BACK IN (METAL) BLACK
There is nothing wrong with your XBOX®. Do not attempt to contact Microsoft®. We are controlling the videogame.
We repeat: There is nothing wrong with your XBOX®. You are about to participate in a great adventure.
You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to its limits on... Metal Black™.
Third time I'll talk about the "I-was-meant-to-be-a-Darius-game" Newalone shmup.
Yeah, I'm talking "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro John Ford", which means Metal Black, but this time is Metal Black S-Tribute.
FOR A DEEPER ANALYSIS OF GAMEPLAY, Check the original review of Metal Black.
FOR THE ARCADE ARCHIVES RELEASE, Click here.
The Ultimate Weapon for Peace
Battle preparations are complete. We will not retreat.
Back in the 90's you'd probaby asked: "Why they didn't released Metal Black on Super Nintendo?" (or "the Genesis" if you were more on the Sega side back then) Metal Black is already a classic, and for some reason, it didn't saw the light of the day on the 16-Bit consoles. Clearly, this game was too big for the TurboGrafx and its cards, but it wasn't available for the Genesis either. Yeah, the console that claimed "Arcade Graphics and Sound" on its box and bundled Altered Beast with it as the clear testimony couldn't tame and port the Newalone "beast" that was Metal Black, not even with later add-ons like the Sega CD and 32X. But believe it or not, the arcade powerhouse that was the Super Nintendo was unable to port it. Even with its vast list of successful coin-up conversions (except their butchered ports of Captain Commando and Final Fight). It was a mystery because it was hard to believe that the console that brought us three editions of Street Fighter II, a solid port of Gradius III, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time, three faithful Mortal Kombat titles (MK1 sucked due to censorship), Aero Fighters and Street Fighter Alpha 2 wasn't able to port Metal Black. In a twist of fate, the game had a console release, but only in Japan and for the Sega Saturn. That's the Ving release of Metal Black which was the second game of the company, and the only entry of the Gun Frontier series released by them since Gun Frontier was released by Xing Entertainment as part of their Arcade Gears lineup.
As far as I know, the Saturn port of the game is arcade perfect in gameplay, so naturally there's not too much to say about it, especially after reviewing the original arcade and its PS4 Arcade Archives release. But in graphic and sound terms the sound being slightly lower in some effects. For instance, in the opening sequence, the Black Fly's wireframe spins slower when the text begin to appear, and in stage 1, the clouds in the background doesn't "block" the sun properly like in the arcade. Apparently, fully recreating the visual effects was too much for a 32-Bit console like the Sega Saturn, but it still runs as fine and smoothly as the real arcade game, which is in the other side, an accomplishment. The sound on the other side is quite inferior as it sounds muffled by a bad filter. I could understand that on 16-Bit consoles since their sound chips have limitations, but in the case of a CD based console where you can get CD quality, arcade perfect music and sounds Ving didn't made the job right (The arcade perfect sound department of Super Darius is a good example of that).
Onto the S-Tribute port, City Connection (formerly Jaleco) made a minimal change to the game. If you owned the Japanese Saturn game, you'll remember that the "Missile fired-explosion" sound effect was played on the Notice screen before the Taito and Ving logos. City Connection removed the notice screen and the explosive sounds play during the Taito logo just like the arcade. Minimal change that differs from the real console, but in this case the change makes it a little more closer to the real arcade. Porting the game as close as the real Saturn game was the core of this reissue, but the major feature in the game was the inclusion of new gadgets and options. Like in Darius Cozmic Collection, and Arcade Archives: Metal Black you can use save states and change the default button inputs and adding auto-fire buttons with respective rates. Along with the save state function, you have a "Rewind" which acts more like a ZSNES save file rather than the rewinds in the Forza series, Megaman Legacy Collection and Castlevania Advance Collection. There's also the selectable wallpaper option like in the Anniversary Collection releases of Castlevania and Contra. The S-Tribute exclusive features are the adjustments on the credits if you want limited like in the original game or free play and increasing the power given by a Newalone particle. Yeah, you can decide if you want to receive more. You could call this "Metal Black: Cheaters Edition", but you can also decrease the power received if you're aiming for a harder challenge. To finish this review, the game gives you the usual achievements that increase your Gamerscore, being the 500,000 point achievement the hardest one to obtain. Good Luck and have fun with the achievement hunt.
METAL BLACK CURIOSITIES SP-REVIEW
We now return control of your XBOX® to you, until next time at this same game, when Taito® will take you to... Metal Black™.
- This is the fifth entry in the S-Tribute series.
- This game was announced even before Hamster's release of Metal Black as part of Arcade Archives.
- City Connection had plans to release it on the Switch and both PlayStations 4 & 5 but it was discarded due to Hamster's release of the original arcade game.
- This is the last (by now) Taito game in the S-Tribute series.
- It is also the last title that uses the "S-Tribute" as name, being the upcoming Batsugun which uses the full "Saturn Tribute" as its re-release name.
It was nice to have Metal Black on the XBOX.
While I can say it's better and more convenient to pick the Arcade Archives release, for XBOX, PC owners and even Anti-PlayStation, Anti-Nintendo snobs, this is the closest thing to the arcade game for the XBOX and PC owners.
Is not the arcade game, but its still a positive result in all the scales.