Released in 1995

Available in

Genre: Shooting

Metal Head is a shooting game which lets you control a large mech unit. Your mission is to stop a terrorist group, in a series of varied missions. Some missions require your to just completely destroy all enemies, whilst others have different objectives, such as having to take a picture of the entrance to an enemy base. Your mech is armed with different weapons, and you can buy more between each missions.

The game initially impresses, with a 3D environment and textured polygons, making it one of the best looking 32X games. Once you've gotten use to the mech (known as Metal Heads), you'll be able to run through each city quickly and fighting against other mechs with ease. But the problems soon start to flare up, with the game having poor draw-distance (buildings can pop-up in front of you suddenly), some slow-down, unimpressive explosions (enemies will fly into the air and then float back down slowly before exploding in a very small blast) along with annoying music.

Metal Head feels like another rushed 32X game, and whilst it isn't completely awful, it clearly needed some more development time.

Each stage of Metal Head is made of several missions. Before each mission starts you will be told what your objectives are (you can also pause the game to see what to do) and most missions require you to take out enemies. Throughout each city there are several enemies, use the radar (located in the top right corner) and look for the yellow circles to locate where enemies are. Some enemies won't fight back (like parked jeeps) but most of them will. You'll have to fight things like cannons, flying sentries and other Metal Heads. The B button fires your current weapon, whilst holding down C lets you move faster. Holding down A lets your strafe, which is useful for avoiding enemy fire. The Y button will cycle through your weapons.

Each stage has a time limit, but usually you don't have to worry about it that much as the timer is generous and you should have enough time to complete the stage. The default view is inside your Metal Head, but by pressing the mode button you can switch views, including one behind the Metal Head and another which is set up in the sky, looking down.

When you complete a mission, you will be given a certain amount of points depending on how quickly you beat it, how many shields you had left etc. After an entire stage is completed you can enter a store, where you can buy new weapons for your Metal Head. You'll have to upgrade your Metal Head to get the more powerful weapons, including a stronger melee attack and a laser cannon. You can also purchase extra armor and a booster which speeds up your Metal Head.

Your Metal Head has armor, which is represented by the "power" counter on the HUD. When you get hit this counter will decrease, if it his zero your mech will explode. You have several continues to try the mission again, if you do die and continue you'll have to start the current mission from the beginning.

Many sites list codes for a level select and an unlockable Metal Head, but I've never been able to make these codes work. As far as I can tell, these are fake cheats.

Different team pictures
Hold down Start, A, B and C, then turn your Genesis on. Keep the buttons held and when you get to the title screen, release start and then press it again. Go into the options menu and change the "YOUR TEAM" option to "ANIME". The pictures shown in cutscenes will be anime-styled.

There are currently ten prototypes available for this game, click here to read about them.

-This game was one of the earliest 32X games to be revealed, and was supposedly meant to be a launch game, but it ended up being delayed and never made the 1994 release date. It was pushed back into 1995 instead.