When testing Metal Gear’s initial concept—hiding and escaping from…

“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.”

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.

“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.”

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

“It would still be a hide-and-seek game, but I would create tension by adding a story to go with it.”