Metal Gear Solid
1998 · Stealth / Action · PlayStation
Overview
Metal Gear Solid brought stealth action to a mainstream PlayStation audience with full voice acting, a formalised enemy awareness system, and a cinematic presentation that referenced Hollywood action films. Solid Snake infiltrated Shadow Moses Island to stop nuclear launch. The exclamation mark above detected enemies became one of gaming's most recognisable images.
Deep Dive
Metal Gear Solid was directed by Hideo Kojima at Konami as the first Metal Gear game with 3D graphics and full voice acting. The game's enemy awareness system — with distinct alert, caution, and normal states communicated through music and enemy behaviour — formalised the stealth game's design vocabulary. The game's use of metatextual breaks — a psychic villain who reads the player's memory card, a boss whose codec frequency is printed on the game's case — created moments that players discussed as singular experiences.
Developer Story
Metal Gear Solid was directed by Hideo Kojima at Konami in approximately three years following the 16-bit Metal Gear 2. Kojima designed the game as a cinematic experience as much as a game, with extended codec conversations and cutscenes that were unusual for PlayStation games of the era. The game launched in Japan in September 1998.
Did You Know?
- Psycho Mantis — Metal Gear Solid's psychic villain — read the player's PlayStation memory card and commented on their save files from other Konami games before the boss fight.
- The game's codec frequency for Colonel Campbell — 140.85 — became a metric of 1990s gaming cultural knowledge.
- Metal Gear Solid's development required Kojima to teach himself film direction theory — he described the game's cinematics as his attempt to apply film grammar to game cutscenes.
- The game was one of the first PlayStation games with a full English voice cast of professional actors.
