Metal Gear - NES

Metal Gear for the NES is the game that started one of the greatest franchises in gaming history — and one of the most fascinating artifacts in the NES library. Solid Snake, a rookie operative of the special forces unit FOXHOUND, is sent on a mission codenamed Intrude N313: infiltrate Outer Heaven, a heavily fortified mercenary fortress near South Africa, find the missing agent Gray Fox, and destroy Metal Gear — a bipedal nuclear-armed walking tank whose existence threatens global stability. Snake must avoid guards, collect weapons and equipment, and radio allies for intel — all in 1988, before stealth games were even a genre.

The NES version is a port of Hideo Kojima's original 1987 MSX2 game — but developed by a separate Konami team, without Kojima's involvement or consent, in just three months. The level designs were completely rebuilt, several gameplay elements were altered, and the story framing in the manual was rewritten by Ultra Games with little regard for the source material. Kojima himself was famously unhappy with the result. Despite that, the core mechanics survive — avoiding enemy sight lines, sneaking through buildings, and uncovering the fortress room by room — and the game sold over one million copies in North America alone.

This cartridge is also a piece of publishing history: it was the very first game released under the Ultra Games label — a shell company Konami created specifically to circumvent Nintendo of America's rule limiting third-party publishers to five NES releases per year. Ultra went on to publish TMNT, Snake's Revenge, and others, but Metal Gear was where it all started.

Released in North America in June 1988, Metal Gear on NES remains the only way to own a physical cartridge of the first entry in the series — the MSX2 original was never released in North America, and the NES version is the version that introduced an entire continent to Solid Snake. 

Japanese Title: メタルギア (Metal Gear)
Language: English
Rating: N/A (pre-ESRB release)
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
Genre: Stealth / Action Adventure
Players: 1 player
Developer: Konami (NES port by separate Konami team)
Publisher: Ultra Games (Konami imprint)
Release Year: 1988 (North American release: June 1988)

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