is a 1990 action-adventure stealth game developed and published by Konami for the MSX2. The second mainline installment in the Metal Gear series, it serves as a sequel to the original Metal Gear (1987). Set in 1999, a few years after the events of the original game, Solid Snake must infiltrate a heavily defended territory in Central Asia known as Zanzibar Land to rescue a kidnapped scientist and destroy the revised "Metal Gear D". The game significantly evolved the stealth-based game system of its predecessor, and uses a storyline dealing with themes such as the nature of warfare and nuclear proliferation.
Metal Gear 2 was written and designed by series's creator Hideo Kojima, who conceived the game in response to Snake's Revenge (1990), a separately produced sequel that was being developed at the time for the NES specifically for the North American and European markets. Metal Gear 2 was released in Japan to positive critical reception, and retrospective reviews have labeled it as one of the best 8-bit games ever made. It was followed by a sequel, Metal Gear Solid, and was released worldwide for the PlayStation in 1998. Metal Gear 2 was re-released alongside the original Metal Gear in the Subsistence version of Metal Gear Solid 3 (2006) with a full English translation and other revisions, which was used for further re-releases on the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection.
Gameplay
Metal Gear 2 builds upon the stealth-based gameplay system of its predecessor. As in the original Metal Gear, the player's objective is to infiltrate the enemy's stronghold, while avoiding detection from soldiers, cameras, infrared sensors and other surveillance devices. The biggest change in the game was done to the enemy's abilities. Instead of remaining stationed in one screen like in the first game, enemy soldiers can now patrol different screens across a single map. Moreover, guards now have an expanded 45-degree field of vision instead of just seeing in straight lines, along with the ability to turn their heads left or right to see diagonally. Enemy guards can also detect sounds, being able to hear any noise made by the player (such as a punch to the wall or a gunshot made without a suppressor) and will investigate the source of the sound once it is made. Guards can also hear sounds made by the player when walking on certain surfaces, which means that one has to be careful when navigating certain areas. If the player is discovered by the enemy, then a counter will be displayed on the upper-right side of the screen that will go down after the enemy has lost track of the player. When the counter reaches zero, the alert phase will go off and the game will return to normal.
The player is given a variety of new maneuvers and tools to help them remain undetected and complete the game. For example, the player can now kneel and crawl in addition to walking, allowing the player to avoid making noise over certain terrains, pick up land mines, and hide in tight spaces such as under desks or inside air ducts. A radar with a 3×3 grid on the upper right of the screen shows the player's current area in the center grid (as a red dot), with enemy soldiers as white dots, allowing the player to determine what's ahead. However, the radar is disabled when the game enters alert phase. The radar can also be used with the mine detector equipped to determine the locations of enemy mines or launch Stinger missiles onto an airborne target. Many of the weapons and equipment from the first game are brought over along with new items such as robotic mice used to distract enemies, a camouflaged mat and three different types of rations, each with special attributes. Health and carrying capacity are increased each time a boss is defeated.
The transceiver has also been greatly revamped from the first game as well, with conversations now being context-sensitive rather than being simply area-oriented. The transceiver screen now displays the faces of Snake and the radio contact he's currently communicating with. The player can also talk to children living in the fortress to gain new information; the player is penalized with a loss of health if they kill a child. The areas are more varied than in the previous MSX2 game and a number of puzzles must be fulfilled to complete the game, such as luring a carrier pigeon with a specific kind of ration, chasing after a female spy to the ladies' lavatory, and deciphering secret tap codes to gain new frequency numbers.
The MSX2 version requires the use of either a floppy disk drive or a Game Master II utility cartridge to save progress. In the absence of either media, a password can also be written down to reload progress. Later versions of the game removed the password feature in favor of standardized storage media such as memory cards and internal hard disk drives.
Plot
Setting Metal Gear 2 is set in a near-future world in which the Cold War continued into the 1990s, with the game's events taking place in 1999, three years after the events of the original Metal Gear (later retconned to four years in Metal Gear Solid).
Characters
Solid Snake, formerly retired FOXHOUND agent and hero of the original Metal Gear returns as the playable character. His new mission is to rescue the kidnapped Czechoslovak biologist Dr. Kio Marv from the forces of Zanzibar Land. He is assisted by a radio support crew consisting of Roy Kyanbel (spelled "Roy Campbell" in later versions), his new commanding officer; McDonnell Miller, a survival coach and drill instructor; George Kesler ("George Kasler" in later versions), a military strategist; and Yozev Norden (renamed Johan Jacobsen in the later revised versions), a wildlife expert. Also assisting him on-site are Horry White ("Holly White" in later versions), a CIA agent posing as a journalist; Natasha Marcova (Gustava Heffner in later versions), an StB agent, Olympic gold medalist and Dr. Marv's bodyguard; and Dr. Petrovich Madnar ("Drago Pettrovich Madnar" in later versions), the Metal Gear designer from the first game, who was captured along with Dr. Marv. Also appearing in the game are Big Boss, the renegade former commander of FOXHOUND, and Grey Fox ("Gray Fox" in later versions), who disappeared following the events of the Outer Heaven incident.
The bosses of this installment consist of Black Color (Black Ninja in later versions), an experimental drug-enhanced ninja from a disbanded NASA project (who is revealed to be Kyle Schneider from the original Metal Gear); Running Man, a former Olympic runner turned terrorist; Red Blaster, an explosive expert from Spetsnaz; Ultra Box (the Four Horsemen in later version), an assassination squad specializing in confined spaces; Predator (Jungle Evil in later versions), a jungle warfare expert from the South African Reconnaissance Command; and Night Sight (Night Fright in later versions), an assassin from Vietnam who uses a state-of-the-art stealth suit that renders him invisible to both radar and the human eye.
Story A major oil crisis seriously affects the global economy in the late 1990s, with petrol deposits running out faster than previous estimates. Efforts to adopt alternative energy sources and attempts to drill for more oil fail to take up the slack. To counter the problem, Czech scientist Dr. Kio Marv bio-engineers a new species of algae, OILIX, that could produce petroleum-grade hydrocarbons with little expense and effort. He unveils the algae to the World Energy Conference in Prague and was on his way to a demonstration in the United States when he was kidnapped by soldiers from Zanzibar Land, a Central Asian country established in 1997 after a successful independence war against the Soviet Union. NATO discovers that Zanzibar Land's leaders plan to hold the world hostage by controlling the supply of oil through OILIX and nuclear warheads pillaged from old stockpiles marked for dismantling in light of global efforts toward nuclear disarmament. FOXHOUND's new commander, Roy Campbell, brings Solid Snake out of retirement and sends him to Zanzibar Land to rescue Dr. Marv on Christmas Eve 1999.
Over the course of his mission, Snake teams up with Holly White, a CIA operative posing as a journalist, and Gustava Heffner, an StB agent and Dr. Marv's bodyguard. He is also reunited with Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar, the Metal Gear inventor from Outer Heaven, who claims to have been once again kidnapped and forced to work on another Metal Gear project (named Metal Gear D) for Zanzibar Land, as well as oversee mass-production of smaller, non-nuclear-equipped Metal Gear units. Snake learns from Dr. Madnar that Big Boss, Snake's former superior, survived the events of the first game and now leads Zanzibar Land.
As Snake, Heffner, and Dr. Madnar head toward Zanzibar Land's main prison, Heffner is killed by a missile fired by Metal Gear D and Dr. Madnar is recaptured by the enemy. The new Metal Gear's pilot is revealed to be Gray Fox. Determined to finish his mission, Snake fights against Zanzibar Land's elite mercenary force and manages to reach Dr. Marv's cell.
Snake arrives too late, as he finds Dr. Marv's corpse and the OILIX data. Holly later tips him off that he actually died under Dr. Madnar's torture. In addition, Snake learns that Madnar volunteered his services to Zanzibar Land to finish work on Metal Gear as revenge against the scientific community shunning him after the events of the first game. Snake incapacitates Madnar when the latter attempts to attack him.
Snake faces off against Gray Fox in Metal Gear D and eventually destroys the mech. Both men later fight hand-to-hand in a minefield, and Snake defeats him. As he tries to escape, Snake meets Big Boss. Having lost his equipment and with no weapons at his disposal, Snake is forced to improvise using the only items he can find: a lighter and aerosol can. Fashioning a makeshift flamethrower, Snake defeats Big Boss for the second time. Snake and Holly escape together, and they deliver the OILIX formula to Campbell.
Development Following the success of the NES version of Metal Gear, which sold over a million units in North America, Konami began the development of a sequel for the same platform titled Snake's Revenge designed specifically for the overseas market. Hideo Kojima, who directed the first MSX2 game but was not involved with either of the two NES games, did not have any plans to develop a sequel himself at the time until he became reacquainted with a junior coworker who was assigned to work on Snake's Revenge on a train ride in Tokyo. The coworker revealed his involvement with the project and encouraged Kojima to create his own sequel. By the end of the train ride, Kojima had already envisioned the basic premise for the game. After undergoing a business trip to the sales division of Konami, Kojima successfully convinced his superiors, who were hesitant to develop a Metal Gear sequel for the Japanese market due to poor sales of the Famicom conversion of the first game, to approve the development of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
In order to accurately portray realism in the game, Kojima and his crew consulted various references, including a former Green Beret turned author, and even participated in a series of survival games in a forest located in a mountain near their workplace. Originally Metal Gear 2 was announced with a February to March 1990 release window, but was delayed to July, undergoing an increase in ROM size from 3 megabits to 4 megabits. Metal Gear 2 also employs Konami's proprietary SCC sound source that has been used in all of their MSX titles since Nemesis 2. Development of Metal Gear 2 was briefly suspended in order to help out on the development of SD Snatcher, which was being developed at the same time by a separate team.