Kept you waiting, huh?

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Back in 1987 Konami released Metal Gear, which would go on to spawn more than a dozen sequels, spin-offs, remakes, and retellings. In 2015 the company decided it was finished with video games in general, series creator Hideo Kojima in specific, and grudgingly released the series’ swan song Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. After years of Kojima telling us he was done with Metal Gear and its world, finally he was telling us the truth, though not in a way that anyone hoped. That is, unless you count Pachinko machines, which we sincerely hope you don’t.

Metal Gear remains a unique series in the history of video games. All of its major entries were directed by the same individual and feature his unique sensibility, but the titles themselves were released over a period of decades. Technology changed radically, and the series went from sprites to polygons to HD with Dolby Surround Sound. Within this it told not just the story of its oddly named protagonists Solid Snake, Raiden, and Big Boss, but the story of video games as a medium, all the while never straying far from its roots. Best of all, regardless of how convoluted its nanomachines and third act twists could get, the games remained universally fun.

For Exposition Break‘s inaugural series of features, we’ll be taking apart the entire Metal Gear series. Join us as we talk about everything from its gameplay to its sexism, from graphics to story to politics.

  1. Metal Gear (1987) – MSX2
  2. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990) – MSX2
  3. Metal Gear Solid (1998) – PlayStation
  4. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001) – PlayStation 2
  5. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004) – PlayStation 2
  6. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008) – PlayStation 3
  7. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010) – PlayStation Portable
  8. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013) – PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
  9. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) – PlayStation 4, Xbox One
  10. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) – PlayStation 4, Xbox One