Unused Graphics

Metal Slug 4 seems to have a surprising amount of leftovers inside it, including stuff from completely different games! Sadly, not much of this is terribly interesting, with most of the unused sprites just being stuff from older instalments.

This animation would've been used for when the characters were fat, looking upwards, and turned. Strangely, they didn't make versions of this sprite for Trevor and Nadia.

The characters, impaled on swords, in animations that haven't been used since Metal Slug 2.

And the characters as skeletons, like the MS3 death from falling into the water in Mission 1.

And there they are, all frozen. This death occurs in Mission 6 of MS2, when you jump into the freezing water. I couldn't get a good palette for Nadia, so I only coloured the ice, and left them as they were found in the tile viewer.

Here's them fatties using the Laser. This animation is used in the game, but you can't see them without using the levels select, as you can only be a fatty cake in two areas of Mission 3, where a Laser is unavailable to your buttery self.

Here's that weird throw that's been about for some time. It looks like an alternate crouching and throwing animation, or maybe it was for something else?

Alternate aiming upwards animation?

Unused animation of the character turning while shooting upwards.

Alternate aiming upwards animation.

Yep, all the unused animations of Marco aiming backwards in the air are left among his tiles in Metal Slug 4! However, I can't be assed to include them all here. Pop over to the MS1 section for the rest, and info.

The Arabian commander from Metal Slug 2 / X is one of the first things to see inside the game, and has all of frames of animation intact.

And the Arabian slashing guy follows after, and just like the commander, has all his frames of animation intact, including the ridiculous exploding body animation. Heck, the little pieces of pork that fly out of him are also there!

And to finish off the Arabian enemies, the throwing sword guy. With all his frames of animation. For the unaware, the pirate enemies you find in Mission 5 are edits of the two Arabian enemies from Metal Slug 2 / X, so these were probably kept in the game for them to editing purposes.

(other mugshots not shown)

There are numerous King of Fighters leftovers in this, but since there’s so many, I won’t be listing them all. Here are eight mugshots, all whom I’ve no idea who they are.

According to Domino, these are from King of Fighters 2000, and according to Galvatron, from left to right, the people in the mugshots are: K', Maxima, Benimaru, Shingo, Terry, Andy, Joe, and Mai. Galvatron says the mugshots "are grouped together like they are in KoF 99, not 2000."

A font to the same King of Fighters game.

And a tiny logo.

(other mugshots not shown)

And more mugshots. K' and Maxima, according to Galvatron.

And some names of the fighters.

The dead explorer from Metal Slug 2 and X is found among the tiles, and like everything else, with all it’s animation.

Metal-Geo found this scan of upcoming items in the game, and among them is the “famous photo”. In Metal-Geo’s own words, “am I the only one who remembers the photos that were announced to be in the game? I believe they were suposed to be items. Or left it out of the game or I'm actually being a dickhead and can't find the damn things”.

Enomosiki suggests that maybe the photos were collected to unlock the artwork in the gallery. A reasonable thought, but they'd be semi-useless in the arcade version, being simple bonus items.

The poor old Bradley can't be used to complete a level with, unless you use the Level Select. Note how it uses the plain vanilla Bradley colours, unlike the player-controlled Bradley's green colour.

And the crawler can't complete a level either, your character just hops off it for no reason in both paths.

Same deal with the forklift.

And the spiky thing doesn't get a slice of the completing levels cake. And again, it's coloured like a regular spiky thing, instead of the blue player-controlled version.

The motorcycle, on the other hand, cannot complete levels with Level Select, and thus can only be viewed with a tile viewer. That's the best palette I could find.

The Camel Slug doesn't appear anywhere in the game, but it's icons do, and strangely enough, it has two icons: One of it standing, one of it sitting.

Elephant Slug, like the Camel, with two icons. What's stranger is that you couldn't complete a mission with the Elephant Slug in Metal Slug 3, the only game it appeared in. I couldn't find a suitable palette, and this was the best I could find.

And the Ostrich Slug was left out too, but it's icon remains to inspire ostriches of the world to unite and fight wars for the sake of humanity. Like the Elephant, I had a hard time getting a decent palette, and this was the best I could get.

And like the previous three, the Rebel Armour appears nowhere, but it's icon remains.

The Slugnoid is ready to go.

Slug Mariner fell like a trillion feet.

The Slug Copter's gonna live forever.

And the Slug Flyer? It just chants "pogo".

Actual unused sprite that isn't seen anywhere else! Apparently, the boat men were once prisoners, and here's a sprite of one of them spazzing out while tied up. What's interesting is that there's no animation of them being released from their ropes.

Another unused animation. Looks kinda like them jumping down and holding their breath. Maybe instead of just scurrying away in that part on the side of the ship, they jumped off into the sea? Crazy fools.

his animation does play in the game, but it's impossible to see without debug, and even then, it's only a brief glimpse. In 5: 2 4-2 (the part that takes place on the side of the ship, with pirates invading on boats), keep using the "D button = death to all" dipswitch to destroy the boats, and get to the second stop point. You'll catch an obscure view of the boat men hopping off the platform, but since I could never get the screen to scroll forward in time, I'm unsure if they jump to the lower platform, or into the sea.

And here they are again, all paranoid and such. To be honest, I'd feel the same if pirates that BLED OIL invaded my ship and started throwing swords about aimlessly.

Now this is intriguing: The scientist enemy turning into a monkey! What would cause this fate to befall them? I mean, it'd certainly be rather blundering if all they had to do was make their syringe hit another scientist and they'd be transformed. You could simply hop over them and they'd be gibbering and flinging crap everywhere.

Palette is as found in the tile viewer.

One of those hazmat guys, throwing a pipe bomb. They do throw bombs in the game, but they use the same kind of bombs the rest of the soldiers use.

And them burning, with real fire and proper animations! The fire is reminiscent of the burning animations from Metal Slug 1, which is strange, as that style hasn't been used since that game. In the game itself, the hazmats burn, but they just reuse the regular soldier animations.

For some reason, Eri's drown animation is located near some of Fio's. It's not even the proper drown animation, but it actually one without the oxygen tank on her back, that is unused.

I love this guy. I mean, you just see him in the middle of a war zone in the country side, having a puff at his pipe, and then this biker just comes roaring up to him, and he flees like there's a frickin' avalanche after him. That's badassery if ever I say such.

And apparently, he's a lumberjack! This unused animation has him standing, looking about, with an axe. Pure badass, plus being a lumberjack makes him even more badass. He probably eats ninjas for breakfast.

This is used in the game, but it's mostly obscured by the helicopter and "Mission Complete" or "Mission # Start" text. So there's really little point for it being here.

This would've been used for Tarma kicking open the door of the truck he rides in during Mission 1's upper path, but alas, the truck simply appears with the door already open, and him crouching and shooting.

These are found near the tiny vehicle icons and GO text, with animations similar to them. I guess these were to be used for the motorcycle and truck, maybe.

It's not unused graphics or anything, but Enomosiki brought it to my attention with this image, and it's interesting so I thought I'd throw it in here.

===CLICK FOR BIG===

Whatever Metal Slug 4 didn't recycle, it frankenstein'd. The sad truth.

[leftovers include a bunch of things from the old games, such as the aliens, Morden, some submarines and the usual miscellaneous things.]

That bloody monkey is back. It's in the console versions of the first three games.

This has been a public service announcement.