Fiddling around with Metal Slug 7 (XX) xbox 360

The place for all discussion on gaming hardware
Post Reply
User avatar
Hoagtech
Posts: 970
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 3:53 am
Location: Bellingham, WA

Fiddling around with Metal Slug 7 (XX) xbox 360

Post by Hoagtech »

I just wanted to share a couple of settings to make the gameplay of Metal slug a little more bearable.

I downloaded this game years ago and played it briefly on my LCD tv at the time and thought it sucked because of a few reasons:

1. The 240 sprites were filtered so that it looked like 2sai engine when it was scaled. Also the backdrops are a higher resolution than than the foreground making the pixel art look cheap or non existent. To top it off the aspect is stretched in fullscreen mode.

2. The gameplay had unlimited continues and no high score meaning you would lose track of amount of lives lost so there was no skill barrier. You could just throw yourself at bosses and use grenades for 3 seconds until he killed you again and do this a million times until you noob your way to the credits.

3. The game doesn't support the Neo geo X arcade stick but I suppose you could find a wealth of decent fightsticks to replace it with (which is what I ended up doing).

To combat these issues I Used my OSSC and Xbox 360 VGA Cable to intput to my Crt monitor through my DAC.

Image

I turned the native resolution to VGA 640x480 to get to a near neighbor interger scale of 240p (2x)

Then I enabled scanlines in the OSSC 480p mode to help separate the softened image into less blurred parrallel rasters on the CRT. giving the Vertical resolution some needed definition.

Image

To combat the unlimited continues I grabbed a big pile of quarters about $15 dollars worth and manually placed them from my pocket onto my coffee table every time I hit the "continue" screen. after beating Level 4, I ended up using $10.50 worth of quarters on a pile on my coffee table. Which let me know I had room improve.

Image

Finally, I missed my arcade stick dearly so I bought a HORI DOA 4 stick from my local game shop for $35.

Image

Even though its not perfect or close to, I really enjoyed getting this game closer to the arcade and have enjoyed playing it.

Cheers, here are some bonus pics:

Image
Image
Image
Copyright 1987
User avatar
Gunstar
Posts: 644
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 10:29 am
Location: UK

Re: Fiddling around with Metal Slug 7 (XX) xbox 360

Post by Gunstar »

Looks good, releasing such a game without scanline options and egregious filtering is a sin. I like your use of quarters to track continues!
User avatar
Shelcoof
Posts: 1528
Joined: Mon Nov 03, 2008 9:36 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Fiddling around with Metal Slug 7 (XX) xbox 360

Post by Shelcoof »

Nice!

I'm running a similar set up as well with my OSSC on a CRT PC Monitor. I'm using the Mad Catz Street Fighter IV Edition modded with Seimitsu parts.

I recently ordered a RetroVGA and I'm going to try that out as well.

The added scanlines on a CRT PC Monitor really gives it a nice genuine arcade look.
The Joystick is pure icing on the whole experience.

I have this habit of wiggling the stick before putting my quarter in the cabinet. Back then you never knew if the joystick was busted or not until you played around with it.

Those were the days 8)
Post Reply