The Metal Slug 2 artist Akio Oyabu has recently taken to Twitter to solve one of the greatest mysteries that has been puzzling fans of the Neo Geo run 'n gun shooter for decades: the origin of its ugly character select portraits (thanks @richmond_lee!).
In Metal Slug 2, when players access the character select screen before, they are greeted with a bunch of caricatures of the game's leads (Marco, Eric, Tarma, and Flo) that don't exactly paint them in the most heroic light. Both Marco and Eri, for instance, look scared and angry to be going on the mission, while Tarma seems to be struggling with a runny nose and Flo's glasses are smashed and useless.
Over the years, fans have speculated what SNK potentially meant by this, with some believing that the portraits were either an anti-war message on behalf of one of the company's artists or potentially based on how the enemy portrayed the characters via wanted posters. Neither of these seems to be the case, however, with Akio recently suggesting online that the decision simply came out of a desire to provoke the player's curiosity and differentiate the characters from the handsome and beautiful characters that were being portrayed elsewhere in gaming, particularly in the fighting game genre.
Akio stated on Twitter (as translated by Google Translate): "At the time, fighting games were at their peak in the gaming world, and no matter which machine you looked at, there were only handsome men and beautiful women. I thought about how I could stand out from the crowd, and deliberately drew an ugly character to differentiate myself. So, the unmotivated expression doesn't have any deeper meaning, like 'I don't want to go on the mission.' In other words, I wanted to make the player think, 'What's with this character?' and simply create surreal humor. But to be honest, if I was better at drawing, I would have liked to draw a character with the appeal of Terry Bogard or Chun-Li lol"
"In a way, those ugly characters were born out of my own limitations. But when I see these characters being loved by people overseas and even turned into murals, it makes me feel really strange and happy."
Akio went on to argue that he believes it was his childhood love of Terry Gilliam's animated sequences in the British TV show Monty Python's Flying Circus that is likely to blame for making strange creative decisions like this, in the hope of defying the player's expectations.