Having fun while raging? Possible? Yeah, that describes my childhood alright as it does now when I played Metal Warriors for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System; developed by Lucas Arts and published by Konami. In my own personal opinion, this is has got to be the best mech game for the SNES and within my top 10 of favorite games for the SNES.

The story begins in the 22nd century as you are one of the last survivors of Earth fighting against an evil axis ruled by a dictatorship. You are Lt. Stone and part of team called the Metal Warriors who fly around in mechs or “Space Armors.” You go from mission to mission to stop this evil axis, and you must do it all in one sitting because there aren’t any passwords or save points; you did it all in a single afternoon and you liked it, if not, then I don’t know why you are here – go back to playing your Bejeweled. That’s all there is to say about the story but unless you were playing a RPG, I wouldn’t think most people would care about the story for the majority of SNES games; because back then, all the story was in the manual and no one read those. You will get some story out of this in the cut scenes, but nothing too exhilarating. The cut scenes themselves though were well animated, at least for being on the SNES, so the opening one might be worth watching, while every other is just simply a mission briefing which can be skipped over.

The gameplay is where it’s at. Metal Warriors is a simple side scroller with mechs. Every single button on your SNES controller will be used as mechs can shoot, melee, block, use secondary weapons, use a special ability, and jump. Basically go from left to right doing all that and a just a bit more. There are a variety of mechs to choose from but you have to go find them. At some points in the game you will have to get out of your mech to press a button or to take another mech at which point you can fly around and use a pea shooter. Though the gameplay is simple, it is fun. The level designs are well done and doesn’t exactly feel like the same thing over and over again – to a degree. The variety of mechs also changes things up a bit as they all play differently, with different traits and abilities. Also the objective is different in each mission so it doesn’t feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over again.

All the mech action is fun and all, but the game does have a difficulty curve. The first levels start out easy enough, but then it gets to the point where giant guns shoot you once and die. Besides that, there are also ridiculous points in the game such as mission four where you have to defend a ship with a slow moving juggernaut. Sure it does enough damage, but it takes a minute to go from one side of the ship to the other where all the enemies are. By time you get there, they’ll just move to the other end of the ship to destroy that part while you are slowly trekking back. At this point of the game it can get very frustrating and after five continues, you’ll have to start the game all over again. At another point in the game, you have to get out to press a button, only to get blown up by a giant mech or, even worse, when you get back to your mech, an enemy pilot just spawns right next to it and takes your only ride out, leaving you for dead. If that’s not enough, the final boss fight will make rage more than anything, as it is a ridiculously cheap fight.

Besides all the single-player stuff, there is also a head-to-head mode where you can play with your companions, friends, families, or lovers – if you have access to that stuff. Initially you can choose any mech you desire and jump right into the action. This can be very entertaining and can easily kill an hour. Just as its entertaining, it could be just as rage inducing. For instance, there is a mech called the Drache, a fast flying mech with only two weapons. One being just a gun that shoots in any direction and the other being a power dive that kills anything beneath it in one stroke – it’s not really fair, it doesn’t need distance or momentum, just get an inch above your opponent and they’re dead.

Overall, the game is good, you just need a bit of patience to play it. The presentation of the game is good, graphics and music are superb and fit well with the style of the game. If you are any sort of mech fan, I suggest you play this game; anyone else, it’s a fun afternoon if you get a hold of it.