Metal Gear On MSX

So! A week ago we did posts about Metal games, and I wrote a paragraph of Metal Gear. It was a very nice paragraph, but somewhat lacking for a series with as much gravity as Metal Gear... though Metal Gear had no gravity in 1988 here. Still, a Friend of the Faction asked nicely for it and I'm an indulger of wordful delights. We should start with the MSX, then. It was a home computer that existed in various places, according to good old Wikipedia. The early 80's and the home computer scene is lost on me, but they had their time and they thrived. These are the Before Times, the days before old smart Japanese men created their red and white box. We have a black keyboard. We have a machine that thrived in nonexistant lands as of 1983. Japan. Brazil. The Soviet Union. Did Comrade Communism, enemy of the Lady Capitalism, and his furry hat love the MSX? We can only speculate. Still, in this thriving land, things were born. The Bomberman, demolitions expert. Lolo, king of puzzles. And yes... Solid Snake, secret operative. He hit 1986's MSX2, a potent processor ready to power the walking nuclear tank known as Metal Gear. Snake himself, in the artwork, is a dead ringer for Kyle Reese. This mission is nothing less than a mission to prevent the Dance Apocalyptic. Lady Capitalism and Comrade Communism stare each other down, ancient gods among the stars. Metal Gear is not their story. Metal Gear is the story of the ants among giants, and one especially crafty ant sneaking into an enemy base to stop their plans. After sneaking very well, and defeating all sorts of dedicated terrorists, it turns out that your boss was behind it all. The Big Boss, the man who dares to attempt to ascend to become a god. Even his fortress is called Outer Heaven. The world can barely handle the death stares of Capitalism and Communism without collapsing into global thermonuclear war. Big Boss's ascension would surely bring this earth to ruin, and so Solid Snake stops him. Because it is his duty. I don't have too much else to say about the game. It was smart to make a game based on sneaking around and being covert in 1987, when everything was "blow up the bad guys". Hideo Kojima knows his military stuff, and he breaks the fourth wall a couple of times. Nothing as zany as his later works. I beat it, but that was a good few years ago.

Now, Metal Gear 2... well, this is a fun one. I have only played half an hour of it, but that's okay because I don't need to talk about the game itself that much. I will say that it has one of the best video game intros ever. Its plot also leads into the next Metal Gear game, Metal Gear Solid... which is well outside the scope of a Nintendo game blog but is also very good. No, Metal Gear 2 is important for other reasons. Well, to me anyway. It has a secret history within its secret history, separate of the Japanese public's enjoyment of it in 1990. Metal Gear 2, you see, invented Let's Play. Sort of. A nice fellow named Slowbeef played the game and thought its puzzles and internal logic were very silly. He took screenshots of the game and added running commentary on how silly the puzzles were. In the process, he accidentally created a prototype of "talking over a video game". The concept spread to Something Awful around 2006 or 2007, and Slowbeef did a few of the very first. The Immortal. Super Metroid. Raw and rough, but the foundation for insular goons to talk over and talk about video games. Then it hit Youtube, and... blew up. It was enough to get me to do it at the dawn of 2008. I was terrible at it, but I got better. Probably. Let's Play is a business now. People make money off of it. More money than I have, to yell about video games. All of this from a little MSX2 game. Not bad. Not bad.

I hope that's enough talk about Metal Gear for you, my lovely Friend of the Faction. I'm all tapped out. Maybe I'll go play them again. I mean, I do have that Subsistence disc... and the PS2 is hooked up. First, I should probably talk about Mickey Mouse.