The best Lucasarts/Konami game you've never played: Metal Warriors for SNES

I just rediscovered this little beauty and am I ever glad I did. Years and years after I first played it, it still has amongst the best graphics, action, design and sheer fun factor of any 2D action game I've ever played.

[image=http://www.ioffergames.com/gimg/605304-Metal-Warriors.jpg]

While it may first seem to be any old cheap anime inspired robot game, it's a wonderfully addictive adventure. Fighting against the Dark Axis regime, your military force sets out to blast its way through the enemy ranks and recapture Earth from their control.

The most unique aspect of the game is mech highjacking, years before the GTA series. If you don't like the mech you've been assigned, you can bail out of yours and, to scale, walk around as an infantryman. If you seen an unoccupied war machine, you can hijack it, but beware. Enemy infantry can do the same to you! I'll never forget the time I bailed from my allied machine and tried to get a damaged enemy unit to test out... and had an enemy soldier steal MY machine and proceed to smush me flat. Needless to say, I was a lot more careful after that. The game also has a rich multiplayer mode just as, if not more, fun than the single player game.

The great part is, you actually feel like you're a part of an army, something which games didn't consistantly do until many years later. Sure, you end up doing 100% of the action on your particular mission. But the covering barrages from your baseship, the sight of ruined mechs, enemy and friendly, really helped sell the experience. Moreover, you have to watch out for ALL enemy forces, not just the big war machines. Even an infantryman with an RPG can take you out if you get sloppy. Everything else looks functional and real.

If you have the means, I couldn't reccomend this baby more.

The mech designs are wonderfully unique, and are unmatched by anything except the Zone of the Enders series. Everything from humanoid power armor to rolling spider artillery cannons to air superiority spinning VTOLs. All are balanced, with very unique attributes.

 

I read something about this game a while back, but have never gotten the chance to play it. IIRC, one of the early working titles was "Battle Droids"...

 

Some other little cool bits of info, you could actually still fight once you left the safty of your war machine. One shot would still kill you, but it was fun none the less to shoot it out with troops and even other mechs.

Also, there were no health bars in the game. Your mech slowly degenerated as damage accumulated, spraying fire, sparks, and losing limbs. Sweet.

You could also get a numer of 'power ups', mostly munitions to aid in your battle. Everything from ricocheting bullets to high powered cruise missiles. The best part was, you could actually store them up and use them when you needed.

 

Further details on the game here