Metal Gear Solid (video game)

Metal Gear Solid is a 1998 action-adventure stealth game developed and published by Konami for the PlayStation. Directed, produced, and written by Hideo Kojima, the game is the third mainline installment in the Metal Gear series and serves as a sequel to the MSX2 game Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990). The game's story follows Solid Snake, a former Special Forces operative who is pulled out of retirement by the U.S. government to infiltrate Shadow Moses, a nuclear weapons facility that has been taken over by rogue unit FOXHOUND, led by Liquid Snake. Solid Snake must liberate hostages and prevent FOXHOUND from using Metal Gear REX, a mecha capable of delivering a nuclear warhead anywhere in the world, while confronting his own origins.

The game is played from a top-down perspective from where Solid Snake must navigate the environment. Stealth is optional but highly encouraged, with a cover system and radar utilized to avoid sight from guards. Getting detected triggers an "Alert" mode where enemies will attempt to kill the player, and is usually deactivated if they evade guards for long enough. The player obtains various items and weapons through the game, including key cards which are used to unlock different areas of the base, typically obtained from defeating bosses.

Conceived by Kojima during the development of Policenauts (1994), Metal Gear Solid was initially developed for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer in 1995 but was soon moved to the PlayStation. With a small team of 20 people, Kojima emphasized extreme detail, utilizing real-life demonstrations of weapons, individually-designed set pieces, and mocking environments using Lego building blocks.