Konami Computer Entertainment Japan

How Metal Gear Solid Integral Upgraded Solid Snake’s Simulation

Lessons Learned

Metal Gear Solid’s post credit scene reveals that the nuclear-equipped Metal Gear Rex’s test data survived Solid Snake’s missiles, its log an invaluable learning experience for the developers. Similarly, snaking through the occupied Shadow Moses military base where Rex was developed required a lot of in-the-field training and dozens of hours, rations, and Game Overs, stats the game totals onscreen at its end. Of course, this is all created by a third set of data, the combined mechanics, systems, art, scripts, and modes that are the game. If the elements in Hideo Kojima’s classic thriller supports the theme of biological evolution, the very existence of its 1999 special edition, Metal Gear Solid Integral, tells us much about the new worlds that technological evolution is building for us, even on societal levels, as it upgrades its digital bootcamp to MGS version 1.2.

Metal Gear Solid 2 and Mass Producing Solid Snake

Updated 8/18/23 to analyze the Solid Snake Simulation’s larger applications.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is celebrated for how it critiques social engineering, Hideo Kojima having crafted a theme that shows how controls built into the social fabric of a culture can shape an individual’s thoughts, beliefs, and actions. The story and game progression do an outstanding job subtly running players through a “real-world” simulation of the events of MGS1’s Shadow Moses incident as the rookie Raiden. It forced them to question whether their actions were truly their own or if they had been molded into a clone of Shadow Moses’ legendary hero Solid Snake, a test for the Solid Snake Simulation.

Policenauts’ Mise-En-Scene

Policenauts was the perfect game to introduce the world to Hideo Kojima’s visual style and keen eye for editing a trailer. Unlike other games at the time, every screenshot from the 1994 ‘Interactive Movie’ could have been ripped from an anime, this one the tale of a man lost in space for the first twenty five years of humanity’s move into off-world colonies. It’s Lethal Weapon in the Gundam timeline with an Aliens setup, starring a blue-haired Mel Gibson. The trailer claims Policenauts is ‘The Next Generation of Snatcher’.

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Metal Gear Solid Analysis: The Identity Trilogy Part 2: Sons of Liberty

Sons of Liberty

The second installment in the Metal Gear Solid saga is about the dissemination of information, how important ideas are to the beliefs of an individual, and how they get passed within a society.

For those who never played The Twin Snakes, its story is recounted on disc as the fictional novel ‘In The Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth’ written by that games weapons specialist, Nastasha Romanenko. The book fulfills several important roles all at once: it provides players of the first game with new story bits that happened on the opposite end of the Codec that Snake wasn’t privy to and exists in the Metal Gear universe as the tell-all that made Solid Snake and his crop of dark mulleted hair a hero the world over for preventing nuclear war.

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Metal Gear Solid Analysis: The Identity Trilogy Part 1: The Twin Snakes

MEME, GENE, SCENE

As an aesthetic work, the Metal Gear Solid saga examines what it means to be human. The spine of the series revolves around the full development of an individual’s identity through the foundations of their biological makeup, the shaping of culture and art upon them, and the importance of the experiences that individual collects throughout their life. But just as important are how those facets forms an individual’s beliefs and directs policies within their country and relative to countries across the globe.

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