Metal Gear Solid 2 On Nintendo Switch Sometimes Jumps To 60 FPS

As we had reported yesterday, Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 1 just released on all platforms. The Nintendo Switch version faced some controversy, after Konami announced that some of its games would output at 30FPS. But it turns out Konami may have made some objectively wrong, or at least perplexing choices, with this collection.

As revealed by SwitchUp in their YouTube review of the collection, something strange happens with Metal Gear Solid 2: Guns of the Patriots. They actually checked the framerate and performance of the game on the Switch.

So as it turns out, the game runs quite smoothly at its 30FPS framerate cap on the Switch. But then, SwitchUp found out that sometimes the cap gets removed and the framerate actually goes up. This can happen with cutscenes, but also happens in parts of Metal Gear Solid 2: Guns of the Patriots that aren’t demanding to render. As SwitchUp had concluded, it’s possible that the Switch can run this game at 60 FPS after all.

As for why Konami made this choices, there really are no easy answers. SwitchUp also found that the release of the original Metal Gear Solid is somehow not steady on performance, in spite of being the older game between itself and Metal Gear Solid 2: Guns of the Patriots. In fact, it is Metal Gear Solid that dips down to 20 FPS in certain cutscenes. SwitchUp concluded that this game in particular must be suffering from poorly optimized emulation.

Now, it’s easy to assume that Nintendo Switch may not have the power to run these games at 60 FPS. Many of the platform’s so-called impossible ports drop the framerate down to 30 FPS. But that isn’t really a hard rule for the platform.

Doom 3, Cuphead, Quake II, and Rayman Legends are all 1080p, 60 FPS on the Switch. Not every game can run at these performance metrics on the platform, but it’s absolutely credible that the Switch could have done this for the Metal Gear games.

While Metal Gear Solid 2: Guns of the Patriots was originally released on PlayStation 2 in 2001, the rerelease in 2012 as part of Metal Gear Solid HD Collection was made by Bluepoint Games. It’s absolutely possible that this could have been optimized to run at 60 FPS for the Switch.

What this really reflects is a cut rate release on Konami’s end. Either they decided not to work on these optimizations, or they ran out of time. Whatever the case, it leads to a compromised rerelease for some of the industry’s greatest games.