There is a new rumor going around that Metal Gear Solid games will be coming to Steam this year.
Our source Oops Leaks tweeted this out:
“Classic Metal Gear Solid games should be coming to Steam this year. Got multiple signs of that this will happen but have no clue which games and versions exactly it will be.”
If this comes through, it will be a major breakthrough for the fans of Konami’s classic library, but there was a lot of hope that it would be coming.
As we had covered ourselves, Konami seemed to have lost interest in their own classic games, when they fired Hideo Kojima. At the time it was interpreted that the company was ready to go all in all the way with gacha game Dragon Collection, and so they had also fired other veteran game designers and programmers, or forced them to resign, including Castlevania steward Koji Igarashi.
Konami claimed that they had not given up on the Metal Gear franchise in spite of firing its creator. True to their word, they did publish Metal Gear Survive in 2018. Unfortunately, Metal Gear Survive proved to be quite the commercial failure, and so they had kept quiet for a few years.
Move forward two years and Konami makes the surprise announcement no one expects. Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid are both released on GOGcom. That means these are DRM-free versions of both games, but there are some more interesting details on both releases.
Metal Gear Solid on GOGcom is based on Metal Gear Solid: Integral, the port of the game for Windows XP or Windows 98 in the year 2000. It apparently contains fixes made by fans to run on modern computers, and bundles the VR missions, originally released as a separate retail release for the PlayStation, in one package. It’s a very rudimentary port, which does work out for a retailer like GOGcom that doesn’t remaster games with better graphics so much as they just get the games working again.
Metal Gear, on the other hand, is based on the version of the game that with Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. That is a version of Metal Gear Solid 3 that was released on the PlayStation 2, and then Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2011, and finally PlayStation Vita. This version has a new translation, higher quality textures, and other enhancements. Some but not all of these changes were present in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version, so it seems that Konami put some additional work just for this version. Strangely enough, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was also part of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, but Konami opted not to port it as well.
It’s possible that these are the games that will make it to Steam, but it is also possible that Konami will be bringing over other Metal Gear games as well. The franchise has largely lived on the PlayStation, so fans would be eager to get as many Metal Gear games to come to PC, where they can presumably be made available for longer than consoles.
Of interest to fans would be Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, a compilation with remasters of Metal Gear Solid 1 to 3, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of The Patriots, even newer versions of the MSX games Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, the PSP game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and codes for the PlayStation Store versions of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions.
This was the best collection of Metal Gear games at the time, and also bundled other extras including comic books and production materials. However, could Metal Gear fans hope for even more? I’d like to think so.
On PC Konami could go even further than they did at the time, bringing in Snake’s Revenge, Metal Gear Ghost Babel from the Game Boy Color, and the Metal Gear Acid and Portable Ops games, also from the PSP. They could also properly bundle in Metal Gear Solid V, and even Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
Metal Gear is up there with Super Mario Bros, Halo, and Street Fighter, as one of the most important game franchises of all time. Gamers are looking for ways to play those games again, and the interest in such games has expanded beyond just a nostalgia trip, to video game preservation, and gamers themselves studying game design.
If Konami is planning rereleases of Metal Gear games on Steam, we can only hope that not only do they match the amount and quality found in Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, but that they exceed that collection’s level of content. If Metal Gear is no longer Hideo Kojima’s, it is the fans’, and the fans deserve to get the best of Metal Gear.
