hey guys, i wonder if this issue is common. i experience heavy, HEAVY slowdowns on all the metal slug games particularly when there's a lot of sprites and gunshots around the screen. keeping a high resolution seems to exacerbate the problem further but even at stupid low ones it's still there and a huge problem for the playability of the game at least for me. hard to time jumps when the controls and response of the game slows down to a crawl. i've tried everything, from enabling the compatibility options in the exe to fiddling with every video control with no perceivable difference. launching with the options enabled somewhat reduces the issue but it's still there and a huge PITA. this happens both on my gaming rig and on my puny laptop, so i'm not sure it's a problem related to specific hardware (although it may be related to windows 10).

my specs on the gaming rig:

i7 6700K
GTX970
16gb RAM

laptop:

i5 4something U @2,5Ghz
intel gt550 integrated with hi-speed 8gb@1600mhz DDR3 ram slotted in by me

it's safe to say that it's a software problem 100%, since even the shitty laptop can play 3D games up to 2009 at reasonable settings and 60fps at native resolution.

From what I gather this is a very common issue. It seems like an issue with the integrated emulator just being unoptimized. Are you experiencing significant slowdown on X as well?

I have an actual Neo Geo with Metal Slug carts.

It slows down on original hardware, massively.

Yeah, the Android releases did this as well.

Actually I'm not sure if they are meant to slow down, because the originals did and so the emulators are actually quite good at "emulating". Still it would be nice to get an option for steady 60 FPS...

It's the old dillemma: accurate emulation, or fast emulation? Do we want NES sprite flicker, or no sprite flicker? Should Metal Slug slow down when the screen fills with sprites, or should it run at a smooth 60fps?

Eh, I think a _good_ port would make these options in the settings.

To add useless things that dont help, changing ammount of cores allocated to the game or priority do not help making the game faster. Also the issues preset on MS1, 2 and X, the MS 3 works perfectly.

Same here I own the machine with 123 and 1 and 2 lag like hell but it seems a lot of people think this was never the case. the dotemu releases on humble I think are pretty legit to the real thing with slowdown and all but the one thing that killed it was rebind keys that was it!.... Using a machine with pretty much same specs here all the only one that seems to lag a lot is 2 for me but the others are pretty fine. did you by any chance have the nvidia control panel with all vsync options on? cause that fixed it for me I had mine on off and did not work and adaptive or whatever it is and that did not work but having it all on made the games run a tad bit better.

Actually, MS games run at 30fps :)

Some emulators allow some form of overclocking (which you can do on actual hardware too, to a lesser extent), but that comes with a compatibility cost.

hey guys, sorry for the delay but i thought that the gog ui would notify me of forum posts and instead it didnt. so, i pretty much think that the ones saying it's down to the emulation are right. i've tried tinkering with the vsync option but at least if fraps can be trusted, the game runs at a stable 60fps (well fraps signals 57 for some odd reason). the slowdowns, however, are still there. honestly, i'd very much like a toggle to just emulate at a locked 30 instead of this. i didn't own the original neo geo console back in the time (played these on old cabinets) and i can't really remember if they had the slowdowns back then. i'm almost sure that in their MAME versions i also played in later years they didn't though. it's a bit of a bummer for me though. i agree there should be toggles for this, if it's due to emulation. after all, i can't fathom the developers seeing the slowdowns as a feature in any capacity, and having a locked game would still perfectly preserve the original, just tuning out the rough edges. if the game got modded in some way, that i would not like, but not having locked framerate on a 2D sprite based shooter, honestly that's just plain zealotry seeing that the solution would be so simple. sad, really. :/

The rom is in a zip file in the install directory; you can use it with the neo geo emulator of your choice.

Using mame you can crank up the emulated CPU speed to 200%. Doing so makes the game go totally smooth.
It is fairly easy, just start mame with the cheat enabled and the overclock will appear in the "Sliders" menu.

Unfortunately, for some questionable design decision the overclocked speed is not stored so you need to increase the speed each time you start the game and in some versions (e.g., sdlmame) the slider is painfully slow.

So... how to start "with the cheat"?

sdlmame -cheat

All the SNK Neo Geo Games slowdown when there is alot going on across the screen, they did it back in the late 80's and 90's on the Arcade Machines and to be true ports the devs due not update the code to fix with current hardware specs. It is part of the nostalgia of playing the game. It plays just as it did then gotta love the attention to detail.

As a professional programmer with gamedev experience I can tell the devs this with certainty:

"You did bad, and you should feel bad."

There's zero excuse for it to hit deadlocks or other blocks that I'm experiencing in Metal Slug 1, 2, 3, and X. What the hell did I pay for?

There is zero excuse for this. Stop defending it. Programming is not magic.


So here I am, trying it in MAME, and they're using such an ancient version of the NEOGEO BIOS, MAME won't even run it. GREAT JOB GUYS. Did you spend a whole week on this release?