Metal Gear

• 1. Introduction

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  Metal Gear began not as a stealth game, but as a straightforward military action game. Hideo Kojima designed it for the MSX2 computer platform in 1987, intending players to fight their way through enemies with guns blazing. The hardware had other ideas. The MSX2 could only render a limited number of bullets and enemies on screen at once, making the combat Kojima envisioned feel flat and broken. Forced to rethink everything, Kojima drew inspiration from the 1963 film The Great Escape and redesigned the game around a prisoner trying to slip past guards undetected rather than shoot them down. That accidental pivot would shape an entire genre. By the end of December 2025, the franchise Kojima built on that constraint had sold 65.5 million units worldwide. What kind of game earns that following, and what does it take to build a story that spans five decades of fictional history across more than a dozen installments? The answers involve Cold War paranoia, cloning, fourth-wall-breaking humor, a walking nuclear tank, and a creator who hid a heavily censored magazine interview to keep fans guessing.

• 2. An Accidental Genre

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  Metal Gear sold over a million copies in the United States, making it the first mainstream stealth game and establishing the genre on its own terms. The player begins the game unarmed, a detail that communicated the rules of engagement immediately: avoiding conflict was the point, not winning it. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, released in Japan in 1990 for the MSX2, pushed those mechanics further and is considered one of the best 8-bit games of all time. When Kojima brought the series into three dimensions with Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation, debuting at the 1996 Tokyo Game Show before releasing in 1998, he introduced the hiding-behind-cover mechanic that would become standard across the action genre. Splinter Cell producer Mathieu Ferland said Metal Gear Solid "was a pioneer for both the genre and the quality of directing." Splinter Cell and Far Cry 2 designer Clint Hocking put it more bluntly, stating that every stealth-action game "owes its existence to the success of Metal Gear" and that, "Without Metal Gear, there would be no stealth games." Tenchu creator Takuma Endo and Thief creator Tom Leonard both cited early Metal Gear games as formative influences. Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski named his own franchise in direct homage to Metal Gear. The series also pioneered the integration of cinematic techniques into video games; Eurogamer considers Metal Gear Solid the "first modern video game." Metal Gear Solid 2's script, ambitious enough that some critics called it the first postmodern video game, was later seen as anticipating concepts like post-truth politics, fake news, and echo chambers years before those terms became commonplace.

• 3. The World Inside the Games

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  In the Metal Gear universe, history diverged sometime after World War I with the founding of a secret pact between the United States, China, and the Soviet Union. That fictional organization created the Cobra Unit, which was instrumental in defeating the Axis Powers. Cloning and robotics technology advanced far ahead of the real world by the 1970s. The nine main-series games weave a narrative spanning five decades, from the Cold War to the near future. Big Boss is the most central figure across that span; five of the main games are prequels centered on his story. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which is chronologically the earliest installment, follows a young operative called Naked Snake as he is sent into Russia to assassinate his own mentor, The Boss. His success earns him the codename Big Boss. Metal Gear Solid, set decades later, reveals that Solid Snake is a genetic clone of Big Boss, created through a secret government project. Each numbered installment is organized around a specific philosophical theme: Metal Gear Solid addresses genetics and the moral weight of genetic engineering; Metal Gear Solid 2 examines how a society's philosophies shape individual identity; Metal Gear Solid 3 explores how time and place determine who a person becomes; Metal Gear Solid 4 takes up what a person's understanding of the world means when it dies with them; and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain looks at how revenge strips away a person's humanity. The series carries implicit parallels to Nietzschean philosophy. Solid Snake himself is a deconstruction of the action hero archetype, a soldier worn down by conflict who wants to retire but cannot escape it. Big Boss follows a parallel arc: as Naked Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3, he is an everyman character, not the suave secret agent the 1960s spy pastiche of that game's setting might suggest. Only after severe psychological and physical trauma does he become the legendary figure the series calls Big Boss.

• 4. Sequels, Prequels, and Pivots

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  After Kojima completed Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake in 1990, a separate team at Konami produced a sequel called Snake's Revenge for the Nintendo Entertainment System without his involvement. One of that game's designers met Kojima personally and asked him to create a "real Metal Gear sequel," which prompted Kojima to develop Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. That pattern of outside pressure spurring Kojima into action recurred throughout the franchise. Metal Gear Solid began development in 1994 and was planned at one point for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer before shifting to the PlayStation. Metal Gear Solid 3 was intended for the PlayStation 3 until the console's long development delay forced the team to build it for the PlayStation 2 instead. The portable Metal Gear Acid games, released for the PlayStation Portable, departed from the series entirely by using turn-based strategy mechanics built around collectible cards. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, released in 2013 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and in January 2014 on PC, replaced the main-series operative Solid Snake with Raiden, the character who had controversially displaced Snake as the playable protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2. For The Phantom Pain, Kiefer Sutherland replaced David Hayter as the English voice of Snake through voice acting and facial capture, a casting change that drew significant attention before the game's release. After Kojima's departure from Konami in 2015, Konami announced Metal Gear Survive at Gamescom 2016, the first Metal Gear game developed without him. It sold only a fraction of The Phantom Pain's total. On the 24th of May 2023, Sony's PlayStation Showcase event unveiled Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a remake of Snake Eater, signaling that the dormant series retained enough cultural weight to warrant a full modern revival.

• 5. Film, Page, and Stage

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  Raymond Benson, the author of nine James Bond novels, wrote the novelization of Metal Gear Solid, published in 2008, and followed it with a novelization of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty in 2009. Critical reaction to both books was generally positive. A Japanese-language novelization of Metal Gear Solid 4 by Project Itoh was published on the 12th of June 2008, and Viz Media released an English translation on the 19th of June 2012. A comic book adaptation of the original Metal Gear Solid, written by Kris Oprisko and illustrated by Ashley Wood, was published by IDW Publishing in 2004, and Wood returned to illustrate a sequel adaptation of Metal Gear Solid 2 as well. The full comic run eventually spanned 24 issues and was collected in a paperback called Metal Gear Solid Omnibus in June 2010. The effort to adapt the franchise for film has had a longer and more complicated history. In May 2006, Kojima announced early development of an English-language Metal Gear Solid film. The project landed at Sony Pictures Entertainment in February 2007, with producer Michael De Luca attached; Kojima expressed interest in casting Viggo Mortensen as Snake. By January 2010, De Luca revealed work had halted indefinitely, partly because Konami was concerned the entire franchise could be damaged if the film underperformed. The project was re-announced at the franchise's 25th anniversary on the 30th of August 2012, with Avi Arad's production company and Columbia Pictures attached. Jordan Vogt-Roberts was confirmed as director in 2015, and Oscar Isaac was cast as Snake in December 2020. In April 2026, Vogt-Roberts was replaced by directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein; that same month, Isaac stated he was no longer attached to the project.

• 6. Numbers and Legacy

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  Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty sold 7.03 million copies worldwide, the highest of any single installment, holding a score of 96 out of 100 on Metacritic as of the time of writing. Metal Gear Solid itself sold over 7 million copies and won the Excellence Award for Interactive Art at the Japan Media Arts Festival; IGN's editors ranked it the best PlayStation game ever in 2002. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was the second fastest-selling PlayStation 3 game in the United Kingdom after Grand Theft Auto IV. The Phantom Pain grossed more on its opening day than the combined box office receipts of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Jurassic World on their respective opening days. Beyond sales, the franchise accumulated 3 million strategy guides, 1.5 million action figures, and 200,000 comic books in ancillary merchandise by February 2007. Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 were exhibited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's "The Art of Video Games" show, which ran from the 16th of March to the 30th of September 2012. Filmmaker Jordan Peele cited the series, and Metal Gear Solid 2 in particular, as an inspiration. Neil Druckmann named Raiden's surprise introduction in Metal Gear Solid 2 as an influence on the narrative design of The Last of Us Part II in 2020. Clint Hocking's summary still stands as the bluntest measure of the franchise's reach: stealth games as a category exist because Metal Gear existed first.