There is something telling about the fact that after releasing Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake in 1990, Hideo Kojima didn’t make another Metal Gear for eight years. Between the first and second games in the series he had made Snatcher, an adventure game influenced heavily by Blade Runner. Because Snatcher was little more than text with still images, a choose-your-own-adventure picture book, it gave Kojima a great deal of control over the dramatic pacing of the game and how the plot unfolded. Solid Snake is a testament to Kojima’s then growing interest in making cinematic games. Featuring a more detailed plot, with more fleshed out characters than the first, Metal Gear 2 is heavily influenced by another film, Apocalypse Now. For all intents and purposes a young game designer, Kojima laid the foundation for what has become at this point his life’s work. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is documentation of a designer coming to grips with a genre, and slowly deciding what he wants to say.

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