Top-notch sprite work. Everything is so sharp, so detailed without turning to fudge, so fluid in its movements and idle animations. I'm hypnotized by the soldiers' walk loops. The use of limited colours, the distinctive silhouettes, the fucking shadows in the recoil animations, damn! Really, what looks better than this?

That's what was ultimately so disappointing about the pixel graphics revival; it quickly became synonymous with "lazy" and/or "artistically unskilled" and/or "solo dev" game art. But there's nothing unskilled or efficient about Metal Slug, even though that mountain of talent was in service of a pretty generic platformer.

Metal Slug 3 is one of the greatest games ever made.