Welcome to the 67th issue of the GBAtemp Recommends Revival Project! This project is a weekly feature where we share our favourite games and applications with you. The titles we recommend may be "old school" games, a piece of Homebrew, a ROM hack, sleeper hits, an application, etc, but one thing's for certain, we think they are fantastic and deserve your attention!This is the second part of a special four week look at excellent games of the Gameboy/Gameboy Colour and from one solid gold GB classic to another solid gold classic, this time for the Gameboy Colour...
Metal Gear Solid
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For me this is the best Metal Gear game out there...ok I'm not a huge fan of the series (first one was good, not played MGS2 and I could not stand the rest) but that doesn't make this any less of a great game.
Originally called Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel, this takes the essence of the Solid series of the games (back then there was only two) and squashes it down onto the GBC. The first Metal Gear game was originally meant to be a military shooter but limitations of the MSX meant that rather than have a balls out shooting experience, the game became more of a "sneak-me-do". The GBC game in a way returns to it's MSX roots (lets forget about the poor NES titles) but also takes some of the gameplay advancements of the Solid games only without the tedious cinematic scenes. However rather than follow continuity of the series, this acts as a "alternate" sequel of the very first Metal Gear game.
You play Solid Snake who was once a great hero but now retired in Alaska, he is suddenly brought out of retirement by his former colleague Roy Campbell to stop a stolen Metal Gear prototype called GANDER which is going to be used to help win a civil war in Central Africa by a separatist guerilla group known as the Gindra Liberation Front. As Snake you must infiltrate their base Galuade which is actually a fortress formerly known as Outer Heaven which he actually already infiltrated in the first game.
Like with the MSX games, this returns to the top down view that the series began with and it works extremely well on the GBC. Graphically Konami have done a great job and squashing down the art, theme and tone of the Solid series and they've done very well with the limitations of the GBC. The sound could be better, tunes are very repetitive but the sound effects do their job.
Gameplay has been left in tact, you do your usually sneaking around, grabbing guards when they are unaware to get to your goal. In a way it feels like it's taken the best parts of the PSX title and fit them into this game. The content is very rich, it's broken down into 13 stages in all and they are definitely not light in terms of content. At the end of each stage you are ranked according to how well you played and completing the game opens up a special mode where you can replay those stages again so you can go through some additional objectives. This makes playing the game for a second time a lot more worthwhile. As well as the main game you also get 180 VR missions (which I enjoyed the most in MGS) and these have actually introduced multi-player for the first time in a Metal Gear game in form of a two player battle mode.
Overall this is an extremely faithful game of Metal Gear Solid, it may look like something from the 80's but it retains the best parts of the gameplay of the first title and is an essential title to play from the amazing GBC catalogue. For whatever reasons this was the last none remake/port of a MG game for a Nintendo system, such a shame as a GBA game would have been fantastic and I could easily see some cool features with the touch-screen on the DS...but you know, Kojima would have had to put more game in there rather than pretend to be a movie director with his bloated cutscenes.
This game was actually directed by Shinta Nojiri who usually does scripting for the games as well as directing the two Ac!d titles on PSP. He headed the development team TOSE who have been in game development for over 30 years and were behind the likes of DQM Caravan Heart, Resident Evil: Revelations, Legendary Starfy, Super Princess Peach, Kid Icarus GB, DQH: Rocket Slime and so much more.
Genre: Stealth/ActionRelease Year: 2000
Developer: TOSE
Published by: Nintendo
Directed By: Shinta Nojiri
Released For: Gameboy Colour
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