Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance is an expanded version of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (which was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2001). Substance was released for the XBox by Konami in 2002.
It’s the fourth Metal Gear game co-written and designed by Hideo Koijima and the seventh game in the series as a whole.
Jumping Flash! is a first-person platform shooter co-developed by Exact and Ultra and published by Sony in 1995.
You play as a jumping robot, called Robbit, who must collect a number of “Jet Pods” (which look more like big carrots) on each level, then stand on the exit pad. This must be done within a strict time limit.
Metal Gear Solid is an award-winning tactical espionage action game focusing on stealth gameplay and it was first released by Konami in 1998. It was directed, produced and written by Hideo Koijima and follows on from the MSX games Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
You play as codename “Solid Snake“, a legendary American soldier who infiltrates a nuclear weapons facility in order to neutralise a terrorist threat who are threatening a nuclear strike on The White House. Snake must sneak around, liberate hostages and stop the terrorists from launching the strike, all the while avoiding enemy contact as much as possible and gathering information about the situation.
Called Gunner’s Heaven in its native Japan, Rapid Reload is a run-and-gun scrolling shooter with amazing 2D graphics, massive amounts of destruction, and lots of tough boss battles. It was developed by Media.Vision and published by Sony.
Rapid Reload was first released for the PlayStation in 1995 and made an immediate impression with gamers, predominantly because of the action-packed gameplay and the sheer amount of on-screen carnage. Outside of arcades, little had been seen on this scale before – at least in terms of the amount of stuff going on on-screen. You only have to play the first level to know what you’ve got in store when you play Rapid Reload.
Quarth is a brilliant mixture of Tetris and shoot ’em up and was first played in arcades in Japan in 1989. Outside of Japan it is known as “Block Hole“, which – let’s face it – is a stupid name, so I’m sticking with the original name, Quarth.
The 1987 conversion of Ikari Warriors is bit of an “auteur piece” on the ZX Spectrum. What I mean by that is: one guy made it on his own. He programmed the game; created the graphics, and did the sound. That man was David Shea, and the truth be told: he did an excellent job of it – managing to squeeze in most of the arcade game‘s features. Which is pretty impressive on a Spectrum.
This Commodore 64 conversion of SNK‘s classic arcade game, Ikari Warriors, is considered to be one of the best vertically-scrolling shooters on the system. It was programmed by John Twiddy and published by Elite Systems in 1986.
Released in 1986, Cyberun was arguably Ultimate Play the Game‘s most successful Spectrum game after the label’s sale to US Gold. The game received a Crash Smash in issue 28 of Crash magazine. Although it really shouldn’t have…
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is a direct sequel to the original Metal Gear and was first released for the MSX2 by Konami in 1990. It was again written and designed by Hideo Koijima and is much better than the half-baked pseudo sequel, Snake’s Revenge, by Ultra Games on the NES.
Snake’s Revenge is a sequel to Metal Gear that was developed specifically for the North American and European NES markets by Konami and Ultra Games. It first came out in North America in 1990, and in Europe in 1992. Why there was a two-year gap between those releases is anyone’s guess.
Hideo Koijima wasn’t involved in the making of Snake’s Revenge and it is considered ‘non-canonical’, but he did make Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX in response to it. I’m guessing that he wasn’t particularly enamoured with the idea of another team working on his signature series, but ultimately he (rather diplomatically) says that Snake’s Revenge is “not a bad game“.
The King of Grabs 