Celebrating Metal Gear’s 20th Birthday

On Tuesday night we partied at the Ritz Carlton Tokyo in celebration of Metal Gear’s twentieth birthday. With friends and business colleagues gathered from around the world, we used the 20th Anniversary Party to announce a few new products, host a live concert and display tons of Metal Gear memorabilia. But really, the big event was Hideo Kojima’s real-time gameplay presentation of Metal Gear Solid 4. This presentation will be available for download over at the PlayStation Store today in all its fifteen minute, high-def glory. In the video, Mr. Kojima provides narration in Japanese with English subtitles.

Now, it’s no secret that we’re pushing the graphical capabilities of the PS3, but the emphasis with our latest video really is MGS4’s next-gen gameplay. Solid Snake may be getting up in age, but we prove that you can still teach an Old Snake new tricks — OctoCamo to help blend into the environment, Solid Eye to analyze the state of the dynamic battlefield, the drum can attack, full SIXAXIS support along with a totally reworked and intuitive control scheme… There’s plenty of new stuff to help give you all an idea of how the game will play when it ships early next year.

At the event Tuesday night, we also debuted Metal Gear Online for PS3! The attendees were able to see the game in action in our ten minute demonstration. This is a game we’ve been working on nonstop since our first entry into online competitive gaming with MGS3: Subsistence, and so far it’s a blast to play. Look for more on this soon!

And let’s not forget about Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus — we showed off the first trailer for this multiplayer-focused PSP title that we’ve been working on in secret since the original Portable Ops launched to worldwide success. You can grab that trailer here.

Lastly, we announced a brand new PSP title — the Japanese version of Metal Gear Solid 2: Digital Graphic Novel. This is a title I’m particularly excited about since it’s an awesome way to revisit the story of MGS2, now through the eyes of Solid Snake. (If you’re pumped for MGS4, do me a favor and brush up on your MGS2 knowledge — you won’t regret it.) I hope to have an official announcement regarding the North American and Europe versions of this game soon.

Let me close by saying that I speak for the entire team here at Kojima Productions that we appreciate your support and hope that this gameplay video for the PS Store gets you excited for Metal Gear Solid 4’s upcoming release.