These days, when people think of Metal Gear as a franchise, they usually insert the word "Solid," referencing the more modern games. While Sons of Liberty is considered one of the best in the stealth series, the original late 80s and early 90s entries are still classics. The first game in particular helped usher in the stealth genre, and the sequel was just as well-received. However, this second installment wasn't always going to be called Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake as Hideo Kojima recently stated.According to a couple of posts on his Twitter profile, the famed Japanese director has said that this particular Metal Gear game was going to have a somewhat different title. Kojima says that he wasn't happy putting "Metal Gear2" into the name, and instead wanted something that was more in the style of Indiana Jones. In other words, he was more interested in dropping the first part of the name and would probably have called the sequel "Solid Snake." Of course, this didn't come to fruition, but Kojima agreed with the sales team to a compromise, so both titles were used.The video game auteur has been in the news quite a bit recently. As well as him seemingly moving forward on new projects, Hideo Kojima was also mistaken for the Shinzo Abe assassin at the start of this month. Some took to social media to draw comparisons between the developer and Tetsuya Yamagami, the man who was arrested in connection with the shooting of Prime Minister Abe. Much of the accusations included racist comments, with images of Kojima being shared alongside that of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. Since the news broke, Kojima Productions has been looking into legal action against the false rumors.
That unpleasantness aside, there has been some good news regarding Kojima's classic stealth series. To celebrate 35 years of the first game being released, Konami is resuming sales of the Metal Gear Solid titles. It's presumed that the second and third installments, Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater, are the ones that will be reinstated.
As well as that, there are some out there who would love remakes of Metal Gear 1 and 2. Given that these were the basis that formed the later games, and helped spearhead espionage games in general, they still hold a special place in older gamers' hearts. Whether such remakes will ever emerge cannot be said at this stage, but there is a rumor that Metal Gear Solid is getting remade.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake originally released in 1990 for the MSX.