Yes! Metal Slug 4! (In order to halfway understand that page you’ll need to stick a Babel Fish in your ear to translate it from Korean to English).

Even though SNK is dead (as of last week, in fact) they handed their Metal Slug property off to a Korean company to make the fourth installment – on original MVS hardware, no less. I just hope that this makes it to the States in a more popular console format. They released Metal Slug X on the PSX a few months back, so why not? Man, I need to pick that one up.

I’d sit here and explain what the whole deal with Metal Slug is, but you’d be better off heading to the nearest bowling alley, pizza parlor, or wherever you can find a Neo Geo cabinet and check it out for yourself.

Or, failing that, get your MAME on:

Metal Slug (1996)

Metal Slug 2 (1998)

Metal Slug X (1999)

The first game was done by a company called Nazca, the second and third ones were done by SNK themselves (X being an expanded version of 2). Metal Slug 3 was released in 2000 and is available in arcades as well as the home Neo Geo formats. It has been dumped but not unencrypted yet. It will be incorporated into MAME in 2002 since MAME ethics require a game to be two years old first.

Metal Slug 4 was apparently announced Thursday, so perhaps its March date will be unaffected by the SNK closing (which was announced right before Halloween.

Anywho, go, go go!