Aqua Ippan

[xxx1993]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ-iyClGZMI

Pretty sweet looking Metal Slug inspired game about two female divers who, after finding a mysterious artifact at the bottom of the ocean, must fight their way to freedom after a ruthless group tries to steal their treasure.

[Air Master Burst]

Jump seems a little floaty but otherwise looks promising; I'm sure I'll buy.it anyway.

[Sumez]

Wow, and I thought Alien Hominid, Krautbuster and Demon Front were obvious about copying Metal Slug

[BareKnuckleRoo]

As long as the mechanics are executed well and it plays well. That's something Alien Hominid never did; it tried to copy a lot of the elements and added new ones, but none of them meshed or were really executed well.

They've really done their homework in mimicking the art style (perhaps a bit too closely in terms of the colour palette). It would've been nice to see them diverge a bit more and add their own touches, like what Demon Front and Dolphin Blue did.

[XoPachi]

Something about the characters reminded me of Dolphin Blue actually when I saw this last night.

[Air Master Burst]

DOLPHIN BLUE! I used to love that game, mostly because it featured a most excellent riff on the classic DOG BUTTON with the motherfucking DOLPHIN BUTTON! I really need to get an Atomiswave emulator going one of these days.

Metal Slug got particularly bad about the drab color palette after Noise Factory took over, although even X and 3 are fairly dingy affairs. That's the one thing Contra always did better!

I just slo-mo rewatched the action in this trailer a few times like the Zapruder film and couldn't find any decent hitbox porn. Fingers crossed they got it right!

Also, is that a fucking child following you around helping you murder hundreds of dudes? How delightfully bizarre!

ETA: Oh shit, didn't realize there was a demo available! After a bit of play, this is what I found:

The jump is a bit floaty compared to MS, but otherwise handles great. Haven't found any subweapons yet, though, which is a pretty big disappointment. The pistol is real snappy and responsive, but throwing oxygen tanks and bricks instead of grenades feels pretty lame.

The only enemies in the demo were soldiers, but they had some variety to their attacks and did what they needed to. More enemy variety would be nice in the full game for sure. The two minibosses and one boss were both pretty cool, if a bit on the standard side (perfectly respectable opening level stuff!). Hitboxes are pretty good so far but I haven't really put it through its paces.

ETA2: Not sure if the high score table is accurate to the demo or not, but if it is, there seems to be a pretty robust scoring system (or at least a massive no-miss bonus). I killed all the scenery bits and grabbed all the hosties, but I did die twice, and I'm well over 100k short of the top spot. I know there's a combo counter, but haven't been able to determine any sort of score multiplier for it.

Still feels kinda lame without subweapons or cooler thrown weapons, though.

ETA3: apparently the lack of interesting weapons is intentional:

Despite having a very similar gameplay to Metal Slug, Aqua Ippan is more focused on movement, and has its protagonists rely more on allies to give them a helping hand on their journey back to their school.

Yikes. They better REALLY go hard on enemy variety if we don't get any cool weapons. I also didn't really find the ally follower to be any kind of useful.

[null1024]

The art is really good and absolutely nails the style dead on. I'm gonna second AMB's comments -- the jump is too floaty, the lack of other weapons as a design choice is kind of lame, the helpers didn't do squat. Beyond that, it felt solid enough.
I'm REALLY baffled by the default keybinds, and was baffled for five more minutes looking for the settings [hit pause, which defaults to F1/F2 to bring up the menu].

[Lemnear]

The screen in the gameplay video a bit too "empty" of elements.
In Metal Slug nearly everything is destructible and there are far more enemies on screen + vehicles, and several layers of background