Amazing flash Metal Slug clone

If you like the Metal Slug games as much as I do then you should check out this flash game called New Metal Slug at: http://www.funny-games.biz/newmetalslug.html

It makes me want to waste far too much money slogging my way through Metal Slug 3 down at some greasy early nineties arcade.

yep that's really cool.

I got to the big mechanical monkey boss at school playing that, only once.

grey, that was a cool consept :)

It's a neat game. A bit like golden axes with it's sorta 3D looking levels that are really 2D.

That is a pretty cool game.
I use a DVORAK keyboard layout instead of the standard QWERTY, so games that use hardcoded keys are a ROYAL PAIN IN THE NECK!! unless I run a keyboard macro to remap keys.

I wish some people writing games would keep in mind that things like WSAD are NOT going to be in a nice directional-key layout on everybody's keyboard! Heck, on my keyboard WSAD are on the keys labelled ,;ah. Not very friendly!

impressive

This game lets you configure the keys. It's the bottom button on the first screen to get to the configuration screen.

Thanks Daniel.
I should have known one of those squiggly-line buttons was to configure input!

I never understood why somebody would go to the effort of making a really nice game and then not even make the input configurable.

Mark.

I never understood why someone would do something nutty like use a DVORAK keyboard.

Really cool, though I always die at the end of the level! :&

Had another go, it's still cool. Got killed on at the walking plants.

The qwerty keyboard arrangement was actually devised when typewriters were first created, and it's purpose is to make it harder for people to type fast so the keys didn't jam all the time (early manual typewriters had really bad problems with the keys jamming). Qwerty was purposely devised to maximize finger movement and slow people down on those manual typewriters. The dvorak arrangement was created to minimize finger movement and increase typing accuracy. I typed on a qwerty arrangement for over 20 years, and developed carpal tunnel syndrome, especially in my right wrist and elbow (mousing made the right worse than the left). At first I tried different input devices, but that didn't really help much. I then read that some people had carpal relief by switching to dvorak, so I gave it a try. There is much less finger travel when typing on dvorak than qwerty, so it made sense to me that it would be likely to help with the pain.

Anyway, now I've been typing on dvorak for about 4 years. I have no carpal tunnel pain in either my wrists or elbows. I type faster than I ever did in the preceeding 20 years, and with greater accuracy.

The downsides to switching to dvorak for me --

1 - It took a couple of months to get back up to my former typing speed and accuracy. It definitely takes quite a bit of practice to rewire the brain to a new keyboard arrangement, and I used a couple of typing tutorial programs daily to assist in that. Once I got back to qwerty levels, though, I quickly surpassed them.

2 - Other people using my computer can't type. This one I actually find pretty funny, though. I keep the keyboard icon of the language bar at the system tray so two clicks can change any particular app back to qwerty for this situation, though.

3 - Logins use qwerty. Since keyboard language options don't take hold until after login, I have to type logins in qwerty. Win2003 is an exception to that.

4 - Dvorak keyboards are expensive. There are also keyboards made that have switches on them to change back/forth between dvorak/qwerty, but these are also expensive. For that reason I don't use a dvorak keyboard at all, but instead use the cheaper and more available qwerty keyboard. As a touch typist, what it actually says on the keys doesn't really make any difference.

4 - People hardcoding input keys in games, and providing no configuration options. This always seemed silly to me, especially since it's so easy to allow for people to choose their own. Anyway, I just write an AutoHotkey macro ( http://www.autohotkey.com/ ) to remap keys to other keys, or keys to joystick, joystick to keys, mouse to joystick, or whatever. Then it doesn't matter what the input choices are in games, because I can always choose my own.

So Shawn, to me at least the benefits far outweigh the downsides. I'm really glad that I switched from qwerty to dvorak 4 years ago, and really can't see ever going back.

Mark.