Simple fix brings back the blood in XBLA Metal Slug 3

by Kyle Orland { Jan 4th 2008 at 1:01PM }

Come back with us, if you will. Back to the middle ages of video gaming. Back to the early '90s. Mortal Kombat was a huge, bloody (and we do mean bloody) hit in the arcades. Unfortunately, console makers were concerned with how such a gory game would be received in family living rooms. Thus, the game's signature red blood was replaced with white "sweat" for the console versions.

Luckily we don't live in such dark times anymore, right? Not so. The Xbox Live Arcade version of Metal Slug 3 similarly has been toned down to include white "sweat" instead of red blood. This is especially odd considering the Metal Slug 3 port for the supposedly family-friendly Wii included what one reviewer called "arterial blood spraying everywhere."

Luckily (for real this time), there's a way around this bit of historical revisionism that's as simple as the Genesis Mortal Kombat's famous "blood code." As Insert Credit points out, simply setting your Xbox language to Japanese brings back the original Neo Geo classic in all its gory glory. Apparently, someone at Microsoft thinks the Japanese have a higher tolerance for this stuff. Either that, or they think Japanese gamers are just more picky about historical accuracy in their re-releases. Which is probably true, but still ...

Tags: Metal-Slug, Metal-Slug-3, Neo-GEO, NeoGeo, SNK, XBLA, Xbox Live, xbox-live-arcade, XboxLive

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Marty @ Jan 4th 2008 1:26PM

Seems awfully silly, when every other game released these days contains buckets of blood from start to finish. Maybe the arcade games are supposed to be more family friendly?

rom @ Jan 4th 2008 1:34PM

Castlevania:SOTN wasn't censored. Maybe they just don't like Metal Slug....the bastards.

Bloo @ Jan 4th 2008 1:36PM

This game is EMULATED. The original ROM was toned down. Switching your NEO-GEO AES setting to Japanese would do the same thing. This game was NOT toned down for Xbox.

As a side note, I own the AES version of this game and have it on my MAME machine, but I still bought it and finished it on XBL the other night with a friend - what a blast!

Fernando Rocker @ Jan 4th 2008 1:42PM

It's possible to do all the achivements?

J.Goodwin @ Jan 4th 2008 1:47PM

Quite.

Presuming that this is using the same BIOS for emulation as Fatal Fury Special did (a VERY early version of Razoola's Universe BIOS), you can actually do a region and console/arcade mode swap from the game itself.

You hold back and start together once you're in game, then release them, and push them back down, then while holding those down, hold ABXY together with back and start. In FFS that brought up the debug menu.

AirIntake @ Jan 4th 2008 1:49PM

Thanks America for forcing the game to be censored.

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Jan 4th 2008 1:54PM

Am I the only one who thinks that zombies projectile vomiting a ridiculous amount of blood to take down helicopters is one of the funniest and coolest things ever?

DeadPlasmaCell @ Jan 4th 2008 2:03PM

Maybe I'm missing something, but that Vomit blood is actually red on mine.. everything else isn't though, like when you kill mofos

LiK @ Jan 4th 2008 2:17PM

that's really weird. it's like the opposite of what happened to Uncharted. if you put the US version into a Japanese PS3, you don't get blood and there's no way around it.

Jonah Falcon @ Jan 4th 2008 2:47PM

The lack of blood is not surprising since the Virtual Console version on the Wii is a straight, no-frills port, while XBLA versions are recoded and worked over to include Achievements, Live awareness and HD resolution. They probably felt they could remove the blood while working on the coding.

Booxatron @ Jan 4th 2008 2:54PM

"Apparently, someone at Microsoft thinks the Japanese have a higher tolerance for this stuff. Either that, or they think Japanese gamers are just more picky about historical accuracy in their re-releases."

Or, they just think that the Japanese are more (virtual)blood-thirsty.

Personaly, I don't play Metal Slug or any other arcade style game for its anatomical accuracy, so the bad guys can explode into coins or tires or bits of stars for all I care.

DomoBraden @ Jan 4th 2008 3:01PM

"Thus, the game's signature red blood was replaced with white "sweat" for the console versions."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that was only on the SNES version. The Genesis port had red blood still.

Also, projectile-blood-vomit is the coolest feature a game can ever have...ever.

Anam @ Jan 4th 2008 3:07PM

I think the Genesis version had white sweat but allowed a code to be used to turn it red.

(Note: I've never played the Genesis version. I'm basing this on what I've heard.)

J.Goodwin @ Jan 4th 2008 9:19PM

Every Neo Geo AES version only had red blood for vomit. All other blood was green or white.

Joseph @ Jan 5th 2008 1:33PM

you are correct, i was about to post the same thing. pretty big mistake from a video game site. maybe the writer wasn't born yet.

KiraXD @ Jan 4th 2008 3:17PM

weird, i thought japanese censored video games more than the US. (ex: No More Heroes japanese coins vs. U.S. blood)

Anam @ Jan 4th 2008 3:41PM

You have it backwards. The U.S. had to censor No More Heroes by taking out coins and putting in socially acceptable blood, rather than let Americans be exposed to the currupting oddness of Japanese culture.

KiraXD @ Jan 4th 2008 5:18PM

ahhh my bad... that was EU version:

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/08/european-no-more-heroes-removes-bloody-gameplay/

Jigsaw @ Jan 4th 2008 4:10PM

As previously mentioned, this has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft or XBLA regulations, this is censorship put in place by SNK themselves back in 2000. The reason it's in the game is NOT because it was edited in any way, but rather because it wasn't, unlike the Xbox version of MS3 for example(which was uncensored in PAL at least - I'm unsure about the US version).

As dumb as it is, the censorship was in the original game, and if what J. Goodwin mentioned applies to this game as well, it's easy to get past anyway. The fact that there is no option for it irks me somewhat, but that's nothing compared to the fact that you can't turn off that horrible graphics filter! It's bad enough that companies try to convince people that smeared, blurry 2xSaI filters constitutes "enhanced high definition graphics", but when I'm not even given a choice to play with the original, proper graphics, I get pretty pissed off.

carg0 @ Jan 4th 2008 8:34PM

It's a classic, just like all the other "slugs", but it's not worth $10 by itself. $5? Yes. $10? No.

And the reason you're not seeing this released in a set, like the Anthology collection (where you got 6 titles for $40 -- 7 if you got the psp version) is because MS knows some people will be dumb and lazy enough to buy them individually at $10 a pop.