2000 · Game Boy · Game story
MetaFight EX: The Game Boy Color Mission That Makes You Leave the Tank
Nintendo’s C-5022_e record is the Japanese Game Boy Color original, not merely an overseas label. Its strength lies in the friction between Leonardo’s armored Metal Attacker and the vulnerable on-foot, top-view excursions the world demands.
In this story
First, name the correct cartridge
MetaFight EX opens with a tank and immediately makes that tank a promise. Nintendo calls the Japanese Game Boy Color release メタファイトEX, dates it to 25 February 2000, and sends Leonardo and the Metal Attacker to planet Theta. English-language players met the mechanically equivalent game as Blaster Master: Enemy Below; Hardcore Gaming 101 notes that its story framing and ending material differ, while MobyGames catalogues that overseas release as a 2000 Game Boy Color game from Sunsoft. The Japanese name matters because Leonardo, the Metal Attacker, and Theta give this particular mission its own vocabulary. The action itself, though, has an immediately legible hook: a powerful vehicle can charge across hostile country, but progress repeatedly asks its pilot to climb out. 1 3 2 8
That boundary reveals a game with a very clean central proposition. Leonardo boards an all-purpose fighting vehicle with a high jump, durable armor, and heavy cannon fire, then has to leave it wherever the world narrows or changes its rules. Nintendo’s description states the switch plainly: narrow spaces require him to disembark, and dungeon interiors change to a top-down view in which he fights with a gun and grenades. The alternation is not an ornamental genre mix. It makes the Metal Attacker’s strength meaningful because the player repeatedly has to surrender it. Vehicle exploration is not a default that solves everything; it is one half of a route whose other half is exposed, constrained, and personal. 1 2
Trivia Nintendo’s record dates メタファイトEX to 25 February 2000 and lists SUNSOFT as its maker. Its official description names Leonardo, planet Theta, and the Metal Attacker—the compact cast of nouns that makes the Japanese mission feel immediately distinct. 1
See it in action
The Metal Attacker sets the outer rhythm
In the side-view landscape, the Metal Attacker establishes a confident, forward-moving rhythm. Its jump, armor, and cannon let the player read enemy-filled terrain as a place to cross rather than a place to tiptoe through. The Japanese manual places the rider’s status and the vehicle’s hover and power measures alongside this play, emphasizing that the vehicle is a system of capabilities rather than a decorative mount. The point is not merely that it hits hard. It makes traversal ambitious: high ledges, hostile stretches, and locked-in firefights all become questions of what the machine has been equipped to attempt. Exploration begins with a sense of mass and reach, then gradually adds more ways to bend that reach around the world’s architecture. 1 2
The machine’s weapons reinforce that practical identity. The manual lists Hyper as the ordinary attack and describes three selectable special attacks: Homing Missile, Thunder Break, and 3-Way. These are not just a tally of ammunition types; they let the player choose an answer for a particular shape of threat. Homing shots seek enemies, Thunder Break reaches below, and 3-Way spreads fire into separate directions. A world built around side-view movement benefits from such choices because danger is rarely arranged on one clean horizontal line. The vehicle remains powerful, but its power asks for judgment about angle, inventory, and terrain instead of simple indiscriminate fire. 2 4
Trivia The official manual lists four Metal Attacker attack types: Hyper, Homing Missile, Thunder Break, and 3-Way. The three special attacks begin with zero ammunition and are replenished by their matching item pickups. 2
Leaving the vehicle changes the stakes
Disembarking turns the game’s confidence into caution. The official record says Leonardo must act outside the Metal Attacker in narrow places, and the manual identifies a distinct rider state. Nintendo Life’s coverage of the mechanically equivalent overseas release expresses the design consequence clearly: on foot, the hero is more vulnerable and less well armed than the armored vehicle. This matters because the game does not present the rider as a rival mode with equal comfort. He is the price of access. The player leaves the machine to enter a passage, collect an item, or meet the conditions that the vehicle cannot satisfy, and every step then asks for more deliberate positioning than the broad side-view exterior did. 1 2 5
Yet the rider is not merely a weakness inserted to slow the player down. He is a bridge between systems. The manual says that rider health is fully restored on re-entering the Metal Attacker, a simple rule that makes the vehicle a refuge as well as a transport. It encourages a cadence of commitment and return: go out to do what the machine cannot, absorb the risk of the small space, then get back inside with a renewed sense of protection. That relationship is more interesting than a binary choice between two characters. The two forms support each other, but the game makes their different tolerances for danger impossible to ignore. 2 4
Trivia The Japanese manual states that the rider’s POW meter returns to full when he boards the Metal Attacker. It also warns that falling from a sufficiently high ledge damages the rider and can, depending on the height, cause a game over. 2
Top view makes every room a commitment
The switch to top view is the game’s most consequential change of perspective. Nintendo describes dungeon combat from above with guns and grenades, and the manual says the player controls the rider through those dungeons. The view does not simply provide visual variety after side-view platforming. It changes how a room is read. A jump arc and a cannon line are replaced by approach angles, walls, and close threats. The player cannot carry the Metal Attacker’s bulk into this space, so the dungeon has permission to become more exacting. Movement is about clearing a room, finding an exit, and surviving the route toward a key or boss rather than forcing a path with armor. 1 2 5
The gun system makes the risk visible instead of hidden. The manual says the rider’s ammunition is unlimited, but gun strength is not: enemy contact reduces the GUN meter, while GUN items restore it. This creates a useful distinction between permission to shoot and permission to remain powerful. The player is never rendered helpless by an empty clip, yet damage still erodes their offensive comfort. Nintendo Life notes that the overhead sections use four-way walking and can become tricky in boss fights, an observation consistent with the manual’s more exposed on-foot interface. The top view turns damage into a change in capability, not just a number falling on a health bar. 2 5 3
Trivia The rider’s GUN meter starts with three marks, falls when enemy contact causes damage, and is restored by GUN items. The manual says the hidden GUN2 upgrade raises the maximum to eight, while rider gun ammunition remains unlimited regardless of equipped item. 2
Upgrades make the map a memory test
MetaFight EX’s exploratory rhythm comes from what upgrades do to a remembered obstacle. The manual presents eight areas and says an area is cleared by defeating its boss; it also states that movement between areas happens only in side-view. GameSpot’s review of the shared gameplay calls back-and-forth travel a major part of the design and notes that early zones require power-ups obtained later. That is the important loop. A new part does not simply improve a combat statistic. It changes the meaning of a ledge, passage, or stretch of terrain the player has already seen. The world asks to be carried in memory so that equipment can turn an old dead end into a newly intentional destination. 2 4 3
The game ties that loop to dungeon work rather than leaving it as an overworld scavenger hunt. The manual says boss dungeons require keys, which are found in other dungeons within the area; it also distinguishes gates that admit the Metal Attacker from gates only the rider can pass. Hardcore Gaming 101 highlights this lock-and-key structure as a meaningful addition to the Game Boy Color design, and notes optional parts for both vehicle and rider. StrategyWiki’s area-by-area reference makes the practical effect easy to picture: a route can be a lead toward a required key, a useful part, or both. The player learns that no opening is merely local to the room where it first appeared. 2 3 7 6
Trivia MetaFight EX contains eight areas, each completed by defeating its boss. The manual specifies that keys for boss dungeons are obtained in other dungeons in the same area, and that some gates allow the Metal Attacker through while others admit only the rider. 2
Survival is a set of reserves
The game’s harshness has structure because it is expressed through several reserves rather than one undifferentiated life bar. The manual separates the Metal Attacker’s and rider’s POW state from the hover measure and rider GUN meter. Damage reduces POW; HOV items refill a hover resource; the hover measure is consumed by using that function. Each system gives the player a slightly different question to answer. Can this fight be endured? Is there enough hover capacity to cross the next space? Is the rider’s gun still strong enough for a dangerous dungeon room? Instead of treating upgrades as a simple march toward invulnerability, MetaFight EX makes them part of a resource-reading habit. 2 4
That economy complements the vehicle/rider distinction. The Metal Attacker creates security but asks the player to manage special functions. The rider can enter the crucial interior but makes every hit and drop more consequential. Nintendo Life describes the experience as difficult even early on, while GameSpot praises the way its Game Boy Color design keeps outside-the-tank exploration from becoming mere busywork. Together, those perspectives explain the rhythm: the game does not want safe accumulation alone. It wants the player to decide when a reserve should be spent, when an upgrade is sufficient to revisit a route, and when the apparent safety of the vehicle must be left behind for progress. 5 4 2
Trivia The manual gives the hover meter a maximum of eight marks and says it drains when hover is activated. It also says a Hybrid Armor pickup raises the Metal Attacker’s maximum POW measure from the starting eight to ten. 2
A Game Boy Color design, not a placeholder
It is easy to reduce MetaFight EX to an echo of an older series entry, especially because its international counterpart has more English-language criticism. That would miss what the Game Boy Color design actually organizes: eight areas, keys inside side dungeons, optional parts, separate vehicle and rider economies, a password display in the manual, and a persistent alternation between side view and top view. Hardcore Gaming 101 calls the layouts changed and identifies the Japanese title’s separate narrative presentation; GameSpot likewise says the areas are an original design rather than identical copies. Those claims do not erase the lineage. They clarify that this cartridge asks its own questions about routes, equipment, and risk. 3 4 2
The result is a portable exploration game whose most memorable gesture is a subtraction. The Metal Attacker gives Leonardo range, armor, and a repertoire of weapons; the next necessary gate may demand that he step out of it. Side-view space rewards the machine’s movement, top-view space tests the rider’s restraint, and upgrades turn both spaces into a longer conversation with the same world. By keeping the two perspectives materially unequal, MetaFight EX makes every transition legible. The player does not switch modes for variety’s sake. They switch because the route has changed what strength means, and because the best tool at one threshold is deliberately the wrong tool at the next. 1 2 5
Trivia The official manual says area-to-area travel is possible only in side-view, while the dungeon screen is top view. It also provides a password display for recording game progress, giving the original cartridge a stated way to resume the eight-area mission. 2
Sources & image credits
Facts were checked against the links below. Official media remains the property of Nintendo and the relevant rights holders.
- メタファイトEX Nintendo ↗
- メタファイトEX 取扱説明書 Nintendo / SUNSOFT ↗
- Blaster Master: Enemy Below / Metafight EX Hardcore Gaming 101 ↗
- Blaster Master Enemy Below Review GameSpot ↗
- Blaster Master: Enemy Below Review (3DS eShop / GBC) Nintendo Life ↗
- Blaster Master: Enemy Below StrategyWiki ↗
- Blaster Master: Enemy Below Guide and Walkthrough by DeathsporkX GameFAQs ↗
- Blaster Master: Enemy Below (2000) MobyGames ↗
