Metal Slug, Metal Slug 2, Metal Slug X & Metal Slug 3 (Cancelled 2005 Game Boy Advance Ports)

Metal Slug is an extremely popular cartoonish run-and-gun series from SNK Playmore that features characters like Marco and Eri running and gunning down enemies with various artillery and vehicles. Like any other successful series, its games have recieved many ports over the years to many different consoles, such as the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Wii Virtual Console and so on. This is especially true for the very first installment in the series simply called Metal Slug (also commonly referred to as Metal Slug: Super Vehicle-001' and 'Metal Slug 1 for differentiation).

And after the sucess of Metal Slug Advance on the Game Boy Advance, more Metal Slug releases for the console were given the go-ahead, and the original installment was also set to make a port onto that console. Announced in 2005, this port would remain largely faithful and untampered to its original formula, with the developers claiming they neither added nor removed anything. It would use as many colours on screen as possible for the GBA, and was possibly going to be sub-titled "Super Vehicle", which was either just the original version's name or a slightly altered name at that, to separate it as the 10th anniversary port rerelease. It's unknown if multiplayer was going to be in it, but it was going to have a "mission structure". SNK even anticipated more Metal Slug releases for this console despite the fact that the DS and PSP were already in, as Japanese magazine Famitsu later announced that not only was the original Metal Slug coming to GBA, but also Metal Slug 2, Metal Slug 3 & Metal Slug X. It was in a very early state around March/April 2006 as it didn't have anything to properly show at that time, but by May of that year it had background animation and a respondable player, but no enemies. In the same year, playtesting at IGN on an early version revealed that it certainly seemed port perfect, promising and resemblant to the original, but had some slowdown and graphical issues at that point in development that would have to be later fixed. Similarly, at the same time Gamespot reported that not all of the actions were fully functional and that it was incomplete, but it was still looking pretty good and they were going to see how accurate it would get. It is unknown how far the other three Metal Slug ports had gotten in development (thought it's safe to assume that they could have put all of their work into this port first before getting to the rest), but apparently the various gaming websites who got a hands-on with a pre-release version of this port could have possibly played a near complete version which was just at the publishing stage.

Originally planned to be released in December/Winter 2005 and apparently rated T for Teen and distributed by Atari (so it did find one after all), it would continue to be talked about in 2006 and then hopefully released at September of that year to mark the tenth anniversary of the original arcade release (much like the infamous GBA port of Sonic the Hedgehog to mark its fifthteenth anniversary), and was eventually quietly cancelled, as in October 2006 Famitsu announced that it and the ports for 2,3 & X were scrapped. It could have been assumed that this was because of how long it took to release Advance combined with the releases at a time frame nearing the end of the GBA's lifespan and/or because compilations like Metal Slug Anthology were coming out that would effectively make these releases obsolete, but it was actually quietly announced months later into 2007 on the SNK Playmore USA website that "Due to the limited memory size of the GBA cartridge the plans for MS on GBA has been cancelled." Though it does add "Please purchase MS Anthology on Wii, PS2 or PSP to play the complete game." One person even slug gba trailer claimed that he had contacted SNK only to have a representitive say "No matter what, it's coming out. It's a lot of Metal Slug for a small cartridge. It may be limited, but it will come out."

Since then, ports of the Metal Slug games on portable devices like the PSP, iOS, Android and Neo Geo X, as well as inclusions in portable-released compilations like Metal Slug Anthology and SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 have followed.