Flame Shot: As the name implies is a weapon that shots flames, that like the Shotgun can burn the enemies in one single shot.

Shotgun: Perfect to defeat the vehicle enemies and the Rebel Soldiers that appear in groups, since it kills them in one single shot (or in the case of the vehicle enemies, about three to five shots).

Heavy Machine Gun: The most iconic special weapon in the franchise, and like a real-life machine gun, it shots multiple bullets in a short period of time.

Most of these weapons are very powerful and can destroy the enemies and the bosses with only a single shots.

The game gives you lot of different special weapons during the gameplay by saving the POWs, or defeating the enemies, and every weapon has a different mechanic, giving the player some strategy to beat the enemies and bosses.

Also, be careful to not die, because if you get killed by the enemies you will lose the points given by the POWs, and there is no way to get them back, making the gameplay more challenging.

Also, try to save many POWs you can find, since they will give the player a score bonus at the end of a mission. You will find them tied, yelling for help, if you manage to save them, they will thank you and offering an item that can be very useful, like a special weapon.

The POWs, (or Prisoners of War) can be very useful to the player.

This element, is the primary reason why the series is considered a masterpiece, and like Contra, was responsible for popularizing the Run 'n Gun genre. They give you a very fun and challenging experience, having the Contra-Style gameplay, which the player must kill the enemies and bosses without taking damage, because if you getting hit by a enemy or a boss, you automatically die.Not only the background stages, but the characters, weapons, vehicles, enemies, bosses, and most of all, the explosion and blood effects has A LOT of detail in them, also remembering that the first game was released on 1996, which is something that not even other SNK games like the The King of Fighters franchise, which the first one was released two years earlier before the first Metal Slug, had too much detail. The pixelated graphics, especially the first games, aged extremely well, because of how well detailed they were.The games focus on the Regular Army force which are composed by Marco Rossi, Tarma Roving, Eri Kasamoto, and Fio Germi, to defeat severe threats towards the world, being the major threat, Donald Morden, leader of the Rebel Army, the main enemy of the Regular Army, and the main antagonist of the franchise.

Metal slug games