Looking back: Metal Gear Solid

So, somebody on a forum linked me to this tune on YouTube.

The nostalgia! It’s like a time warp back to the 90’s. It’s bringing tears to my eyes listening to it.

I was 16 and the year was 1998. The epic gaming year of ’98. Half-Life, Resident Evil 2, Starcraft, Tekken 3, Gran Turismo, Rainbow Six, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Thief, Unreal etc. released that year! The best gaming year in the history of mankind.


Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid was to become a masterpiece in gaming history and a huge success, exceeding six million units sold. It was a new start and direction in the Metal Gear franchise from the old MSX and NES days. Forever changing how I viewed videogame storytelling. It shortened the gap between gaming and movies. No other game told a story so well until then and no other game had voice acting in this league prior to it.

My first encounter with MGS was through a demo that came along an issue of the fantastic Official UK PlayStation Magazine. I remember sitting down and playing through the demo. I was first met by the haunting melody behind the Konami logo and one hour later I was literally screaming at the “To be continued” screen, asking for more. I don’t think a demo ever sold me as much as that one did.

Technically, MGS looks dated these days and the controls are clumsy by new standards, but it’s one of the absolute finest PS1 releases you’ll find. The true power of MGS though, lies in the story and presentation. Everything from the brilliant voice overs with David Hayter as Solid Snake, the cinematic way it presents dialogue and sequences utilising the in-game engine, keeps a perfect flow of storytelling and gameplay.

Another impressive aspect, considering the hardware limitations of the time, was the amazing way they weighed out the polygon distribution to a point of detail that was just enough to make both the characters and the environments great. Hell, there weren’t even proper faces on the characters, but I still remember them so well!

Speaking of the characters, the sheer variety in them, their interesting personalities and all powered along by a heavy plot with many underlying meanings. The way the story had several twists and the fact that they brought political issues into the mix and blending it into a situation that could have been reality was unheard of in gaming before MGS. It felt real, it touched something inside you with its clever plot and it kept it to a scale that wasn’t going to far, yet showing a large scale of a terror attack on a US military base.

The atmosphere in the environments has to be mentioned too. The way you sneak in and climb out of the water and especially when you reach the top of the base, lean against a container while the snow and wind blows past you, and no one knows you are there, is intense. You feel alone and you feel like you're on a secret stealth mission.

Scenes throughout the game touches you, from the psychotic encounter with Psycho Mantis, who “reads” your mind through the memory card and messes with your vibration in your controller, to the flirting love interest between Snake and Meryl, to the emotional death of Sniper Wolf, and all the way to the brutal brother versus brother fight at the end. The sheer variation in the story, characters, and of course the gameplay, set MGS far beyond its competitors.

MGS 2 and 3 went on from here to a new platform and generation, these also have fantastic stories to tell and characters to meet, perhaps taking things a little too far, they're also some of the best games I’ve played.

MGS1, however, will always stand out as the winner, it truly perfected the stealthy agent formula from the get go.

God I miss the nineties.