Original in-game character portraits and their real-life inspirations (Source: )Ī noted cinephile, Kojima is well known for injecting his games with movie references and homages. At over three minutes long – unusual even by Hollywood standards – the game’s elaborate main titles were far ahead of their time, transporting players into a world of intrigue and espionage, and helping to redefine what was possible in this still fledgling medium. The driving 8-bit score surges and the player’s ultimate foe – the dreaded Metal Gear – takes shape, giving way to a big, bold title card emblematic of the era. As the development team’s credits render in all caps type, complex readouts and schematics fill the screen, weapons are tested and loaded, targets are acquired. Released two years after Snatcher, Kojima’s highly cinematic, Blade Runner-inspired role-playing game, Metal Gear 2 upped the ante even further by featuring a lengthy opening title sequence that borrowed heavily from 1980s action cinema. Image set: 1980s action movie title cards from The Terminator (1984) and Lethal Weapon (1987) featuring typography and colouring characteristic of the time From the stealth mechanics and bizarre characters, to filmic flourishes like long-winded cutscenes and even title sequences – everything modern gamers know as Metal Gear was firmly established by this game. A true successor to the original game in every sense, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake laid the foundations for what would become one of the most enduring and eccentric game franchises of all time. In fact, Kojima only began working on Metal Gear 2 after discovering that a quickie NES sequel intended for release exclusively in the West – titled Snake’s Revenge – was being developed by another team at Konami. MSX-based machines were extremely popular in Asia, South America, and Europe, but were rarely released in North America.ĭeveloped for the MSX2 home computer, the original version of Metal Gear 2 was never released outside of Japan, despite the international success of the first game on both the MSX and Nintendo Entertainment System. MSX is the name of a standardized home computer architecture launched by Microsoft in 1983. ![]() Image set: Original Metal Gear D designs by Tomohiro Nishio and Konami staff However, Snake's ultimate goal is to destroy Metal Gear D, one of the hulking, nuclear-armed bipedal tanks from which the series derives its name. ![]() The sequel to the 1987 hit Metal Gear, the game again puts players in control of super commando Solid Snake (a codename inspired by Escape from New York’s Snake Plissken) as he undertakes a covert mission to stop the aptly named Big Boss. It’s a standard action movie setup, but this is no movie – it’s Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, a 1990 stealth-action video game from Konami and madcap game designer Hideo Kojima. ![]() Why is this interesting? Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima has never hidden the fact that his game's hero, Solid Snake, was inspired by Snake Plissken, the hero played by Kurt Russell in John Carpenter's 1981 movie "Escape From New York.The near future: an elite soldier, a big bad, a secret formula, and a sinister plan for world domination. But the most intriguing piece of all was a seemingly unrelated story by a contributor to the Web site Ain't It Cool News who won an EBay auction for a previously unpublished and rejected draft of a script for the 1996 movie "Escape From L.A." from the screenplay's author, Coleman Luck. We were particularly impressed by both the 1UP Yours podcast, which featured Kojima Productions' own Ryan Payton explaining various aspects of the games features and development and MTV News Multiplayer's Q&A with the same Payton about the philosophy between the various trailers (nine, at last count) that the studio has released for MGS4. There's been a lot of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots coverage in the wake of the game's spectacular and dominant Tokyo Game Show appearance last month.
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