Directed, designed, and written by Hideo Kojima
As mentioned at the end of the Metal Gear review, the Metal Gear sequel situation was a bit confused. As the West only got to experience a heavily butchered NES port of Metal Gear, they also got their own NES sequel, Snake’s Revenge. Both of these games were created without Kojima’s input, so his work wasn’t truly introduced to Western audiences until Metal Gear Solid in 1998. Kojima was working on a visual novel called Snatcher. He heard about Snake’s Revenge from a coworker who was working on it, and who encouraged Kojima to create his own sequel — and so Kojima began working on Solid Snake for the MSX (later retitled Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake by Konami’s marketing department).
Metal Gear 2 is very similar to its predecessor, but with everything taken up several notches. The game takes place in a version of 1999 where the cold war is still ongoing and the global oil supply is about to run out. A Czech biologist named Dr. Marv created a species of algae he calls OILIX to solve this problem, capable of producing their own petroleum. Of course, this is a hot commodity, so he is taken hostage by Zanzibar Land — a place which evidently has nothing to do with the actual Zanzibar and instead is an ex-Soviet state in central Asia that had been established two years earlier. Whatever. In any case, they pillaged old nuclear stockpiles meant for dismantling, and planned to use the combination of the nukes and Dr. Marv to control the world’s oil supply by holding everyone hostage.
Solid Snake is called out of retirement to infiltrate Zanzibar Land, rescue Dr. Marv, and foil their evil plan. This naturally happens on Christmas Eve in what is probably a tribute to Die Hard — Kojima has always loved his movie references. The game is much heavier on codec calls than its predecessor, getting much closer to the level of dialogue you’d expect from a Metal Gear title. It also introduces the sort of ensemble cast you’d expect, including two characters that will play heavily into future titles — Snake’s commanding officer, Colonel Roy Campbell, and his drill instructor, Master Miller. Several characters also reappear from the previous game, including Dr. Madnar, Gray Fox, and, in a move that won’t be explained for another 25 years — Big Boss? But wasn’t he dead?
Surprise! According to Dr. Madnar, who has once again been captured and forced to build a Metal Gear, this time for Zanzibar Land, Big Boss is somehow still alive and is behind the whole scheme, and he’s now using child soldiers. And so a series formula is established — Snake must infiltrate the terrorist compound, rescue one or multiple people, stop the Metal Gear, and end the terrorist plot by Big Boss (or one of his clones), all while being helped by a fun cast of characters via endless Codec calls, who you can now call for hints when you get lost. The story is much more fleshed out than in the first game, featuring numerous twists. There’s a love interest in Czech intelligence agent Gustava Heffner, establishing another plot element that gets carried over to later MGS games — Snake is always going to get entangled with a fellow soldier or intelligence agent, if a romantic subplot is present.
And, of course, there is a boss crew — and once again, they’re hilarious. The highlight is Running Man (undoubtedly another movie reference), a ‘former olympic runner turned terrorist’, who just runs around the map in circles, too fast for you to shoot — you have to put mines in his path to stop him. There’s also a ninja, and a boss which uses a total stealth suit — elements that are later combined into the cyborg ninja character in MGS. Another boss, Jungle Evil, hides in tall grass, perhaps laying the groundwork for the final fight in MGS3. And, of course, you have to singlehandedly fight the Hind D helicopter once again, and undergo a timed escape sequence after several final boss fights.
The gameplay is also taken to a whole new level. Enemies no longer have to be directly staring at you to detect you — they have a wider cone of vision, and can now follow you across screens, turn their heads, and hear you. There are now different types of floors that make different sounds, and some will cause guards to come investigate if you’re not careful, so kneeling and crawling have also been introduced. You’re no longer just forced to fight if you alert an enemy — the alerts are on a timer, as in future games allowing you to hide and wait it out, and you’re given radar to help you in that endeavor, as well as a suppressor for your weapons. This all makes it feel much more like a proper stealth game than the first title, which felt more like a puzzle.
Naturally, there is a whole array of new gear to help you with that. You can send a robotic mouse out to distract your enemies or find traps. You can set down a camouflage mat which will mimic the texture of the floor, allowing you to crawl under it and hide. You can improvise a flamethrower using a lighter and spray. You can play a cassette tape with Zanzibar Land’s national anthem to distract guards, who will automatically salute in response (and the tape even gets worn out with overuse). The cardboard box has returned, but now you can use a bucket for the same purpose. Equipping cigarettes will slowly drain your health, but you may find a use for them. As in the first game, there’s a simple leveling system where your health and inventory space increase after each boss.
I enjoyed the music in the first title, but it’s even better in this game — the music and art design combine to make it feel surprisingly moody at times, in a retro way. There’s even some fun odd time stuff in the soundtrack. The level design is more varied than in the first title, and like the later MGS games, the gameplay is kept very dynamic, throwing new ideas at you all the time. The MGS mechanic of a key that transforms into a different key based on temperature conditions started in this game. You’ll have to find ways to lure a carrier pigeon, sneak into a ladies restroom, fly a hang glider, figure out codes from someone tapping on the wall, stop a snake from eating all of your rations, and trick a guard using an owl.
Not all of it has aged well — at one point, you have to navigate your way through a swamp, which swallows you up if you don’t stay on exactly the right invisible path. Unfortunately, this is determined by trial and error. As with the first game, there is plenty of backtracking, which unfortunately includes said swamp — you have to traverse it numerous times. I once again abused the emulator’s save state to make my way through moments like these — they’re simply too frustrating otherwise.
This game is simply bursting with ideas — ideas which still felt radical and exciting when many of them appeared in the West for the first time 8 years later in Metal Gear Solid. It feels like Kojima really found his voice here, so to speak — he may have inherited the first title in the series, he really made the sequel his own. The result is a game that has stood the test of time remarkably well — it’s still incredibly fun to play, despite some frustrating sequences, and features a really properly fleshed out story.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was initially released only in Japan. The MSX never took off in the West, so Konami never bothered to create an English localization of this game. There was already an NES sequel, so I guess a port didn’t seem necessary to them, either. Unofficial fan translations appeared on Western markets around 1996–7, but the game didn’t officially make its way to the west until it appeared in the Subsistence reissue of Metal Gear Solid 3 with many quality-of-life updates in 2006, 16 years after its original release. The first game has been available on PC through GOG for a long time, but MG2 is about to appear on PC for the first time ever as part of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection, Vol. 1.
