Metal Gear the story so far…

As promised I will provide the means to brush up on your Metal Gear knowledge on the internet and in any other ways I can think of. First off all, those who are not aware of this yet: Konami has released a standalone encyclopedia on the PSN store that includes all the information on the past titles and everything on the newest game. Still I would like to give you some links and possibilities to revisit the waste story of Solid Snake’s past. I will post them in chronological order (story wise).

Metal Gear Solid 3 – Snake Eater:

The limited edition of the Subsistence release of the game included a third DVD that had the cut scenes, some codec messages and the boss fights cut into a 3 hour movie.

The youtube user alexfung23 has added an extremely large collection of Metal Gear Walkthrough videos that include the whole game and are interesting if you want to see EVERYTHING that happened to Naked Snake. I created a playlist of MGS3: here.

Metal Gear Solid – Portable Ops:

There is sadly no video that I know of on the internet and no comic/novel depicting the events of this game.

Metal Gear 1+2 (MSX):

Here is another playlist created with the videos of alexfung23.

Metal Gear Solid:

Now this is the title you will probably find most ways to recap. First of all you can view the cutscenes and the codec messages when you have finished the remake Twin Snakes. Then there is the possibility to relive the events of Shadow Moses through the comic by Ashley Wood and Kris Oprisko, which was such a success that it was even released in a digital version for the PSP called Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel. This digital comic includes music and sound effects. It will be released with voiceovers on DVD once the second part including the digital comic of Sons of Liberty will hit the shelves.

The most recent addition to the Metal Gear Solid franchise is a novelization of the game by Raymond Benson.

And for all of you who still have not enough here is the playlist of Phoenix9215987’s videos.

Metal Gear Solid 2 – Sons of Liberty

MGS2 was also treated to a comic book again with the artwork of Ashley Wood and story adaptation by Alex Garner. The digital version has not yet been released but will probably include complete voiceovers by the cast of the game series.

Here is the final video playlist of alexfung23.

This is it. Several hours, if not days, worth of material for all of you who cannot get enough of the world that Hideo Kojima created over 20 years ago. I’m tempted to write a review on the newest title, but I’d also like to shift my attention to something else. So who knows…

Solid GOLD!

It’s the year 1998 and the Sony Playstation has been around for a few years. With the new CD-Rom support, game developers got the opportunity to vastly increase the multimedia elements of their games and amongst them was also Hideo Kojima who had heard a lot of good things about Sony’s first console. It is not surprising that he decided to continue his most popular franchise on the new console, enriching the game world with a new adventure of Solid Snake dubbed Metal Gear Solid. On September 3, 1998 Kojima’s newest masterpiece finally hit the shelves and became an instant hit selling over 6 million copies worldwide.

The story continues Snake’s adventures several years after the incidents at Outer Heaven. Once again the soldier is recruited by his former chief Roy Campbell, to infiltrate a facility on Shadow Moses Island that has fallen into the hands of terrorists. This time the villains are none other than members of Foxhound, the special unit that Snake was a member of himself when he was still in active duty. He has to rescue several hostages, amongst them Meryl the niece of Campbell, and stop the terrorists from launching a nuclear strike against the US. Everything works according to plan until one of the hostages dies of a heart attack. As Snake proceeds to the ArmsTech president Kenneth Baker he faces Revolver Ocelot in a challenging gunfight. However their duel is cut short when a ninja in a strange exoskeleton appears out of nowhere and cuts off Ocelot’s hand. Snake’s opponent runs for cover and the ninja also disappears using high-tech stealth camouflage. After telling Snake that the facility is only a cover for a new Metal Gear, Baker also dies of sudden heart failure.

On his search for a way to disable the powerful walking weapon Snake runs into Hal “Otacon” Emmerich, the scientist behind the new Metal Gear called Rex. Once again the ninja makes an appearance and divulges that he is in fact Gray Fox, who was supposed dead after the Zanzibarland incident. Snake defeats him in an honorable fistfight and makes his way to the holding facility of Metal Gear. On his way he defeats most of the other members of Foxhound until he finally faces of with their leader, Liquid Snake. Liquid reveals that he is in fact Snake’s twin brother and that they are both the result of a cloning project in which a group of scientists tried to replicate the legendary soldier Big Boss. He jumps into the cockpit of Rex and tries to kill his brother, only to have his precious weapon sabotaged by Gray Fox. Fox disables the tank’s radar but gets crushed in the ensuing battle. After destroying Rex Snake and Liquid have a face-off on top of the burning carcass of the tank and ultimately Snake emerges victorious. He frees Meryl and tries to leave the facility but moments before they could escape Liquid reappears and just as he tries to kill them, he falls to his knees and dies of a heart attack. It turns out that Snake is carrying a virus that was programmed to eliminate the terrorists and everybody who knew too much about the Metal Gear project. Ultimately the virus should also kill Snake, but the programming was changed last minute.

Metal Gear Solid had such a huge success that it was remade for the Gamecube in 2004. The game was called Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes and retold the events of Shadow Moses with updated graphics and more impressive cut scenes.

I have left out several characters and key plot parts about this recap, since I don’t want to spoil too much of the games for you. I have also decided to stop my recap session here, since Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is way too vast to summarize in such a short blog entry. However I will post several links, where you can brush up on your Metal Gear history in my next post, so keep your eyes open.

Last time I posted the first of GameTrailers.com’s recaps. The others, can be found here: MGS recap

Metal Gear: a retrospective

Most of you who are into games will probably have heard, or even anticipated the release of the latest Metal Gear Solid games. “Guns of the Patriots” is in fact the last game that will be spearheaded by Hideo Kojima himself, but in an interview he said he would be looking forward to a new generation of Metal Gear games by younger developers. Over 20 years ago Kojima pitched his idea of a sneaking based game to Konami and after some initial doubt the development firm agreed to producing the game, without knowing it would turn into one of the most important gaming franchises of our time. In Metal Gear initially released on the MSX2 in 1987, you control a special agent with the codename “Solid Snake” on a mission to infiltrate Outer Heaven, a fortified military state supposedly having a WMD. On this mission he is also supposed to rescue another agent (Gray Fox) that is held captive inside the base. It turns out that the WMD is in fact a bipedal walking tank called Metal Gear and the legendary mercenary leading the base is none other than Snake’s mentor Big Boss.

The game had such a success that a few years later Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was released (sadly only in Japan). Once again Snake has to infiltrate a base, but this time in the mercenary nation Zanzibarland. He is supposed to rescue a scientist who has developed a new way to refine petroleum in a very effective and cheap way. However during his mission he finds out that once again the real threat is a Metal Gear tank. He has a run-in with Gray Fox who has defected to Zanzibarland and also Big Boss survived the destruction of Outer Heaven to take revenge on Snake.

Gametrailers have created a recap anthology of the Metal Gear games which I will include with each small article on this page. Next up will be a revision of Snake’s first adventure on the Playstation called Metal Gear Solid.

Back in time… continued

Last time I talked about the two most popular TV shows from my childhood, but there were several others that I really enjoyed at the time and still love today.

One of those has to my delight been recently released on DVD. I’m talking about the Misfits of Science, a show revolving around a group of people that could be labeled as superheroes. The team had 4 members: Dr. Billy Hayes (Dean Paul Martin) is the leader and the only one who has no special powers. He was a scientist at the Humanidyne Institute and worked together with Dr. Elvin “El” Lincoln (Kevin Peter Hall), who gave himself the ability to shrink to doll size. They are joined by Johnny Bukowski, a.k.a. Johnny B (Mark Thomas Miller) a Rock n Roll musician who after an accident gained the abilities to shoot lighting from his hands and run extremely fast as long as he is “charged up”. The final member is Gloria Dinallo (Courteney Cox) a teenage girl with telekinetic abilities. Together they help people in need and study supernatural phenomena. The show has a decent mix of action and comedy and became quite popular in Germany. Sadly it never took off in the US and we were left with only 16 episodes.

Another short-lived show from the 80s was Street Hawk, which has sadly not yet been (and probably never will be) released on DVD. Street Hawk was about the police officer Jesse Mach secretly picked to test a new weapon against crime – a high-tech motorbike capable of speeds of over 300mph and equipped with a laser. Jesse was joined by Norman Tuttle, the technical genius behind the Street Hawk project, who stayed in touch with Jesse per computer and lend him remote assistance in his crime fighting. The show had a similar charm as Knight Rider. Although there are only 13 episodes the show still has a huge fan base.

“This is Jesse Mach, an ex-motorcycle cop, injured in the line of duty. Now a police troubleshooter, he’s been recruited for a top secret government mission to ride Street Hawk. An all terrain attack motorcycle, designed as a fighter of urban crime, capable of incredible speeds up to 300 miles per hour and immense fire power. Only one man, federal agent Norman Tuttle knows Jesse Mach’s true identity. The Man… The Machine… Street Hawk.”

Gotta get back in time

I don’t know about you, but for me the shows I watched in my childhood are still among my favorites. Sure some of them don’t stand up to the memories I have about them, but they just have a certain charm that I can’t escape. Some of them are shows that most of you probably know but some were only around for a single season and still managed to get a place in my all time favorite collection.

The first an probably the most famous is the 1982 series Knight Rider. The police officer Michael Long is critically wounded by a gunshot wound to the face while investigating a criminal organization. After extensive surgery he wakes up in the hospital with a reconstructed face, not recognizing himself. He is approached by a special foundation, the Knight Industries under the supervision of Wilton Knight, to help them infiltrate the crime syndicate that wounded him in the first place. They provide him with a special car the Knight Industries Two Thousand (K.I.T.T.), fitted with bullet proof alloy and artificial intelligence, to help him with his crime fighting work. After Wilton Knight’s death, Michael adopts his last name and becomes part of the Knight foundation. Together with his liaison Devon Miles and the technician Bonny Barstow he fights for good and for the protection of the innocent. The show ran for 4 seasons with a total of 90 episodes and established David Hasselhoff’s career. NBC has recently filmed a remake pilot of Knight Rider and the show that has been picked up for the upcoming fall schedule.

“Knight Rider, a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.”

I’m sure you remember these 4 maniacs all too well: The A-team. Four Vietnam vets, found guilty of a crime they didn’t commit, establish themselves as soldiers of fortune known as the A-team. They are for hire and try to help the helpless anyway they can. Col. John “Hannibal” Smith was the leader of the group, the brain of the organization and an expert at disguise. Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck was the ladies man and the con artist, while Sgt. Bosco “B.A.” Baracus was the muscle and a genius mechanic. The final member of the team was Capt. H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock, the pilot and loony of the group; before they could accept a job they usually had to break him out of the mental hospital. The team was constantly on the run, pursued first by Col. Lynch and later by Col. Decker. Apparently the movie rights to the film have been bought and there is a new version of the A-team planned for the big screen in 2009.

“If you have a problem, if no-one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire, the A-Team.”

Over the next few days I will add several posts on this topic so stay tuned if you want to go back in time with me.