Credit where it’s due – this is a solid title screen.
Metal Mech: Man and Machine was published in 1990 by Jaleco, a company that’s probably best known for publishing the serviceable Bases Loaded series. I played a whole lot of Bases Loaded back in the days when I didn’t know I could do better. They’re also responsible for a handful of other interesting titles, including Earth Defense Force and Totally Rad, though most of their output is pretty mediocre. So how did Metal Mech turn out? Only one way to find out!
I couldn’t quite remember which game this was at first glance, as it has one of those titles that just kinda blend in with a bunch of other NES games like Metal Storm, Metal Gear, Mechanized Attack, Metal Fighter, Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, etc.
That last one is a real game! No metal or mechs, but it does have a “DUMP” button, which is cool.
Back to the far less interesting game for this week – Metal Mech is a side-scrolling game in which you control a large, difficult-to-control mech. While searching for powerups and items, you’ll take this mech through numerous exotic locations, like this, uh…organ bank:
The mech, which looks exactly like the one from Robocop for some reason, is incredibly clunky and can’t reach a ton of places where key powerups are located. As a result, you’ll often need to eject yourself from the mech and do a bit of platforming to find things. As you’d expect, playing without the mech makes you much faster, but also considerably more prone to damage. That contrast is kind of interesting, I suppose.
Metal Mech has a host of other issues as well. The mech’s health is insanely high, and the enemies are remarkably unthreatening. Once you have the key to the next level, you can sometimes just ignore everything and walk to the level’s exit. In one case, I literally just held right on my controller while typing this sentence. If you do want to shoot stuff, you have to deal with rather frustrating aiming/movement as well.
The whole experience is pretty-well summed up by the image above. As a result, a lot of the game’s other features don’t even matter. There are weapon upgrades, but there’s basically no reason to get them. That’s so weird.
If you’ve played a lot of retro games, you might be asking yourself – doesn’t this seem a whole lot like Blaster Master? Yes, yes it does. Both feature big vehicles that contain a small human that can eject and do stuff (the humans look weirdly identical to boot). There are a few key differences, though – in particular, Blaster Master is actually good game.
In conclusion, Metal Mech is a bad and uninspired game that you should not play. To my surprise, Jaleco stuck around for a surprisingly long time, becoming a holding company in 2006 and releasing games by way of a subsidiary as recently as 2009. I can only imagine their tradition of mediocrity continued unabated.
Next week, I’ll be playing one of the most ‘90s games imaginable. You won’t want to avoid it.