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I suppose you could call me a Metal Slug fan. Or maybe you could call me a fan of the fading subset of gaming known as 2D. Hell, you could call me anything you like. Me? I prefer Top Gun. That’s a name with pizzazz. It has presence. “Hey, Top Gun. Want to go for a walk? No? Too busy getting bitches?” You’re goddamn right I am.

Metal Slug 3 is a game that ended up costing me one hundred and ten dollars to play. I had to order a mod chip to allow me to play imports and kill a whole Saturday installing the thing. My Playstation 2 still hasn’t fully recovered. No solder 10 second installation my ass. “It just pops right in” they said. We’ve all heard that one before. Now where’s my Preparation H? Heh. I would love to be you reading this article right now. I’m on a fucking roll.

Well why didn’t I just save myself the hassle (and the expense) and just pick up the domestic Xbox port instead, you ask? Aside from a few pragmatic issues, such as the inane continue system that game sports or the fact that playing Metal Slug with the Saturn replica pad for Sony’s machine is the only way to play (and slightly less importantly, my lacking an Xbox), there’s a fair amount of spite involved.

You see, MS3 on the PS2 was slated for domestic release a bunch of times. Release dates came and went, new ones would be set. The game was localized but disagreement over pricing between SNK/Playmore and SCEA kept the game from store shelves. It’s been a long time so don’t ask about the details, but the gist of it was that SCEA refused to sell a standalone 2D game at full price without it being part of some kind of package deal. Now I understand the argument that MS3 was a year’s old port of a ‘dusty’ arcade game, but understand that the game had never seen a console release outside of anything other than Neo Geo’s own AES system. And acquiring the cart for that system makes my measly 110 bones seem like pocket change.

Canning what is arguably the original SNK’s masterwork for ‘quality control’ reasons is a disgrace to gamers everywhere. Eventually SNK pitched the idea to Microsoft, and they ate it up. Sony eventually released Metal Slug 4 and 5, but only after SNK caved and combined them into a 2 disc set.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of SCEA deciding what I can and cannot play. Because of them, Castlevania SotN almost never came out in America. Dodged a bullet with that one, didn’t ya? Because of them, we almost never saw a sequel to Gungrave. The sequel blew chunks anyway, but that’s not the point. Right now, at this very moment, there are stacks of awesome Psikyo collections for PS2 sitting on Japanese store shelves that we’ll never get to play. Because of SCEA the Streets of Rage trilogy present in Sonic Gems Collection was replaced with Vectorman. Well fuck that, and fuck you, SCEA. I’m through with your shit.

Go out and get your system modded out of spite, like I did. Then every time SCEA cancels something you want to play, import it. If they don’t want my money, that’s their business, but I sure as hell want my Metal Slug.