New Mega Drive game "Metal Dragon" by Kai Magazine

[Barone]

The gameplay footage does look very interesting.
But the color use and the HUD look awful.

[xelement5x]

Hello everyone,
I am Oscar Kenneth, from Kai Magazine software (The developers of this game).
Sorry I don't have a profile picture but the "Customize profile" function seems to be broken at this moment.
Thank you Black_Tiger for posting this here, I have been trying to register in this forum for weeks without luck until today.

About the game:
It is not a re-skin of Mercs, I coded it from scratch in C using the famous SGDK.
This game is a port of the MSX2 version which I also coded from scratch (Mercs doesn't exist on MSX). The MSX2 is almost identical to the Genesis/Mega-drive version, but we added more weapons and many improvements, more variety etc.

The game is for 1 player only. We went in this direction because most retro-gamers usually play alone, so we used all the resources for 1 player.
Right now, adding a second player would mean to remove existing elements:
A second player requires 2 sprites plus 6 more sprites for his personal bullets. In order to do this we would have to remove the maximum amount of enemies on screen and also the amount of bullets.
This would harm the 1 player experience and all the game should be re-balanced and re-designed.
Considering that most people would play it alone anyway, I belive we made the right choice.

Please feel free to ask us anything you want.

Thanks for posting, everything looks cool and I was already following the MSX version a bit!

With the various versions you are selling, is the only difference the outer case insert?

Do all the cartridges have the same language versions, no different manuals, etc?

I always have a hard time deciding on variants like this if they're not basically the same inside. I love the JP MegaDrive look but would prefer the game in English when I play it.

[Kai Magazine Software]

Thank you for your interest ^_^
The only difference is the cover. The manual and cartridge is the same, and it will play in English on any region and console.

[xelement5x]

Thank you for your interest ^_^
The only difference is the cover. The manual and cartridge is the same, and it will play in English on any region and console.

Thanks for the response! Any chance of you porting Life on Earth eventually as well?

[Kai Magazine Software]

Thanks for the response! Any chance of you porting Life on Earth eventually as well?

Probably yes, eventually.

[Sut]

My copy arrived yesterday, looking forward to playing this over the weekend.

[Nano Babe]

My copy arrived yesterday, looking forward to playing this over the weekend.

any problems with customs duty charges? I'm based in the UK as well Royal Mail tracking hasn't moved for about 4 days

[Sut]

any problems with customs duty charges? I'm based in the UK as well Royal Mail tracking hasn't moved for about 4 days

No I seem to have got away with this one as didn't have to pay any charges at all. Although I am not sure what the current situation is after Brexit, do we pay custom charges from Europe ?

[ruimtemuis]

I actually pre-ordered this game some time ago, but I haven't received my copy yet. For those who received it, did you get a confirmation e-mail when it was sent out?

[Sut]

I actually pre-ordered this game some time ago, but I haven't received my copy yet. For those who received it, did you get a confirmation e-mail when it was sent out?

Yes received an email with a tracking number, they did advise would take 2-3 weeks, so it arrived 10 days ahead of schedule.

[billy]

I got my shipping confirmation email today. Very excited to play it, and having my name in the manual is gonna be surreal.

[Iced Snowman]

The Kai Magazine website says this under their description: "This game is filled with 80's references from arcade games and movies, so it is mainly focused to 40 year old people and above.
Younger players will probably not get many of the references and humor in the game, as well as the game-play."

Well, I'm in the 40 and above category. How could I not order this? There are 3 Japanese copies of this on eBay already, all going for over $200. Ridiculous. I just ordered my copy from Kai Magazine via PayPal. Looking forward to this.

[Bighab]

Anyone else having trouble getting this game to work on their Mega SG console? I'm running the latest Firmware 4.8 and I get a scrambled screen