Metal Slug 3, which has just been ported to the Xbox, may be a 4-year-old arcade game, but if you've never experienced the unique Metal Slug brand of frantic side-scrolling action, it's probably one of the freshest, most exciting games to hit the Xbox in a while.

While most have traded in their hand-animated sprites and parallax-scrolling environments for rag-doll physics and pixel shaders, SNK has remained a diligent practitioner of 2D gaming and has continued to cultivate a passionate following for it. In 2004, it's kind of odd to see a 2D video game that's not being presented on some sort of portable device.