[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Gear Up for Metal Gear
June 27th, 2011 by Benj Edwards
Don’t forget to pack your high-jump goggles and night vision boots.
As a young NES fan, I absolutely loved this ad. I remember studying it from top to bottom many times, excited by large amount of fancy equipment lavishly depicted in this ad for Ultra’s Metal Gear on the NES. I was never a huge fan of playing Metal Gear myself (I found it too hard as a kid), but I loved to watch my brother play through this depthy stealth-action title.
Fans and critics considered the first NES Metal Gear a classic in its own time, so perhaps I should dust off my cartridge and give it another shot.
Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite title in the Metal Gear series?
June 27th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
I remember this ad and liked it a lot, too. Though I never owned Metal Gear as a kid, NES games were always traded around by the kids of my neighborhood, and I had it in my possession for long stretches of time.
And I grew to hate the game very much. Just like how the traumas of the original Metroid made me avoid the modern ones, playing Metal Gear for NES made me never want to hear the words “Metal Gear” for the rest of my life. I never bothered with all the reboots until a friend convinced me to try out the remake of MGS for the Gamecube. I didn’t particularly like it, and have refused to get any of the games for my PS2 and now my PS3, either.
June 27th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Have to go with the first Metal gear solid game on Playstation. That game innovated the shirt off of the entire gaming industry. Although many didn’t like the innovative new thinking Hideo Kojima introduced, it still is a really good example of thinking outside the box. Sometimes literally.
As for the first games, I found them too difficult then as well as now. And although they were fairly original back in the day, they bring very little interesting things to the game world of today!
June 27th, 2011 at 3:53 pm
I, too, am not a fan of the first two Metal Gears, and it was because I was too young to really get into something that deep and intense back in the ’80s. Even now, I don’t play them, even though I suspect that, having grown up very much as a gamer since then, I just have no interest in revisiting them and completing them. In fact, the only other Metal Gear I’ve played since is the first MG: Solid on the PSOne, and after completing that one, I just had no more interest in the series.
June 28th, 2011 at 12:59 am
I remember poring over this ad as a kid as well! But I’ve read that Hideo Kojima really despises the NES version of Metal Gear, as he wasn’t involved in it at all. It was apparently a loose adaptation of his original version (for the MSX, I think), which bothers him enough that he just recently was quoted harshly criticizing it again.
June 28th, 2011 at 6:36 pm
its really hard to pick a fav from the metal gear saga, all have great points and great inovations, but i can honestly say the nes games was horrible butchered versions of the MSX originals even whole chapters missing. But if put on the spot MGS3 is my Fav
December 26th, 2013 at 2:03 pm
I remember this ad. And its funny because when I saw it I never realized it was for a game which, later on, is part of a series that I am extremely fond of.