Holding out for a hero
It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about Metal Slug, hasn’t it?
A couple of days ago a Korean fellow emailed me with some pretty juicy material found in Metal Slug 5 – we’re talking unused areas, blocked-off alternate paths and totally unique backgrounds!
Seriously, check this out. Those cogs apparently exist at the bottom of the Mission 5 fight against the elephant tower machines, would you believe it? And if anyone has ever survived my terribly written coverage of the early video previews of the game, you might recognise that screen on the right as appearing in one of the videos as an intro to one of the areas – but in-game you start just past it. It’s still there, it’s just off-screen, evidently!
Also, here’s a sneaky one that I can’t believe has eluded me for, what, seven years? Second screen of the first mission. There used to be an alternate path where you would drop down, as indicated by the GEO SCROLL debug option. It is instead patched up by a graphic that overlays the background graphics. The little rascals.
The email linked to the blog where these discoveries were made (and also to a seemingly unrelated fansite, but I figure I may as well link to them for publicity’s sake (publicity? what publicity?)), and it’s intriguing stuff. The person seems to be using the hack of the game, Metal Slug 5 Plus, and dabbling in value editing with Cheat Engine to get these results. It’s fascinating seeing new content get discovered after all these years, and shows that if you’re going to find everything inside a game, you’re going to need more than just the built-in debug functions.
The person emailing me kindly requested “Please find more please Stage,” and seeing stuff like this really piques my interest. Problem is… I don’t know how! I get the impression that figuring out what values control the camera is high on the agenda, that way you can view the maps with no limits… but figuring that out looks like it’d be a real hassle. Maybe this post will spark awareness and someone competent will crack the code? Who knows!
Anyway, I figured I wasn’t likely to get anywhere with this on my own any time soon, so I might as well share it here.
(it was either this, or sharing some vulgar doodles I apparently made in a drowsy haze. You’ve been spared, I’ll tell you that much.)
Well this easily beats out the amazingly dull scans I had of early MS2 (TRUCK IN A DIFFERENT PLACE IN MISSION 3!). Did I ever bother sending you those?
Those cogs are freaky and I don’t know why.
Egads I can’t seem to click on the link to the blog. Is this an early Apirl fool’s?!
Heavens, no! That’s just stupid ass formatting on my part. Fixed the link and the images; you’ll have to click the 메탈슬러그5 link on the sidebar to see the relevant blog posts, the blog seems to be very awkward about URLs. Mind you, maybe the other blog guy is April Foolsin’ us all!
Yeah, those cogs weird me out. And they’re oddly animated too, judging from the videos.
Also yeah, you did send me those scans – yikes, apparently they’ve been sitting in my “received files” folder for a year and a half. Still good to have emergency update fodder, though.
I’m a little bummed those cogs never made it into the game either. Wasted oppurtunity for a great level or backdrop.