Metal Gear is one of the most legendary titles in gaming history and was arguably the best action-adventure stealth video games to have emerged on the 80’s. Along with the original Contra game which initially appeared on the NES in ’87 Metal Gear was also one of the biggest titles to have emerged from that particular year as well. While the run n gun, platform and beat em up genres were popular from the mid 80’s up until the early 90’s; Metal Gear was a title that felt different from what NES players were used to seeing during the 8-bit era. Despite, the fact that Sega had released their 16-bit Mega Drive console in ’87 there hardly any high profile titles on that console that resembled the likes of Metal Gear. Before it was ported to the NES console in December 1987 it was initially released for the MSX2 earlier that year on July 13th. The cool thing about Metal Gear from ’87 was the fact that it was more heavily strategy driven than your average 8-bit video game from the 80’s. Also, Konami’s ability to design a fluid 2D stealth title with gaming hardware that was only capable of 8-bit processing was very impressive.
Metal Gear ’87 was the game where players saw the debut of Solid Snake who ended becoming a recurring main protagonist within the series; excluding Metal Gear Solid III from ’04 up until Metal Gear Solid IV which came out in 2008. The main objective of Solid Snake is to destroy a walking tank carrying nuclear missiles by the name of “Metal Gear” in order to prevent the world’s destruction. Players start the game off unarmed and have the ability to gather weapons, ammunition and other supplies throughout the game for defense against enemies. While players have an onslaught of adversaries to deal with they also have three different buildings within the enemy’s base they must infiltrate as well. In order for players to get around different buildings within the enemy’s base players had to collect key cards while rescuing various hostages throughout the game. The more hostages players rescued the more their rank increased and vice-versa if they are killed during missions. The trans receiver feature was a great touch to Metal Gear and would eventually become iconic as it relates to the series itself. Even though, Metal Gear was probably more popular on MSX2 the game still managed to reach over one million copies in sales for the NES. Metal Gear is considered to be legendary mainly because its often credited for popularizing the stealth genre; which eventually more mainstream within the 10’s decade.
Gaming Hearts Collection 