METAL SLUG ANTHOLOGY

You have to make it through all 5 missions without using more than 5 continues (you get 3 lives for each continue). Patience and practice are going to be your best friends on this run. Tanks are going to be your best friends in the missions as they will not only give you more fire power, but also allow you to take multiple hits of damage before they explode leaving you defenseless again (and make boss fights MUCH easier).

Bosses will obviously be your biggest threat to keeping your lives intact, so here are tips on how they attack and how to defeat them (hopefully) easier:

Mission 1 Boss: Your boss is a giant mechanical crab like tank that is on the left side of the screen and moves towards you as the screen scrolls to the right destroying the wooden walkway as it goes. At the beginning of the fight, it shoots out flaming cannonballs that fire out and then drop down on top of you wherever you are standing. Just move back and forth to avoid them while firing at the boss nonstop. Once you hit it enough, the top of the cannons will change and start shooting out shells at you the drop quickly at your location so make sure to move quickly to avoid them. Just keep firing away and it should fall quickly.

Mission 2 Boss: The battle begins with 6 aliens that spin in a circle and fire orbs of energy at you. As you attack them, the number of orbs and how fast they fire/fall increases. Just keep moving back and forth to avoid the orbs while firing away at them until you finish off the last one. After that, a giant egg looking thing will pop out of the middle of the area and begin the second part of the fight. The egg will fire out a tracker laser type thing at you and then will drop a stone slab on that location faster and faster as it takes more damage. Just keep moving back and forth like before avoiding them and shooting the boss. You can also shoot the stone slabs to make them disappear into the ground faster to free up the ground so it's easier for you to move around and avoid the next ones. Just keep attacking and eventually it will explode.

Mission 3 Boss: The boss of this mission is a giant toy robot looking thing. It has a few different attacks that it rotates through as the battle goes on. The first is that it fires out a few homing missiles from it's one hand, so make sure you shoot them down when they get close to you in order to avoid them. The next is a laser beam it shoots out of it's eyes across the ground from left to right that you will need to jump over in order to avoid (just where the beam is hitting is where you get damaged). The final attack is when it pulls a missile from it's chest and slams it into the ground causing it to explode and send flaming balls up in the air to drop on you, so after the initial explosion, move back and forth in between the fire balls. As the battle goes on, he will repeat these attacks but they will come faster and with more intensity (more missiles, more fire balls, etc). If you can stay up on him and just keep unloading and dodging when the time calls for it, you should be able to make fairly quick work of him without too much of a problem.

Mission 4 End Boss: You enemy this time will be a giant mask with a jewel in the middle of it's forehead and that is exactly what your target will be for this battle. The boss itself starts out with a yellow energy bolt attack that shoots out from the jewel in a random pattern all over the screen (towards you and away from you as well) that can be easily avoided by just moving whenever any of the shots come towards you. After that, the boss hovers over you and does a red energy bolt attack that fires a few shots down towards where you are standing that you can again avoid by just moving back and forth between shots. It then does an attack the summons wolf like ghosts the float around above in a circle and then quickly drop down to where you are standing, so watch their movement and when they are getting ready to drop, move out of the way. It will start repeating some of the previous attacks, but will eventually do an attack where it moves to one side of the screen and breathes purple fire down to the ground towards the other side of the screen. To avoid this attack, move to the opposite side of where it is starting it's attack as soon as you can as it will stop right before it gets to the other side leaving you safe. Just keep attacking the crystal in the middle of it's head while avoiding it's repeat the previous attacks until it explodes.

Final Mission Mini-Boss #1: In the middle of the mission you will come across a mechanical looking blimp like enemy. The enemy has a few modes of attack that you need to look out for. The first is that it drops a bunch of bouncing bombs out the back, which drop to the ground and then bounce back up in random ways making it hard to predict where you need to move to avoid them completely, so make sure you watch to see where they are moving as soon as they bounce off the ground in order to time your movements properly. The other attack is when it shoots out a larger missile at you that loops around and then comes at you wherever you are positioned when it finishes the loop (sometimes it just comes straight at you without the loop), so just move up or down to avoid it or you can shoot it down if you're quick enough. The next attack it does is when a gunner pops out the back of the blimp and fires rockets at you which are easily avoided by either dodging them or shooting them down quickly. After they do these attacks they start to repeat them again, but occasionally there will be a biker on the ground level that will appear as well to bother you so take them out. The final attack it does is when our old mid-level boss from the previous games pops out the side door and starts throwing grenades at you. Just move around the screen constantly attacking and avoiding the grenades and the blimp will fall a short time after he appears.

Final Mission Mini-Boss #2: You will fight a helicopter with a general hanging out the side who has a rocket launcher, but you also have the advantage of having a stationary machine gun to help make this easier for you. The helicopter will begin by firing at the ground in spots on the ground moving towards you, so jump over them when they get too close to where you are and then resume firing. After that initial attack, the front nose of the helicopter will open and fire out missiles that you will fly around before coming at you, but you can shoot them before then so try to take them out and return your fire back to the helicopter or jump to avoid if they get too close. Eventually the bottom hatch of the helicopter will open and the helicopter will raise up to the top of the screen and begin to drop bombs as it moves across the screen. Shoot the missiles as they drop and the jump out of the way as they come near you to avoid taking damage. The general himself might fire a rocket himself at you, but if you keep hitting him there is a good chance he won't get them off or only a shot or two at most. The helicopter will repeat the original attacks, most heavily with the front missile attack but with more misses than original shot. Just keep attack and avoiding until it falls.

Final Mission Mini-Boss #3: This fight is with a UFO type ball. As flying through space it will appear and drop smaller ufo out the bottom that will fire lasers at you. Just destroy these smaller ones as quick as possible and return focus to the main boss. After you attack it enough, it will join in with a mother ship type UFO. It will fire a lightning attack out the bottom at you wherever you are positioned when it starts to prime up, so make sure to move out of the way prior to that. Just keep focusing on the ball in the middle and eventually it will blow.

Final Mission Mini-Boss #4: Another mini-boss, I know, but thankfully this one can be defeated extremely easily. The boss itself looks like a Mother Brain ripoff and has one basic attack which is firing a blue orb at you. During the first part of the battle, it will fire smaller balls constantly at you, but all you have to do is keep moving back and forth across the screen while firing up at it to avoid them. Once you do enough damage, the boss will change the orb attack from faster small ones, to a slower large one. The only change in strategy here is to move to one side of the boss and when the orb gets to just about it's full size, run to the other side of the boss and then rinse and repeat for the following one all while firing up at the boss until it dies.

Final Mission End Boss: The final boss is an alien head with its brain sticking out (that's your target). The alien will grab your tank but you can still shoot from it and also jump in and out of it as well, which is good a that's the method you are going to use to beat him. He has 2 attacks, one is an electrical circle he shoots out of his brain that you need to jump over (or jump out of your tank) to avoid while the other is when he opens his mouth and causes these blobs to come out and float up the screen which can be avoided by moving and jumping or if timed right jumping back into your vehicle (even if not, your vehicle is the place to be if you're going to take hits from them as they don't seem to do a to of damage to it and it won't kill you in one shot either). Just keep jumping from your tank to the alien to avoid the different attacks and firing away as much as possible on his brain. As you do more damage he'll start doing his two attacks faster and almost simultaneously, so just be watchful of them and keep going until he dies.

Once this final boss falls and you have not used more than 5 continues, the trophy will be yours!