Before working on Metal Slug: Super Vehicle-001 for SNK's Neo Geo platform, the former Nazca & SNK artist Akio Oyabu envisioned making a "sci-fi comedy game" based on the Samurai Shodown series.
If you're a diehard fan of the Metal Slug series, there's a high possibility you'll have come across Akio Oyabu's name in the past. The Japanese artist played a significant role in shaping the look and feel of the famous SNK series, contributing to several games, including Metal Slug 2: Super Vehicle - 001/II and Metal Slug 3.
But, as he recently revealed on social media, before he began work on the original Metal Slug arcade game, he was actually interested in producing another game instead, focused on the Samurai Shodown character Yagyu Jubei.
As Akio states, before Metal Slug was a project, a SNK illustrator named Senri Kita had created a joke version of Yagyu Jubei, named Yagyu Kachou, during the production of Samurai Shodown II, which depicted the samurai as a struggling salaryman. This then became a comic, with Akio, in particular, being a huge fan of Kita's unique style and the character's charm.
Around the same time, Akio had the belief that for Nazca's first game with SNK, it would be more sensible for the team to focus on a pre-existing character, rather than trying to create something entirely from scratch, "that nobody knew or cared about," and drew up a doodle for a potential game drawing on the appeal of Yagyu Kachou, which also pulled from influences such as Toshiro Mifune's appearances in Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro and Yojimbo, Kazuo Koike's classic manga Lone Wolf and Cub, and the sci-fi blockbuster Star Wars.
According to Akio, looking at the doodle he saved, he doesn't believe this got much further than a drawing and a few design notes, but he does remember a couple of the different ideas he wanted to explore with the project. This included a sword-based combo system that would have been challenging to master, and a special ability that would have turned the town red with blood, inspired by Sanjuro's bloody final duel.
After sharing the image with his followers, he pondered what type of game it would have become if he worked on it, instead of Metal Slug, before suggesting it likely would have included some ridiculous elements like castles transforming into Macross-style space ships.
Asked whether he'd want to do anything with the premise today, he answered fans, "If the right conditions ever come together someday…we'll see!"
Akio is now a member of a game development company called Kohachi Studio, the studio behind the upcoming titles Black Finger Jet and Yokai Buster: Navinosuke.