Metal Slug Anthology Wii Review

Like a new lick of paint on an old shed, Metal Slug Anthology on the Wii, has made the old appear as new. But sometimes even a freshly painted old shed can look worse, if painted the wrong colour.

With our cringe worthy analogy aside, Metal Slug Anthology has six control schemes, most of which aren’t worth bothering with. There’s a couple of decent remote and nunchuk schemes in there, but everything else will have your pixelated alter ego infuriating you with his/her actions, simply because they‘re not the actions that you are requesting. Without doubt the best control method of the lot is the trusty old GameCube controller and we imagine this is the one most will go with, as any other is simply novel at best and truly terrible at its worst. See old can be superior to new, does our shed nonsense finally make some sort of sense?

With that cleared up, lets give the uninitiated a history lesson, shall we?

Metal Slug is a challenging action series, with charismatic graphics and some of the most exhilarating gunfights ever featured in a game. There have been a lot of titles, but for its entirety the enduring series has received nothing more than simple tweaks to its formula, in a nutshell, once you’ve played one Metal Slug game, you‘ve played them all.

Since the series has reached the milestone age of ten, all of the six main games (along with Metal Slug X, which is nothing more then an enhanced version of 2, but a worthy inclusion all the same) have been put snugly together on one disc (all arcade perfect ports, with slowdown and all!) resulting in one of the best game compendiums that there has ever been.

Sadly not in regards to extras though. Completing any of the games, rewards you tokens, with which you can buy these extras with. Largely this is boring old artwork, but there is a lengthy text based interview tucked away in there that’s rather informative. Other than that, we feel more love should have been given to a collection of games that have such a strong following. This is a rather wasted opportunity to say the very least.

But lack of fan service aside, Metal Slug Anthology is old school action gaming at its very best. Its rabid fans would have been salivating at the prospect of having their beloved series together in one tidy package (as barebones as it is) and would have snapped it up in an instant, we suggest anyone else with even the slightest of interest in fast paced action games to do the same. All said and done, this is an incredible union of games, which if given a few more loving kisses by its developer, could have been an even grander celebration for the series’ first decade.

8/10