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.
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.
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“.
This reworked Nintendo Entertainment System port of the MSX version of Metal Gear first came out in 1987 (1988 in North America), just three months after the original. While it’s considered (rightly) to be inferior to the original MSX version it was a major hit and went on to sell over a million units in the United States alone.
The very first Metal Gear was originally released in 1987 by Konami for the MSX2. It was Hideo Koijima‘s first fully-developed game and went on to spawn a successful series across many platforms. The hero, Solid Snake, has since gone on to become a video game icon.
Delphine Software‘s classic futuristic adventure game, Flashback, came out first on the Amiga in 1992 but was originally developed with the Sega Megadrive as its target platform.
Timing and cartridge production issues meant that it came out after a number of other ports had already been released, but that didn’t dent enthusiasm for the game on the Megadrive.
Created in 2003 by Vicarious Visions, Bruce Lee; Return of the Legend is an excellent side-scrolling beat ’em up that presents Bruce Lee in the role of a martial arts student fighting an evil crime syndicate in revenge for the murder of his master.
It’s an excellent game too – surprisingly so.
Continue reading Bruce Lee: Return of the Legend, Game Boy Advance
This 1987 sequel to the pioneering Saboteur is so much bigger in scope than its predecessor, but retains much of what made it good in the first place.
Written by Clive Townsend and published by Durell Software in 1985, Saboteur is a stealth action platform game that was something of a hit with ZX Spectrum users back in the day.
