METAL GEAR
Metal Gear is a stealth action game designed by Hideo Kojima. Metal Gear was developed and first published by Konami in 1987 for the MSX2 home computer and was well-received critically and commercially.
The game's premise revolves around a special forces operative codenamed Solid Snake who carries out a one-man sneaking mission into the hostile nation of Outer Heaven to destroy Metal Gear, a bipedal walking tank capable of launching nuclear missiles from anywhere in the world. Most of the subsequent games in the series follow this same premise, often changing the characters, locations, and weapons.
Originally released for the MSX2 in Japan and Europe, the game was later ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System during the same year, although with many significant changes made to the game. This was followed with ports to various home computers, such as the PC MS-DOS and Commodore 64. It was also ported to mobile phones and Nintendo GameCube (as part of the Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes Premium Package) in 2004 and for the PlayStation 2 in 2005 as a component of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, with several enhancements and changes, such as typo corrections and some grammatical changes. Its success led to the creation of two separately-produced sequels; the first one, Snake's Revenge, was produced specifically for the Western market for the NES and the other, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, was the canonical sequel developed by Kojima and released in Japan for the MSX2 in response to the former's creation. The latter was followed by a successful series of sequels and spin-offs.
The cover art of Metal Gear is based on a photo of Michael Biehn in character as Kyle Reese from The Terminator.
200 km north of the region of Galzburg, South Africa, lay the fortress of Outer Heaven, a fortified state that had been founded by a legendary mercenary in the late 1980s. In 1995, the Western world had received intelligence that warned of a weapon of mass destruction that was supposedly being constructed deep within the fortress. High-tech Special Forces unit FOXHOUND, commanded by the legendary soldier Big Boss, sent their best agent, Gray Fox to infiltrate the stronghold. However, days later, contact with Gray Fox was lost, his final transmission consisting only of two words: "METAL GEAR..."
With the goal of rescuing Gray Fox and uncovering the meaning of the cryptic message, rookie operative Solid Snake is sent into Outer Heaven alone.
FOXHOUND
Solid Snake
Special Operations Soldier
"The Man Who Makes the Impossible Possible"
Big Boss
Militaires Sans Frontières
"The Greatest Warrior of the 20th Century"
Gray Fox
Mercenary & FOXHOUND Former
"The only operative in FOXHOUND to achieve the codename Fox"
Resistance
Schneider
Former leader of the Resistance movement
"Black Ninja"
Jennifer
Member of the Resistance movement
"Medical Staff"
Diane
Member of the Resistance movement
"Vocalist in the positive punk band Thin Wall"
Civilians
Drago
Pettrovich
Madnar
Russian Robotics Engineer
"Creator of TX-55 Metal Gear"
Ellen Madnar
Former Bolshoi Ballet Star
"Only daughter of scientist Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar"
In 1986, Hideo Kojima joined Konami as a planner, in which he had trouble fitting in with the company. In particular, he joined so he could make arcade and Famicom games (the former due to being inspired by Japan's arcade buildings), and was not fond of the MSX consoles especially regarding programming and hardware limitations, yet was required to work for the MSX1 due to it being the only department within Konami to have planners. The sound director Kazuhiko Uehara gave a similar story regarding how he was hired. Despite working on his game, Last Warld, for six months, Konami ultimately decided to cancel it. As a result of the cancellation, Kojima was the only one in the company at the time who did not have one of their games released. This led other developers within the company to tell him, "at least complete one game before you die." Afterwards, he was given another game plan. This particular game plan was about war, and was partly inspired by the Capcom game Commando, with Konami requesting he make a similar game, only for the MSX consoles. Due to the hardware limitations of the MSX2, Kojima decided to develop a game where the main objective was to avoid the enemy rather than fight them directly (similar to the film The Great Escape). This decision was questioned by his bosses. This, along with the cancellation of his previous game, nearly led Kojima to leave Konami. However, one of his bosses encouraged him to stay and convinced him to continue the development of the game. Kojima did, and the game, which became Metal Gear, was released in Japan for the MSX2 in July 1987.
