Metro Siege just hit Kickstarter for Amiga, Neo Geo and PC

BitBeamCannon launched a Kickstarter campaign for Metro Siege, a 16-bit beat 'em up coming to the Amiga, Neo Geo, and PC. The crowdfunding campaign, which launched in 2021, blew past its initial €16,000 goal in a matter of days before concluding on July 4, 2021. You can download a demo right now for all three target platforms.

The premise is standard arcade brawler fare. Riots break out across the city, prompting suspended police officer Kim and MMA gym owner Alex to punch their way through various districts to find the cause. The soundtrack is handled by John Tsakiris, who provides a jazzy, cinematic backdrop to the street violence.

No button mashing allowed

The developers built the combat engine to punish mindless swinging. You have to rely on evasive maneuvers, blocks, and counter-attacks to survive as enemies adopt new fighting styles later in the game.

Blocking a split second before an impact triggers a parry. This opens the enemy up for bonus damage and restores a small amount of your health and special meter. You can also punish downed enemies with kicks or by throwing other gang members on top of them. The knee-drop inflicts the most damage to grounded targets, but there is a catch. If the enemy rolls out of the way before you land, you take damage instead. Missing a flying knee-drop onto concrete hurts exactly as much as it sounds like it would.

You can play solo, with a CPU partner, or with a second player. There are three core characters to choose from. Selecting a character with a different button loads an alternate version with a completely different appearance but the identical playstyle.

Three platforms, three different builds

BitBeamCannon is not just porting a single codebase across three systems. The team is tailoring the game to fit the hardware constraints and strengths of each platform.

The Amiga version uses a modular animation system. Character frames are constructed by positioning reusable body parts to fit the massive move list into a 1MB memory limit. This version will ship with disk images, a CD ISO, and a WHDLoad file for real hardware or emulator use.

The Neo Geo build takes advantage of the arcade hardware's sprite capabilities. Every frame of animation is hand-drawn. It also includes more detailed environments, overlapping HUD elements, and more on-screen color.

The modern PC release on Steam and Itch.io uses the Neo Geo graphics as a base but adds widescreen support and visual enhancements. It also includes a "Chaos" difficulty option that floods the screen with enemies.

I am putting this on my AES+

The physical editions are designed to be high-value collectibles rather than disposable boxes. The team wants the game to be something players return to for decades.

I am going to get this for my AES+. It is rare to see a new Neo Geo release that actually utilizes the hardware's massive sprite pushing power instead of just treating it as a novelty format. The Amiga version is expected to finish development first, with the Neo Geo and PC versions becoming playable shortly after.