with IGN, Loos revealed several new details, saying that fans can expect an experience similar to Into the Breach - the highly-regarded 2018 tactics game that was among the first to combine turn-based tactics with the roguelite genre. Up until this point, the reveal trailer has been allowed to largely stand on its own. It helped that it was being developed in partnership with Dotemu, the publisher behind Streets of Rage 4 recently acquired by Focus Home Interactive (SNK isn’t directly involved with development). When Metal Slug Tactics’ trailer debuted during E3 2021, retro fans were immediately excited by the possibilities afforded by the shift to the tactics genre, as well as the apparent fidelity to the source material.

The pixel art is beautiful,' Loos says.Īs it turned out, Leikir was more than capable of recreating Metal Slug’s famous pixel art, even without the benefit of being able to use pre-existing assets. 'The first thing we needed to do was to check that we were good enough for Metal Slug because the series is huge.

Metal slug tactic