Metal Warriors is a side-scrolling mecha action game made by LucasArts and published by Konami. It was released only in North America for the Super Nintendo in April 1995.
I first thought this was a Japanese production when I gladly played this during the mid-1990s. It was because of the cool mech designs that were likely inspired from various mecha anime of the 1980s.
The Story
It is the year 2102, and the evil Dark Axis Forces are trying to take over Earth. You have a powerful battle mech suit with lasers, cannons, and a jet pack to fight back. You can pilot six different mechs with various abilities across nine big missions, or battle a friend in 2-player mode. Are you damn tough enough to be a true Metal Warrior?
The Graphics and Sound
The graphics in here were really impressive for the SNES. It felt almost like I was playing an arcade game. The movement was smooth, the game framerate never slowed down, and the animations were clear. The detailed environments fit the game perfectly and made the action kind of even more exciting.
The music fits the action and has some catchy tunes, but most of them get reused, so you’ll hear the same tracks often, from boss fights to regular stages. The sound effects, however, are really well done. The explosions feel powerful, the clunky “metal on metal” sounds when you land or crash into enemies add weight, and every weapon has its own unique sound like boosters to lasers to plasma cannons. The only negative is that sometimes one sound effect cancels out another, like an explosion covering up a plasma shot, which feels a little unrealistic.
The Gameplay
You start with just one robot in single player, but the game has a unique feature: You can actually leave your suit. While your pilot is weak and easily destroyed, he can hop into another robot, which makes battles exciting. The main goal is to fight and destroy enemy robots using your special weapons.
The real fun is in multiplayer, where you can choose from 7 different robots, each with unique abilities. For example, the Spider can walk on walls and ceilings and even turn invisible, while the Prometheus is a slow powerhouse with massive weapons that destroy everything nearby. Levels also add variety, with icy stages where you slip and slide, or hilly areas that change how you move. You can also grab extra weapons during battles.
The controls in Metal Warriors are very easy to pick up for each robot. Every bot uses the same basic buttons—shoot, special weapon, jump, and so on. So it is simple to learn. The only tricky part is with the Spider robot: when you are walking upside-down, the controls are reversed, which can be frustrating and often gets you killed. Other than that, the controls work really well.
Overall, the gameplay is deep, fun, and full of strategy making it fun for 2 player versus battles especially. That alone makes the replay value better.
My Verdict
Metal Warriors is definitely worth playing. Once most retro gamers try it, they will probably want to own it because it is so much damn fun. The versus mode is the best part, with lots of strategies and different ways to play. Any retro games owner should have this game in their collection.
Play it on the still famous Super Nintendo/Super Famicom or play it on a simple emulator.
Let's keep on gaming in the free world!
