(Image credit: SNK / Eisuke Ogura) The Metal Slug 30th anniversary this week is a moment to stop and remind ourselves that games and game art needn’t always be about the race for realism, and perfection and artistic merit can arrive in many forms. When the first Metal Slug was released in 1996, the world was chasing polygons and 3D, pixels were out, and for 30 years, the idea was that higher fidelity meant better, but SNK’s pixel art masterpiece sits in the corner, stubbornly impressing and still outclassing games with higher budgets and more ‘realism’. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: realism might have been a mistake, or at least, the push for realism over everything else, stifled many developers in that 32-bit era, as although the likes of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night put up a fight, there was nothing putting 3D worlds back in the box once Doom, Tomb Raider and Tekken released.…