“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

By 1991, games on the NES were already starting to be overlooked. The onset of fancy new 16-bit game consoles like the Sega Genesis stole a lot of their thunder. Heck, the Super NES launch was right around the corner!

Even games that were critically successful would often fall to the wayside. Sadly, Metal Storm suffered this fate. It didn’t help that it was also published by Irem, the people that brought us Deadly Towers, the game popular satirist Seanbaby refers to as “the worst Nintendo Game of all time”.

The good news is Metal Storm is no Deadly Towers. It’s an action platformer where you control a mech that must navigate some very tricky levels.

On the surface, Metal Storm seems like your average NES platformer/shooter. You are a robot, you shoot the other robots before they shoot you. But their is a very clever mechanic in the mix that really adds to the gameplay: you can control the gravity.

Simply by jumping and hitting A and either up or down, you can switch between walking on either the top or bottom of the screen.

It not only changes your own orientation, but that of many of the enemies in the game. There are also some levels where the gravity will also effects certain doorways. It takes some quick reflexes to properly use the mechanic, and is completely necessary to your successful progression through the game.

Stages are broken up into two sections and a boss battle. I was surprised to find that when I had to continue (which was a lot), I started at the stage I left off on rather than the first one of the set. Boss battles, however, do start at the level immediately before them if you have to continue. Since there is no limit to the number of times you can continue (and you restart play extremely quickly), I found my constant deaths less frustrating than I would have if there were an arbitrary limit of continues, or forced you back to the beginning of the set of levels, etc.

The real key to the game is memorization. You die in one hit (except for when you get a second hit from power ups) and while most of the stages are pretty tough, they are also fairly short. It takes more platforming than shooting skills to make your way through Metal Storm.

Why did I pick this game?

This is another game I picked up while hanging out with Dave at his place of employment, purely based on cover art. We were looking for something to do when the store was slow and he said, “You should play something for a FOG review.”

We initially threw in Judge Dread for the SNES, but it was a little too terrible to stick with for more than a few minutes. I noticed Metal Storm sitting on the back shelf, a recent enough trade-in that it didn’t even have a price tag. The giant mech on the cover made me curious as to what kind of game it would be.

How does it hold up with time?

I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun Metal Storm is. Indie darlings of today like Super Meat Boy, I Wanna Be the Guy, and VVVVVV owe their existence to games of yore like Metal Storm. The fast paced action, instant deaths, and super quick retry times make it just as accessible as any of these newer games in the genre.

In fact, if you like those games at all, you should go back and give Metal Storm a try. I think you will be as pleasantly surprised with the game as I was. It even has a rocking soundtrack to compliment the package.

Tags: FOG, Friday Old Games, Irem, Metal Storm, NES, platformer, shooter

This entry was posted on Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.