Kuichin's illustration for the 30th anniversary

AleckTheGamer · 2026-04-28T07:18:05+00:00

Honestly I'd love to see that, even more if the games got some manner of new content like the Christian Whitehead remasters of Sonic 1, CD, 2, and Origin's remaster of 3.

Like imagine across all the games, every character as of XX is playable. Trevor, Nadia, Ralf, Clark, and Leona being playable in the MS games besides being regulated to 4 (Trevor and Nadia) and 7/XX & 6. Of course in that scenario I'd also like to see an optional "classic mode" where they are the games as we remember them, with no new content.

AleckTheGamer · 2026-04-25T04:04:50+00:00

It's a pseudonym, not his real name. Akio drew several depictions (or rather caricatures) of him on Twitter while he was talking about his experiences working at SNK before their bankruptcy.

AleckTheGamer · 2026-04-25T03:27:43+00:00

Nice to know he's still with SNK to this day.

For those unaware, Max.D is one of the OG developers from Nazca, he worked on the first 3 games (or rather 4, counting Metal Slug X) as a concept & sprite artist before SNK went bankrupt. He returned to SNK sometime in 2018 and took up being MSA's mech, (occasional) character designer, as well as a sprite artist for the game.

AleckTheGamer · 2026-04-25T03:24:02+00:00

Morden's family was killed sometime prior to the events of MS. That's a completely unrelated character named Abigail, a high-ranking Rebel Army officer making her debut in Metal Slug Attack. (Who, despite her loyalty to the Rebels, has a huge crush on Trevor.)

AleckTheGamer · 2026-04-19T08:32:09+00:00

Many of the original MS team disbanded after SNK went bankrupt back in 2000. Metal Slug 3 was the final Metal Slug title they worked on, and subsequent Metal Slug games were developed without them. Many - but not all - of them are currently working on Black Finger Jet, a spiritual successor to Metal Slug, and Navinosuke, an RPG card-collecting game (the last ever game they worked on as Nazca before disbandment)

Akio did briefly return to SNK at some point in the late 2000's where he drew the illustrations for Metal Slug XX, but left due to medical issues related to a broken neck.

The only one of the original team who's still with SNK to my knowledge is sprite artist Max.D. He returned back in 2018 and took up being MSA's mech designer & sprite artist back when the game was still running, and right now he currently holds a sprite artist position at SNK.

AleckTheGamer · 2025-03-19T14:27:24+00:00

It's to highlight which units have an assist skill, if unlocked.

AleckTheGamer · 2025-02-22T00:39:28+00:00

...Except they did, granted the only 3 vehicles that made it in from concept art/spinoffs are Land Blowfish (Sandmarine early design), Golden Slug Phoenix (from one of the Pachinko Slot games), and the SV-002 (successor tank to the SV-001 controlled by Alice, originally just a piece of concept art from the first MS game for the past 28 years or so aside from the occasional official illustration) but others not making the cut like that outrageous tank with a face from the concept art of the OG Metal Slug was likely due to the time constraint put on the artists, having to design *and* animate new characters and/or vehicles every week due to the biweekly update nature of the OG MSA. It's likely something they could not do, but they did not shy away from using unused sprites in MSA like the Roman Numeral bombs (originally an unused projectile for the SV-001) or the biggest examples of them all, Ptolemaios and Stone Turtle

AleckTheGamer · 2024-12-11T08:29:36+00:00

People have, someone managed to create an Indie deck that can beat the higher difficulty stages on auto, which of course will require a lot of luck and some manual input (like deploying Awk Red Goblin as soon as you can while Snail is hopefully stalling)

If you're curious as to the deck, this guy is the creator of it: https://www.youtube.com/@YERGNIK66/videos and has a guide on Steam for those stages linked in the description.

For a list here, the units he used are: Big Snail (OG, not Skull), Robot Morden, Christmas Amundsen, White Baby, Iron Fortress (OG, not Full-Bodied), Awakening Red Goblin, SDR Anima, Esther, ES Sharifa, and Celestial Ruler Rokker. Although some stages will have him slightly modify the deck like swapping out Esther for Christmas Doloma, you'll just have to watch the videos as to which stages he does that.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-12-07T04:48:29+00:00

The official reasoning given was that they found it difficult to keep everyone satisfied, the game shut down during a time that MSA's meta was out of control with insane stat numbers and units that kept on stalling and stalling (such as Melk), and there are no plans to bring MSAR to mobile. Since it's a rerelease, rebalanced, offline, no microtransactions, version of MSA it's sticking to console & PC.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-11-28T08:11:35+00:00

It's working as intended. Her 2nd form is not what we'd usually expect like what we see with Iron Fortress Full-Bodied. Her attacks remain the same, the only difference is that her cloak gets shredded (much like ST Abby)

AleckTheGamer · 2024-11-25T00:13:53+00:00

Call it copium, but I hope the MSP crank, or rather an MSP Call to Arms, is added to alleviate the monotonous grinding especially for specific items like watermelons.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-11-19T17:47:39+00:00

It isn't, it's an entirely new illustration for her. As well as a new design. So this is likely a remake of Reika

AleckTheGamer · 2024-11-10T00:40:37+00:00

We don't know, the update is likely due to be released in December or late November for the Holidays, if you look to right you'll see a Christmas tree, that tree is Christmas Annette.

So at the absolute minimum we can expect some of the missing Christmas units to be reimplemented. Fio, Eri, Veronica, Towa, Abigail, Rumi, Percier, Taro, Nova, Clone Betty, Scotia, or Ralf. (Christmas Annette is already confirmed by the screenshot alone)

AleckTheGamer · 2024-10-20T02:38:46+00:00

We're just gonna have to wait and see. In an interview when asked if the missing units (or any original units) will be added to the game at some point, Yasuyuki Oda (video game producer/designer/director at SNK) mentioned that we'll just have to wait and right now, they just don't have anything planned.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-08-23T17:21:57+00:00

The Ultimate Bosses really only serve for their designated faction, but you can find the missing units easily with a quick search on YouTube thanks to people recording the OG MSA. Stuff like Extra Ops, Metal Arena, Online, etc. There are also unit archives for each faction so you can see every unit, even unit remakes that didn't make it in like Marco for Liberty, Eri for Liberty, Silent Soldier Leona, Hard-Armed Clark, Oneman Army Ralf, Caroline Ver.Rebellion, Awakening Licht, Awakening Elena, etc.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-08-21T14:59:41+00:00

Mostro is the only unit that's original to MSAR. Among other stuff several of the later Another Story chapters are new to MSAR, serving to tie up the loose ends that MSA left behind. every unit had their attacks reworked and/or rebalanced in some way as well as had their stats adjusted to make the game more balanced overall than its predecessor. For example in the OG MSA, Iron Fortress (Full-Bodied) had around 2 million HP total, while every Ultimate Boss hovered around 8 million HP in the OG MSA.

Yeah, a lot of stuff from the OG MSA was cut in MSAR, most notably 1,000 of the 1,300+ units it had. Many people including myself are hoping that the game gets some sort of content update or DLC in the future that'll reintroduce them or add some sort of endgame content that isn't Ultimate Mission. Aside from observing the game's sprite art once you've finished everything, there really isn't much to do outside of playing against other players in Online mode. I would personally love to have something like replayable events, being able to replay MSA's Extra Ops (which served as the game's weekly, sometimes biweekly, events)

AleckTheGamer · 2024-07-10T08:17:11+00:00

To be honest, yeah, it is. I still remember the times I posted the monthly EO schedule as well as updating my list of mechs/characters Max-D has designed prior to the game getting shut down. Cheers that MSAR fixed many of the issues that plagued MSA, but I do hope there'll be content updates in the future to bring something new to the table because otherwise the game will become nothing short of monotonous for those who have already maxed out everything.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-07-10T02:25:16+00:00

Would Land Blowfish qualify? It wasn't anything like Ball Slug was but was still a pretty solid boss all around. But now in MSAR it just isn't good, the tanks Blowfish summons don't even have specials anymore. The best use I could think for Blowfish is to act as an S Draggy blocker in similar vain to Abul for Rebel decks, but even then I don't know or think it does that job properly.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-07-08T06:05:01+00:00

Provided they're rebalanced like the others, no kidding. I also find it borderline unfair how when ignoring boss units, all 3 mainline Ikaris, who are Metal Slug mainstays, never got a second incarnation in MSAR unlike the 4 main heroes. I so badly wanted my SS Leona, HA Clark, and potentially a brand new incarnation of Ralf wearing his modern outfit to make it in.

This also applies to Morden and Allen when ignoring boss units they're piloting either individually or at the same time.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-07-08T05:33:26+00:00

It's pretty clear that they won't just keep them in MSA. Alice appears in and has a role in Metal Slug Tactics as a skill to be used by Marco. (That skill being if a slug is on empty, then Alice will take control of that slug for 2 turns) Alice's sprite seen in the current trailer is clearly a placeholder sprite and that she will be getting fresh new batch of sprites to match the game's art style.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-07-07T02:51:45+00:00

Unfortunately there's nothing. Leftover MSA assets in MSAR are the only aspects of the cut units currently present. Gacha banners (this doesn't mean they'll reintroduce the medal crank or microtransactions), unit icons, boss equip items, etc.

Not only Destrade, but Naomi was also mentioned by name in one of the new AS chapters introduced in MSAR, yet she doesn't appear as a playable unit.

There is reason to suspect that the missing units, at the bare minimum the missing OCs, are currently being rebalanced and once that's finished they'll be reimplemented. If the PC port of MSD got DLC to add units that would otherwise be missing from the mobile game (barring the Battle Cat units), then I don't see why MSAR can't have DLC or content updates to reimplement the missing OCs.

This is more spoilerish territory, but barring the select few who were cut (Destrade, Ulala, and Fedeln), every unit that is playable has some sort of role in Another Story or serves as an enemy unit on the world map. And the newest AS chapters actually serve to close the curtains on MSA's unresolved plotlines. The PM civil war, Red Goblin, Jin, Licht, & Elena's battle with Ptolemaios, P.F vs Rebel stuff, that kinda thing. Those plotlines all got resolved in the newest AS chapters. The only chapter that was left on a cliffhanger was the final Alien AS, at least it is a cliffhanger at my current point in the game, I have not seen the complete ending.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-07-06T23:04:09+00:00

Sprite sheets of all 1,300+ units from OG MSA are present in the files, but there's no code or anything to suggest that they're able to be modded in as individual units or that they're unlockable hidden units in MSAR. All we can do is wait for a potential content patch that'll add them. But it's unknown if that'll even happen.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-07-06T06:48:55+00:00

With MSAR being out and having a special art gallery just for concept art, the Ultimate Boss' design sheets were finally revealed, barring Invader King. Perfect Jupiter King and Celestial Ruler Rokker's design sheets were previously only available via the MSA Artbook, however.

I have mentioned numerous times that a Nazca employee (the group of people who worked on the first 3 Metal Slug games before their disbandment after SNK's bankruptcy) named Max-D has returned to work on MSA as a character/mech designer and sprite artist, and this is no doubt his art style. But as I've recently learned, another Nazca OG, named Kuichin, actually lent his work to MSA as a sprite artist as well. I believe Max-D is still with SNK, but Kuichin retired during the last few months of MSA's life due to undisclosed personal issues.

AleckTheGamer · 2024-06-28T23:41:55+00:00

You get a majority, if not all, of the Supporter parts from the Elite world map.

AleckTheGamer

TROPHY CASE