Metal Gear

“I wondered if this might be the system where I could realize my original, full vision of Metal Gear… and the game that has emerged from that is Metal Gear Solid.”

“the essence of that fear may be closer to Clock Tower 2 than Resident Evil, I think. After vision, the second-most important kind of tension I wanted to create was audio.”

“The reason why we're going to the trouble of actually modeling them this way, is that the 3D model reveals things to you that are hard to see in 2D. [...] we're building the structures with blocks and then using a CCD (a tiny camera) to peer inside them.”

“In order to make the direction effective, I feel like I may have to add unskippable cutscenes. The story for Metal Gear is very complicated, so I think cutscenes will be necessary. The one thing I want to avoid, though, are those tedious scenes where characters are just blabbering at each other for 4 or 5 minutes.”

“In game design, I think the theme of a game occupies the same position of importance as the gameplay. The hardest part for me of any development is building a theme that will enliven and enrich the gameplay.”

“I originally had no plans to add a character like that.”

“when the human pilot gets in, that life is being breathed into the mech for the first time. Like, even though it's a weapon, when it moves it feels like a living creature. But when the pilot exits and it's left alone, it looks just like a jeep or tank or some regular vehicle, and once the pilot gets in and is driving it, it looks like a dinosaur.”

“Up to now—in Policenauts, for example, I used to give the designers very specific instructions [...] but this game was different.”

“designs that are "dishonest", weird, or that are just meant to be visually stimulating—like female characters with huge busts (laughs)—I don't like those. I wanted characters who, just from looking at their clothing you'd be able to tell what kind of person they were, and what their motivations were.”

“He's the developer of this Metal Gear REX weapon, and I like Japanese animation so I wanted to include a character who goes to anime conventions like Otakon in America. The image in my head was of a heavier guy, someone who's always eating a chocolate bar, but somewhere along the way he turned out as you see here.”

“We went to go buy dry ice but they didn't have any, so with no other options, even though I don't smoke I lit some cigarettes and blew smoke everywhere. (laughs)”

“Metal Gear Solid sells more in Europe and America than Japan. I was unapologetic about making something Japanese in taste, but amazingly it was received with more passion and enthusiasm by people overseas.”

“I added a camera mode like that in Metal Gear, but all the developers hated it. The programmers, the designers too.”

“There was a sort of legend at Konami, that if you got involved in this project, you'd up demoted or transferred. (laughs) [...] once we got a working build running, and they saw that exclamation mark pop up when the enemy gets surprised, that sold them on the concept.”

“not being able to program, I had a very hard time making Metal Gear. As a planner you write what you want in the planning documents, and convey your image as best you can, but ultimately it comes down to the programmers' sensibilities.”

“But the sense of identity a player has with their avatar in an action game is something amazing. It's really what video games are all about.”

“From the beginning, I've always been very influenced by foreign films, books, and music. Having consumed all that media, and believing I've grown as a person myself, to see Metal Gear Solid praised by people overseas, it felt like I'd repaid that debt.”

“among the preliminary sketches I drew, one of them looked like a dinosaur, and Kojima did single that one out. "Let's go with this."”

Newsweek reported in 2001 that Kojima, as a child, played outdoor games like thief-and-detective — the Japanese equivalent of hide-and-seek — with his friends, flattening himself against walls and peeking around corners much as Solid Snake does.

“We use wind, rain, steam and other effects to make the players feel as though they're really there. It may look like a film, but it doesn't play like a film--it's more of an event.”

“If I direct the same team, it will only lead to the same game being made.”

“Let your readers know that I'm married, with a son. Put that in boldface, all caps.”

The official biographical profile Konami published on its blog presented Kojima, besides as creator of Metal Gear, Snatcher, Policenauts and Metal Gear Solid, as one of the video game industry’s leading film buffs and noted that he also worked as a commentator and wrote film reviews.

For Blade Runner’s 25th anniversary, Kojima made a personal festival: he bought the five‑DVD set, a three‑CD anniversary soundtrack, a making‑of book, and reread the novel. Although immersed in Metal Gear Solid 4, he made time to see the Final Cut; he asked for one ticket for “BlaRun” and the ticket seller did not understand the nickname. After an unusually silent exit from the screening, he found other viewers gathered in the lobby before the display photos, talking enthusiastically; sharing the film in a theater with strangers who loved it was, for him, the true Final Cut.

“So I deliberately kind of matched myself and Old Snake. This is not just the message to the users, but also a message to the internal development staff as well; we've all been working for quite a long time, and I wanted to show that Hideo Kojima, at 45, still working in the spotlight - I wanted to show that to the staff!”

“I wanted the users to almost overlap their experience - to say, "I aged, Snake aged" - I wanted to express this feeling in MGS4.”

“But it's like when Hayao Miyazaki says he is not going to do more, and then always ends up doing it. I think I am kind of in a similar situation; I have ideas other than Metal Gear, and I want to go on to make other new games, but for political, business or technology reasons, there is always a time when I have to return.”

“But I have to say, my feeling hasn't changed; I would like to pass on the Metal Gear series to younger staff members, and then go on to produce the title, and not be so attached to it.”

“And in my spare time I want to establish a new game, which I have been wanting to do for a long time. I do have strong urges to create a new title other than the Metal Gear series.”

“But I only wanted to make MGS4 a window to this; the next step - where you open the window and look at the real world - that's up to the users! I didn't want to exaggerate just to make my story glitter or get coverage on the news, that was not my intention.”

“In MGS4, yes, I put everything in the cut sequences, which I kind of regret to some extent, because maybe there is a new approach which I should think about.”

“I had the idea of bringing the game to the iPhone originally, but I wasn't the designer of the game. I was more of a producer, guiding the team members.”

“For MGS4, or any other Metal Gear game, I always tend to draw on something that seems to be a 'threat' to society in the near future - maybe one or two years from the present time.”

“For MGS3 though, perhaps for the younger audience that didn't live through the 60s, I guess it seems more fantasy-like to them. But for me and others who grew up during that time period, I think we could relate it to the things that happened during that time period.”

“I think creating that now wouldn't really be 'cool' [laughs]. I'm not saying that I shouldn't do it, but I think that I probably won't.”

“Personally, though, I would like to do smaller projects, but when I think of the time I have left living on this earth, I would rather spend that on bigger things!”

“Sure, there is definitely pressure. We don't belong wholly to Konami, so that pressure might be lighter, but since Kojima Productions is a part of Konami and Konami does the business side of things, yeah, I feel pressure there, that there's a need for it to be a successful, ongoing series.”

“It ended up being more like a puzzle action game.”

During the 2010 world tour for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Kojima was trapped with twelve other people (thirteen total) in a freight elevator at Uniqlo Soho in New York City. They managed to open the elevator doors with their bare hands and found only the metal wall of the shaft because the car had stopped between floors; as people began pounding on the cabin the smell of panic spread and there was fear of running out of oxygen, and Kojima found himself thinking of elevator movies. An hour later a rescue team evacuated them by ladder through the top of the elevator car, and they escaped without injury.

When Kojima reread Shibumi in 2006 as part of his research for Metal Gear Solid 4, he was startled by parallels with ideas he had already used: a combat discipline similar to CQC, the heightened threat perception he learned in scout/tracking training, and the merciful murder of a parental figure, which he related to Big Boss and The Boss. His reappraisal led him to recommend the novel to the development team.

In a September 2011 essay, Kojima wrote that each time a new Metal Gear came out he declared to the press that it would be the last he would make. He explained that all stories and all creators have an end, and that he wanted to bring his own story to its conclusion before he reached his.

Kojima explained in 2011 that he kept continuing Metal Gear because, while fans fervently wanted more, he felt the story could not end and a creator could not turn his back on them. At the same time he recognized that neither creators nor their series are eternal, a contradiction he described as a spiral in which they became trapped.

“plays with Legos all day”

According to Konami’s 25th anniversary website, the project’s original objective was to make a war game, but the MSX2 could not display many enemy soldiers on a single screen nor more than four bullets at once, so Kojima proposed a game about fleeing the enemy in the style of the film The Great Escape: with the rule of escaping without fighting, the tension of war could be conveyed without many enemies on screen.

“When she defeated The End she called me up and said: 'It is finished'.”

“I walked in and the shopkeepers knew about me. I couldn't believe it. It was the most surprising moment in my life.”

“Shinkawa was born to be a video game artist.”

“So, after the second Metal Gear launched, I developed my own scripting engine and decided to work on adventure games so that I could have complete control over when the animation played or when the music triggered.”

“Lost World was the first project I was assigned to and the game was cancelled after six months.”

“Without that encounter I probably wouldn't have pursued a proper sequel, and there might never have been a Metal Gear Solid.”

“Every week they paid for us to visit a forest in the mountains nearby. We would dress up in military uniform and play games there. It was a good time.”

“We had so much more budget so we were able to go to Hollywood and hire a composer.”

“Policenauts also had its own share of naming issues. The game was originally known as "Beyond," reflecting the theme of the story. Konami could not trademark this name, so they went with Policenauts instead.”

“I've done a lot of boss battles in a lot of games, and one thing I try to accomplish is make something no one has ever seen before. From that perspective, two bosses I'm a fan of are Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid and The Sorrow from Metal Gear Solid 3.”

“What I can say is that I've aged alongside Snake, and I've matured along with him. As long as there's a Snake in Metal Gear Solid, that Snake will always be a part of me, so I don't think I could ever do a Snake that's much younger than myself.”

“For example, if at some point if we decided to bring out a JRPG with Snake in his teens, I don't think that's something I could do. I'd have to leave that with the younger staff.”

Kojima attributed Jennie as a subconscious inspiration for The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3. He framed the opposition of Snake as a stray dog and The Boss as a mother cat in terms of his intention to introduce motherhood and the point of view of stray cats into a saga he had until then regarded as a story of parricide led by war dogs.

One and a half years before Project Itoh’s death, Kojima commissioned Itoh to write the novelization of Metal Gear Solid 4—not to make use of an up-and-coming author, but so that another bearer of his memes would connect the video game’s story to a different medium. Kojima considered that Itoh did not merely trace the game’s plot and scenes: he transformed the material into a work of his own that could convey Kojima’s ideas even to readers unfamiliar with the game; Kojima described it as not novelized but Itoh-ized.

According to the book’s capsule, Project Itoh was hospitalized immediately after the meeting to plan the Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots novelization and wrote the entire manuscript from his hospital bed. He identified with Otacon and Raiden, chose Otacon as the narrator to project himself into the novel, and built the rest of the work from that decision.

“There are so many games where you fight aliens or zombies, and they have very high-fidelity graphics, but they don't ask the question of why the events are happening. In Metal Gear, I'm trying to get at why all these violent things happened in the first place.”

“Originally I wanted to hand the series off to younger staff and let them carry on with it. And so we did, and that resulted in the game Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. But after Rising, we found that for my younger staff, the numbered games were just too heavy for them. So that's why I decided to come back and work on them myself.”

“Every game I make, I create thinking it's really, really going to be the last game I create. So I put as much as I can in and make sure I have no regrets.”

“I've been stuck with something of a father complex ever since. All the Metal Gear games so far have been paternal stories. They're all about killing your father (laughs).”

“In the beginning, I would say the answer to that is yes. I had very specific people in mind when I created a game, and I had a message that I wanted to pass along. But now my thought process is changing.”

Kojima spent almost three decades at Konami, beginning in 1986. In 2015, amid a bitter split, Konami removed Kojima's name from Metal Gear Solid V marketing; at The Game Awards in December 2015 the game won awards but Kojima did not attend, reportedly barred from attending by Konami. That same month Kojima re-established Kojima Productions as an independent studio partnered with Sony. Silent Hills had been cancelled in April 2015.

“couldn't even talk to them – he had to talk through someone else. That's how that game was finished.”

Kojima stated that creating the new company was more difficult than developing Death Stranding: upon becoming independent he had to recover credibility, financing, people and a place to work. Fans of his earlier games helped him in unforeseen ways, and he was able to deal directly with Hollywood actors who appreciated Metal Gear and wanted to participate out of mutual affinity.

When testing Metal Gear’s initial concept—hiding and escaping from enemies—Kojima considered it essential to distinguish two failures: that the idea wasn’t properly realized in the game, or that the idea itself wasn’t fun. In the second case he would have canceled the game; handing that decision over to marketing would have removed his ability to turn back and resulted in a typical video game.

“technical limitations of the MSX hardware made it impossible to produce a simultaneous display of the player with multiple enemies”

“Shocked to know Ennio Morricone has passed away.. RIP. I just bought the OST of "The Legend of 1900". I used his music "Here's To You" sing by Joan Baez for MGS V: Ground Zeroes, the song used in the film "Sacco e Vanzetti".”

VIZ's biographical note places Kojima's birth in Tokyo in 1963, his directorial debut with Metal Gear in 1987, the establishment of his independent studio Kojima Productions at the end of 2015, and the release of Death Stranding in 2019.

“And then I made Metal Gear, and I really didn't think it was going to do that well. And it flew off the shelves, and Mr. Oshii was like, "Hideo, you can't make something like that."”

“They can't break free, they can't quit, they can't lose. It felt like that when Metal Gear started gaining fans and I started getting fan letters.”

“I heard stories that the military was hiding information and the FBI had captured aliens. I made an homage to that in the Metal Gear series.”

“You can't show them the inside of your brain. You draw pictures and try to put it into words. But you can't show them in moving pictures.”

“It was my first time meeting him, but I feel like we've known each other since childhood. I think we are going to be good friends.”

“No matter what country you were born in, what ethnicity, what household, everyone is different but everyone's total sum of fortune is the same. So don't give up. That's the message I wanted to convey through this character.”

“What I really wanted to do is something like what they did with Tom and Jerry, with the orchestra watching the performances and timing their music to the actions with symbols and stuff. I want to do that with games so that the music changes in time with what the player is doing.”

“The scariest part is, even if I tell people it's a lie, I can't erase it because it's digital. It's still there. What was originally a joke became worldwide news so basically anyone can create fake news.”

“I've never once said anything to Phil about wanting to create a Death Stranding sequel. I don't know who pulled this kind of information from where.”

“Well, this isn't fake news, but every single day from all over the world, I get messages saying, hey, make a new Metal Gear, or PT, or Boktai, or Zone of the Enders. I take this as a positive thing, but also, as adults, everyone should know that this isn't going to happen, right?”

“I think it takes 3-5 years for a game to receive proper evaluation.”

“Well, I was already thinking about DS2 while I was making DS1. Whenever you're creating a new game or a new IP, it's difficult to establish a game system after just the first game.”

“I referenced it a lot in Metal Gear Solid. Snake and Otacon were really similar to Sako and Vanzetti. So I was going to make it so that in the end, since these two become fugitives, they are made to stand trial.”

“So I looked for the CD, bought it, and realised I wanted to put it into the game. It was fate that we reunited.”

“But I don't remember exactly how we first met. I feel like I've known him from ages ago.”

“In MGS5, Snake isn't really Snake, and Ocelot becomes kind of like the storyteller. And this was really difficult and playing the part of Ocelot was risky, but Troy did an amazing job, so I'm really grateful.”

“I realized you had to do it directly, which is my current style. If the actual person says they can't do it, then I will give it up.”

“You may be playing the hero in the video game, but what if the girl you were in relationship with called you to ask stuff like, 'Do you like me?' or 'Don't you remember me?' We never had a character like that.”

“The boss is kind of mysterious. She's maternal, but she's also like the father figure.”

“We used like 500 or 600 eggs, but we couldn't throw them out, so the staff was going to eat them.”

“In my first idea, Chiko was alive but has become a deranged killer. He was supposed to appear as someone violently killing people, kind of like Christopher Walken's character in The Deer Hunter.”

“We made the CG based off of Otsuka-san and Ginga-san's voices.”

“In Spain, there was a huge line to buy the game because it was the first time that a Spanish audio game was released in the country of Spain.”

“I didn't expect Metal Gear Solid 2 to sell very well, so I did a lot of crazy things in that game. Following Metal Gear Solid 2, though, a lot of pressure was on my shoulders. I couldn't be quite as free after that.”

“I can say that from the first moment I played Metal Gear Solid 2, I knew I was experiencing the work of an artist whose craft just hits different.”

“I want to do something new. But I saw so many people requesting it. And I was thinking, maybe I only have 10 years left. […] And we shook hands and that's how the partnership started.”

Kojima found in his storage the booklet included with the MGS2 limited edition, the MGS3 pamphlet he and his team handed out at E3, and the booklet included with the ANUBIS limited edition. He recalled that they used to make everything in-house at the time. The early visual concept for MGS3 was designed by Kyle. Harry was born in 1961, Kyle in 1962, and Kojima in 1963; MGS3 is set in 1964.

In his conversation with Alejandro G. Iñárritu about DIGGER, Kojima recalled depicting social media taking on a kind of life in Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001), something he felt had now become reality. He saw a structural similarity with DIGGER: untruths swell until they change politics and daily life, leaving people feeling as though they are on a stage being moved by some other force.

Kojima is a video game designer, writer, director, and producer, best known for the Metal Gear franchise and for Death Stranding; he heads his own independent studio, Kojima Productions.

Kojima’s first games as a director were for MSX and computers: Metal Gear (1987), his directorial debut, with which he established the stealth game genre; Snatcher (1988), a graphic adventure with a cinematic presentation inspired by films like Blade Runner; Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990); and Policenauts (1994), another graphic adventure that he designed, wrote and directed.

The Metal Gear Solid saga, which Kojima directed, produced, designed and wrote, runs from Metal Gear Solid (1998, PlayStation) — the jump to 3D that established him — through Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001), Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004), Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008), and Peace Walker (2010), to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015). He announced that The Phantom Pain would be his final Metal Gear project.

Besides Metal Gear, at Konami Kojima produced or supervised other games: he was producer of Zone of the Enders (2001) and of Boktai (2003), executive producer of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (2010) and supervising director of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013).

Kojima created and directed the video games Metal Gear (1987), Snatcher (1988), Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990), Policenauts (1994), Metal Gear Solid (1998), Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001), Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004), Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008), Peace Walker (2010), Metal Gear Solid V (2014–2015), P.T. (2014), Death Stranding (2019) and Death Stranding 2 (2025); he has OD and Physint in development. He has also produced or supervised other video games such as Zone of the Enders, the Boktai series, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Metal Gear Rising.

Kojima wrote that on Policenauts he did almost everything himself — game design, a massive amount of dialogue, the adventure scripts written in simplified language, the storyboards, hit detection, flag management and even the image and sound calls — and that if Metal Gear Solid, made by a team of 100 people, is a Hollywood commercial film, Policenauts is closer to an independent film: in every sense his own colour shows.

“Metal Gear was the first game that was released. There was this other game that I developed that never made it to the market--Lost World. The title was world but with war like a cross between war and world. It was a Mario-esque action game with a story.”

“I really don't like saying this, but it really wasn't up to my standards. The care that I put in the original wasn't there.”

“I wanted to create a game [that played] like the movie, with the character running away· escaping without a fight and trying to avoid being seen by the enemy. I wanted to do that, but I couldn't get approval on that concept alone. I had to add more features.”

“It was my first game that made it to release, so I have a lot of memories. It's my cute boy in that sense.”

“By the way, I'm developing this game called Snake's Revenge, but I know it's not the authentic Snake, so please create a new Snake game of your own.”

“I thought it was very faithful to the Metal Gear concept. I enjoyed it.”

“That is how I got the snake part. I guess the slithering of the snake is definitely not a solid motion. It's smoother, more liquid. I also wanted to create a paradoxical name.”