Nicolas Courcier - Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojimas Magnum Opus

Metal Gear Solid. Hideo Kojimas Magnum Opus
by Denis Brusseaux, Nicolas Courciere and Mehdi El Kanafi
is published by Third ditions
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Editors: Nicolas Courcier and Mehdi El Kanafi
Authors: Denis Brusseaux, Nicolas Courcier and Mehdi El Kanafi
Chapter VIII: Damien Mecheri
Proofreading and layout: Thomas Savary
Covers: Nikita Kaun (classic) and Johann Papayou Biais (First Print)
Cover layout: Frdric Tom
Translated from French by: Jason Mulvaney (ITC Traductions)

This resource guide has been produced by Third ditions as an homage to the great video game series Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid.

Its authors retrace the history to the video game series of Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid in this unique compendium, which reveals the inspiration, background and content of the games through reflections and original analyses.

Metal Gear Solid is a registered trademark of Konami Digital Entertainment. All rights reserved. The cover design is inspired by the artwork of Yoji Shinkawa, the character designer of Metal Gear Solid V: The Panthom Pain.

English edition, copyright 2017, Third ditions. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 979-10-94723-61-6

The Metal Gear saga can be easily summarized. Each game describes the adventures of a spy on a mission to neutralize a nuclear threat, which comes in the form of a Metal Gear, a bipedal tank equipped with nuclear weapons that can reach any location in the world. An ordinary enough synopsis, yet behind it lurks a series of untold, uncommon richness. Even though you play a secret agent in Metal Gear, it would be difficult to place this saga solely in the stealth genre or to reduce it to any other category on the basis of an isolated aspect. In the end, the only term that could suit it is the name of its creator: Hideo Kojima. Although the titles that make up the entire series have been developed by a team, its progenitors aura is so inextricably linked to his work that the game cannot be appreciated without studying the man behind it. The designer knew how to place his own personal mark on the series, which highlights the individuality of each episode beyond the realm of the traditional value judgment. From the storytelling and plot to the gameplay mechanics, nothing of what Kojima produced has an equal elsewhere in video games.

The mythology of the series is so rich and dense that it is only possible to grasp the different Metal Gear episodes through this prism alone. On the other hand, the universe of these games includes numerous real events and puts into perspective historical periods, organizations and well-known figures, such as the Cold War, the Pentagon and certain world leaders. But the illustrative power of the hero supplants the parallels that could be made with reality. The temporal context moves to the background and leaves the scene free for the characters to shape an exceptional fiction.

Metal Gear is not just a succession of games set against a similar backdrop, it is an endeavor created as a whole, aimed at transmitting clear messages. The series thus coincides with the development of a discourse, an aspiration, but it also attests to imperfections and failings. A creators soul is not plain; in fact, it is rough and marked by vicissitudes. The study of the Metal Gear series turns out to be as singular as the game it examines. In fact, despite the impossibility of being exhaustive, Konamis official database fulfills this function very well. We wanted to avoid creating just an encyclopedic work, so our endeavor presents biases that could appear radical to some people, but their arrangement offers a cross-sectional insight into the franchises entire collection. Happy reading!

Nicolas Courcier and Mehdi El Kanafi were print media fans from a young age and did not wait long to launch their first magazine, Console Syndrome, in 2004. After five issues with a limited distribution in the Toulouse region, they decided to create a publishing house under the same name. A year later, the small business was bought by a major publisher in the area of video game guides and books. Over the next four years, Nicolas and Mehdi published more than twenty books devoted to major game franchises, many being their own work, such as Zelda: The History of a Legendary Saga, Resident Evil: Of Zombies and Men, and The Legend Final Fantasy VII and IX. Since 2015, they have continued their publishing careers based around analyzing the great video game sagas as part of a new publishing house that they co-founded: Third.

Denis Brusseaux

Educated in law, Denis Brusseaux has worked as a journalist for fifteen years and is a specialist in the two arts that he loves: cinema and video games. He has contributed to the magazines Joypad and Videogamer, and the website DVDrama. He also co-wrote the 2012 film The Lookout (French title: Le Guetteur), which starred Daniel Auteuil and Mathieu Kassovitz.

Konami was founded in 1969 by Kagemasa Kozuki, Yoshinobu Nakama and Tatsuo Miyasako. Although konami means small wave in Japanese, the companys name is first and foremost an amalgamation of the initial syllable in each of the three founders names. In its beginnings, the business was a jukebox rental and repair shop located in Osaka; however, from the mid-1970s, the company became interested in the video-game market. In 1981, Frogger was released in the arcades: the player helped frogs cross a busy highwaya cult game if ever there was one. Konami then invested in the shoot-em up genre with Gradius (1985), one of the most famous horizontal-scrolling games of the genre, without forgetting its quirky parody, Parodius (1990). Many action games began to be released in the arcades, the most famous being Green Beret (1985) and Contra (1987). In 1985, Konami developed what would become one of the predecessors to modern fighting games: Yie Ar Kung-Fu, which presented the opportunity to control who took on different adversaries, each one with a particular fighting style.

The publisher then quickly entered the game console market and adapted its hits for the machines of that era: MSX, Atari VCS, Megadrive, etc. It was through establishing subsidiaries such as Ultra Software in Europe and Palcom Software in North America that Konami, which had begun manufacturing games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, managed to bypass the restrictions imposed by the Kyoto-based Nintendo. These restrictions limited each publisher to releasing only five titles per year. Later, official branches would open in these western regions.