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...and a special disc which includes, among other things, the original NES version of Metal Gear.
That should actually be, "the NES version of the original Metal Gear."
The
MSX was a type of personal computer available in Japan and a few other regions (not the USA) in the 80's, and was very popular as a videogame platform.
The original
Metal Gear was made for the MSX in 1987, then quickly ported to the Famicom, and then quickly translated to the NES, all in the same year. People who have played the MSX version say that the NES version was severely watered down. And the English translation? Well, "the truck have started to move" is rather infamous in the videogame world.
But, it was still a good game, so it did really well on the NES (like just about everything else). So Konami made a sequel to it in the form of an action game called
Snake's Revenge: Metal Gear 2, and published it under their "Ultra Games" label (the system where Nintendo was letting Konami make twice as many NES games as anyone else). As far as I know, Snake's Revenge is only available in America. It came out in 1990.
Also in 1990, Hideo Kojima finally came out with
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake on the MSX (or it may have been the MSX2, or something like that, but you get the idea). It's never been translated or ported.
In the 1990's, Kojima made
Snatcher for a couple of systems that have never been popular in America. It was a mostly text-based futuristic detective novel kind of game. It set itself in the future of the Metal Gear world, but wasn't really a Metal Gear game though. It appeared in America on the Sega CD. I would recommend it extremely highly, but I wouldn't suggest you spend the kind of money that it demands on eBay.
Snatcher had a sequel called
Policenauts. Even though it's supposed to be the future of the Metal Gear world, it was sneakily referred to a few times in Metal Gear Solid.
Kojima also released a funny/weird "super-deformed" (anime's big head, tiny body look) version of Snatcher on the MSX called
SD Snatcher.
In 1998, Konami released
Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation (first in Japan, the the USA). It referred to the first two (Kojima-made) games, but it seems that most Americans didn't need to understand those parts to enjoy the game.
In 1999 Konami released
Metal Gear Solid: Integral for the PlayStation in Japan. It featured a bunch of extras like a first-person shooting mode, being able to play through the game as the Ninja, and a huge pile of VR missions (Metal Gear-style puzzle challenges performed in a cyberspace training world).
Later in 99, they let Americans have just the added VR missions by releasing
Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions over here.
In 2000, Kojima made
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel for the GameBoy Color. It was just called "Metal Gear Solid" in the States. I haven't really had a chance to play it much. Supposedly it's a "real" part of the Metal Gear story, it just doesn't get referred to by the other games (except for like, an occasional poster on the walls in MGS2).
In 2001, they released
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for the PS2. Kojima finally acknowleged that his games have performed far better in America than in Japan (so bring over the rest of them already!), so we got rewarded with the earlier, slightly more buggy version than Japan for once.
It's probably not a spoiler anymore to mention that Kojima introduced a new (and widely hated) character in this game. Supposedly when you were playing the expanded VR missions of Integral and VR Missions, you weren't playing them as Snake. Or as yourself. You were playing them as the new guy, preparing for his role in MGS2.
Microsoft was on the scene by now, and wanted to make an impact, so they paid Konami to give them a timed-exclusive on a superior version of MGS2. So, they released
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance in late 2002. This game clearly illustrated how bad it is to port to/from the PS2, and it was clearly inferior to the PS2 version in a number of areas. But it had some extra features. In early 2003, MGS2: Substance went back to the PS2, extras and all.
Since I've mentioned practically everything else, I should mention that Kojima has also made
Zone of the Enders for the PS2 (a too-short flying-mech-combat game which probably owes more than half of it's sales to the playable MGS2 demo that came with it), and a sequel to it (which I haven't played), also on the PS2, and
Boktai, the sun-powered vampire hunting game on the GameBoy Advance. I think that's all of them. Aside from the Twin Snakes, which we should already have known about, if we're reading this thread.
Topic: MGS Twin Snakes Bundle for Japan (Read 2639 times)
