I have an excellent memory for when and where I played specific games. When thinking about Metal Gear Solid, I remember it like it was yesterday. Mike’s basement. January 1, 1999. I was hanging out with my friend Mike down in his basement, pizza boxes and all. The smell of old pizza boxes mixed with that distinctive basement stench that no amount of air freshener could hide. He had picked up this new game that everyone was raving about called Metal Gear Solid. He explained to me that it was “cinematic gaming” — a term I scoffed at at the time. PlayStation games weren’t cinematic. How could they be?
Oh man was I wrong.
Mike and I popped the Metal Gear Solid CD into the PlayStation around 8 pm that Friday. We planned on fooling around with it for a couple hours before moving onto something familiar. Heck most gamers did that back then — try the new game for awhile, get frustrated, go back to your Street Fighters and Mega Mans. But we booted up that game and didn’t stop playing until the sun came up. We traded off on who would play and ended up whispering arguments at each other about which way to go like we were actually planning an infiltration mission. When Mike’s mom asked if we wanted breakfast, we had both lived through an interactive spy epic and couldn’t stop talking about it.
Even that opening cutscene should’ve clued me in that this wasn’t going to be the same types of games I was used to playing. Swimming in toward Shadow Moses Island. The camera zooming out to reveal this massive offshore installation… I’d never seen a video game open with such panache. Sure other games had credits, but they typically dumped you right into level one with maybe a couple pages of text as explanation if you were lucky. This was cinema, albeit cinema I would eventually be controlling the main character of. When Snake popped that diving mask off for the first time and we saw his face, it was intentional movie direction creating a reveal about this character that felt more at home in a summer blockbuster than on my friend’s rented television in suburbia, Minnesota.
The first thing that really sold me, though – Kojima really sold me on Metal Gear Solid – was the stealth gameplay. It wasn’t just revolutionary in terms of game design, but the stealth gameplay was actually FUN to use in ways that forever changed my perception of difficulty in games. That radar that showed how far away you could see enemies… brilliant. Simple enough to understand the moment you turned it on, but hard enough to master that you needed to develop a real skill with it. But when you went first person to scout out your surroundings, the radar disappeared. So you were constantly making decisions about whether you wanted to visually scout out an area, or keep track of enemy positions by ear. It created such wonderful tension where I found myself literally holding my breath during moments of anxiety.
Before playing Metal Gear Solid, I’d experienced stealth gameplay in other games, but it was always these brief sections you had to endure to get back to the “real” game. Guns blasting, explosions, run-and-gun action. Metal Gear Solid made stealth THE action. Sneaking past guards turned into this intricate puzzle of timing, patience, and spatial awareness that valued quick-wittedness over twitch reflexes. The first time I made it through an entire section of the game without being detected, I felt like I had accomplished something special. Rather than simply memorizing patterns and guessing at button presses, I was carefully examining my environment and manipulating it to create a new path.
Shadow Moses Island itself felt alive, which is something that sounds trivial now but was absolutely not common back then. Levels in games at the time were usually just themed chunks of content – the ice stage, the fire stage, the underwater stage. Shadow Moses Island was a believable military complex where one area logically transitioned to the next. The helipad lead to the tank garage, which lead to the weapons storage, which opened up to the canyon… Even when I was backtracking through areas of the game (LOTS OF BACKTRACKING in Metal Gear Solid) it never felt like busywork because I was traveling through an actual place I had explored, rather than playing through levels in reverse.
Then I had my first encounter with a boss. Going toe-to-toe with Revolver Ocelot after tiptoeing past guards and learning the basics of sneaking around the complex was a rude awakening. Here I was, playing this “stealth” game and suddenly I find myself in this insane-gunfight with an eighties cowboy-obsessed lunatic shooting rounds that bounced off the walls. I don’t know why I expected Metal Gear Solid to maintain any sort of consistent tone, but I was awestruck by how the game challenged my expectations at every turn. It wasn’t a stealth game or an action game — it could be both depending on what the story called for and what would provide a unique challenge to the player.
Speaking of story, David Hayter’s performance as Snake cannot be understated. Video game voice acting was atrocious in the late 90s. Lines were delivered robotic, not timed properly with the animation, and sounded like actors reading from a script they were given 5 minutes prior. David Hayter lent Snake a gravitas and rugged sincerity that made me actually listen to every word coming out of his mouth. I found myself enjoying our Codec conversations, and that should not have been the case. Those were supposed to be the downtime of the game where they fed you all the important story information. With Metal Gear Solid, listening to the Codec conversations felt like being briefed by a real life operative in the field.
And did I mention those Codec conversations happened in REAL TIME?!? Not only did it force me to make quick decisions on where to go next, but you could literally fail to hear important information because you were getting tortured. It was one of the first times a game blurred the lines between story and gameplay that kept me constantly engaged. I remember one time hiding behind a crate during a conversation with Naomi only to peek out and see a guard patrol passing by. I ducked back behind cover, paused the conversation, snuck by the guards, caught up to my teammate, and resumed our conversation. It felt like I was right there coordinating an operation with my team… not just listening to NPCs dump exposition in my ear.
They broke the fourth wall numerous times before I even reached FOXLABS. When the game mentioned Meryl was “on the back of the CD case”, we frantically dumped the disc out and studied the jewel case for anything unusual (hint: it was the in-game box you saw during the game’s beginning cutscene). We felt like kids unraveling a mystery by simply listening to the game point out things most players wouldn’t think to look at.
But NOTHING — absolutely NOTHING — could have prepared me for meeting Psycho Mantis. The second that ninja-story guy told me Mantis could “read my mind” I looked over at Mike and we were BOTH shook. The way he went on to tell us he played Jimi Hendrix AND Guns N’ Roses should have tipped me off that this game would take me completely by surprise. Listening to that guy talk about how he knew we played Resident Evil AND Castevania: Symphony of the Night (which was right on Mike’s game shelf) was the first time I actually thought Metal Gear Solid was cheating. THEN he made the controller buzz without touching it. WE GOT UP AND STARTED RUNNING AROUND THE ROOM LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE because for the first time in my life, a video game was bending reality.
Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But when I literally reached into my pocket and pulled out another controller to plug into Port Two of the PlayStation because “that stupid Ninja CAN’T read two controllers!” — my mind was officially blown. We had both purchased PlayStation controllers thinking we were going to play regular-ass video games. Kojima made us question reality.
I’ll never know another moment like that again. Why? Because it literally made us question reality. The solutions to puzzles were not found within the game world or hidden behind obscure button combinations — it had us physically interacting with the console itself. Throw the controller in Port Two and suddenly an impossible boss was made manageable. Metal Gear Solid wasn’t just breaking the fourth wall, it was dismantling it piece by piece.
As I continued to play through the story, it only got weirder. Layers were constantly being peeled back, making me question everything I thought I knew about the mission. Discovering FOXDIE, that Snake had unknowingly been harboring a targeted virus the entire time we were on Shadow Moses, changed the context for everything leading up to that moment. All the characters I met along the way and all my objectives in completing those missions were now part of this giant web of deception. I was being deceived.
Every boss felt like a different game. Snake vs Sniper Wolf was a thrilling game of cat and mouse played out on this snow-covered field that gave both the hunter and prey an odd respect for one another. Your firefight with Vulcan Raven taught you how to use your environment to your advantage. Liquid’s appearances throughout the game built an intense rivalry that felt earned rather than forced by the narrative.
And we can’t forget about the torture part. I doubt any game has had me sweat through my palms more than those torture scenes. You were given buttons to press in order to survive torture, but there was no saving before this segment so if you messed up you literally started over. Not only was your mental strength being tested, but YOUR PERFORMANCE in these segments determined if Meryl lived or died later in the game. Connecting your ability to withstand mental torture WITH the narrative itself was disturbing on a level most video games didn’t dare to touch.
Sure, the game was impressive from a technical standpoint as well. I didn’t realise it at the time, but those sweeping camera angles as you walked down hallways were disguised loading screens that Kojima fashioned into a dynamic experience rather than staring at a “Loading…” animation. The amount of realism they added to the game world made Shadow Moses Island feel lived in. Guards noticing footprints in the snow, Snake becoming cold if he remained outside for too long, Snake physically aging during long Codec calls. Everything about that game worked together to create an all-encompassing narrative.
I’ve probably replayed Metal Gear Solid 6 or 7 times since that first. Purchased it when the Gamecube version came out. Bought it again for the PS2. Played through it when it released on PSP. And each time I play it, I discover something I didn’t pay attention to during a previous playthrough. Little hidden details about characters and story that all connect you deeper into Metal Gear Solid’s twisted web. It’s like re-watching your favorite movie and noticing little details in the background you didn’t pick up on before, but because you’re interacting with the game world the discovery feels much more rewarding than passively watching a film.
Who knows how many games Metal Gear Solid has influenced? It’s impossible to track. Of course other stealth games owe it a massive debt, but Metal Gear Solid’s impact stretches far beyond that genre. Metal Gear Solid showed developers that games could have cinematic flourish, tell gripping stories, and could challenge your preconceived notions of what a video game should be. You can trace straight lines from Metal Gear Solid to games like BioShock, The Last of Us, and even current day games like Death Stranding. Metal Gear Solid pioneered video game auteurs. Game developers could have styles, personalities, and craft videos games as art rather than products.
Sure, it doesn’t hold up totally perfect. The fixed cameras are downright annoying now and there are some moments in the story that are pretty laughable by today’s standards. Characters will literally sit and have life or death conversations about philosophy while dying from gunshot wounds. The story leans heavily on cop-outs and shocking familial twists to create soap-opera level drama.
But that brilliance of the game still shines through. The game trusted me. It trusted me to handle gameplay that was difficult, but fair. Story elements that were layered deep and had me questioning my entire playthrough. It found the perfect harmony between letting you play how you wanted, while also guiding you down a specific narrative path. Everything about that game, down to the detail that made Shadow Moses Island feel like an actual place I was sneaking around rather than Mario traversing through levels, worked together to create something magical. And most important of all, Metal Gear Solid taught me that video games were capable of telling stories that could never be told anywhere else.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to experience Metal Gear Solid for the first time now. Sure the graphics look goofy and the controls are a bit antiquated, but if I closed my eyes I could STILL play that game for the first time. That’s the mark of a true classic. Metal Gear Solid is regularly on lists of greatest games of all time and people claim it’s because of nostalgia. BS. We weren’t waxing poetic about videogame classics — we were experiencing gaming evolving right before our eyes.
That weekend changed the way I looked at games. I walked into Mike’s basement thinking I was ready for a decent action game with some nifty cutscenes. I walked out having had my mind completely blown by a game that challenged me in ways I didn’t think were possible. Hideo Kojima didn’t just make a great game — he redefined what games could be.
Elena is a librarian in Dublin with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure European computer games that most English-language gaming sites completely ignore. She champions forgotten systems—the Commodore 16, the Spectrum 128K, the Atari ST’s untapped potential—with infectious enthusiasm and genuine expertise. Her writing documents regional exclusives and hidden gems that barely made it to print before the companies folded, preserving gaming history that would otherwise disappear entirely. She approaches retro gaming as cultural preservation, not mere nostalgia.
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