The original Metal Gear on NES: infiltration, ID cards, radio codec. Konami intelligently adapts the MSX version. Founding game of modern stealth. Some porting compromises but the essential is there.
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Category
Action Adventure1 player12+
Description
Infiltration game featuring Solid Snake penetrating Outer Heaven fortress to destroy Metal Gear. Published by Konami, released in Japan in 1987. Snake in top-down view avoiding guards, collecting weapons and communicating by radio with tactical infiltration. NES version of Konami's Metal Gear classic.
The 1987 Famicom pressing is the very first Metal Gear on a Nintendo console, six months ahead of the Western launches. This original Japanese status, distinct from the MSX2 and earlier than NTSC or PAL, makes it the chronological anchor of the series on Famicom. That temporal primacy, never reissued in identical form, drives a higher price among collectors after the first console iteration.
Is Metal Gear still worth playing in 2026?
Metal Gear brings Konami's founding stealth game to NES, in which Solid Snake infiltrates the Outer Heaven fortress to destroy the Metal Gear weapon, avoiding guards rather than confronting them head-on. The stealth concept, revolutionary for the time, and the inventory management remain founding elements of a major genre. This NES version diverges from the MSX original and suffers some compromises. For fans of retro action-adventure and video game history, it is an essential historical landmark, despite its imperfections.
