Metal slug 2 is an ambitious sequel

It Definitely improves over the concept of the original metal slug in theory and design, but it feels like the game was not made to run properly in the arcades

It's about as fun as the first one, with some positives and some negatives that balance it out enough for me to rate it about the same as the first game

I like that this game is the first to introduce a more crazy and bizarre ''story'', with the goofy looking aliens towards the end and the unspoken comedy, even better stages than the first game, and the visuals being absolutely beautiful, as an example using some simulated 3d animation for some moving bridges, the background for the stages looks wallpaper worthy and the variety of ambiences is great.
They also added many more little secrets than in the first game, adding some more to the replayability, which is always great, especially for arcade games like this, as not having many things you can do is what i feel like brings down a lot of other great arcade games, that are simply repeat the same thing over and over without any variety, and lastly the bosses are pretty good and have interesting mechanics

But, either due to their ambition, system limitations, or unpolished coding, the game lags a lot, sometimes enough to bring down the experience as you shoot rockets and kill your fps instead of the enemies, and this is not an emulator issue, it's also exactly the case in the arcade version of the game, it simply runs worse and it slows down significantly in some sections, it's not unplayable but it definitely takes away from the experience

A section i specifically dislike is the train section, it's unfairly difficult trying not to die in that section, the train simply pushes too hard, takes too long to destroy and there are too many enemies coming at you, so it feels like it just wants you to put another coin in sometimes

They wanted to go all out with this game's sequel and they did, freed their entire creative minds to it and i can appreciate it, i just wish it was slightly more polished, and luckily, They listened to similar complains, releasing later on Metal slug X a year later, a much less laggy and improved ''remixed'' version of Metal slug 2

In short, play metal slug X instead for the definitive experience, and only play MS2 out of the curiosity for the original game

Honestly this game is just overall pretty fun for an arcade game, the visuals are pretty great, it has a gritty and dark but also endearing artstyle full of exagerations and the animation is gorgeously well done, it feels smooth and everything has so much character and personality

Metal Slug 1 lays the groundwork for the next games, it's probably the most simple of the series, it does nothing crazy or out of the ordinary like the rest, and for some it might be the reason why they prefer it, a simple military style shoot em up sidescroller that can be played for a good 30 or 40 minutes, in this game in particular there's not much variation on what you can do in the levels so the replayability of it drops in comparison, but as an experience it's pretty good

The controls are simple, but so, so much better than other arcade games (The simpsons arcade and some other beat em ups) that have only two buttons with no real depth, this one has the astonishing amount of 3 buttons, jump, shoot, and grenade, the thing is, the amount does not quite matter that much, but the controls are simply better as the variety in the combat is a lot higher, when you are close to an enemy you automatically stab them melee, when you are far away you can shoot in the direction of your analog stick, and you get a wide variety of weapons and vehicles throughout the level and exploration that is enough to keep the game feeling fresh in comparison to other games, it's enough to make an arcade game not feel like it's a cashgrab with no depth whatsoever.

Also all the metal slug music slaps, they had no reason to make it that good but it's really great

I've played this game through Mario all stars + Super Mario world, which was helpful for me since i like keeping my sanity
Replacing this game for the mario bros reskin of doki doki panic called mario bros 2 (US) was the best decision nintendo of america could have done

Super mario bros 2 (japan) or for us Super Mario bros Lost levels is literally the closest an official mario bros game will get to mario kaizo, which for those who don't know is a hack for mario games, mostly mario world, meant to be incredibly difficult and played by those who have absolutely mastered the movement and game mechanics and love to challenge themselves with pixel perfect movement and controls.
And that is exactly the audience this game is going for, which i can respect but i can also criticize.

i myself am not someone who enjoys these types of challenges, i do enjoy some of the hard content in other mario games like the extra world in super mario world

The difference for me is that the extra worlds are optional content for those who already played through the game enough, while in this game that's the entire game
This game is filled with level design that is meant to kill anyone who is not familiar with the levels themselves.

in short, similar to something like ''i wanna be the boy,'' or ''cat mario'' you learn things by dying over and over again until you figure out that there are invisible blocks that require your max height jump to get to while you have only 1 block of space to gather enough speed to do the jump, or sections full of hammerbros which to a normal player seem completely randomized and frustrating to get through

I can see why some people might enjoy it, but it's simply not for me, before playing it i thought, ''there's no way it's worse than mario bros 2 in the us, why would they not publish the game for being difficult? surely it isn't that bad''

turns out It's that bad.