Metal Gear franchise sells more than 31 million since its inception

It's been 25 years since the original Metal Gear spawned from the mind of Hideo Kojima and launched on the MSX2. From then through right up until last year, the series has surpassed more than 31 million units sold. That's a whole lot of solid snaking, and Konami, Kojima and co. definitely deserve a nice round of applause and congratulations.

Of course, that number doesn't include sales for the recently released Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D, which launched on Nintendo's 3DS earlier this month. Also, I'm sure plenty more folks have purchased some copies of the Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection since Dec. 31 of last year, considering it only came out in November.

Konami included this nugget of info on its Japanese website, in a post detailing the series' inclusion in the Smithsonian's "Art of Video Games" exhibit, which is running from March 16 to Sept. 30 at the American Art Museum in Washington D.C. (More applause!)

Since Metal Gear is one of my favorite franchises of all time, I think I'll celebrate this bit of news by taking a drive up to D.C. to check out the exhibit... in a Shagohod.

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zippdementia Mar 19, 2012

It is, if nothing else, among the most memorable video game series out there and very unique. That's one thing that's both great and terrible about the Metal Gear Solid series, it's uniqueness. Great, because you can't scratch that itch with any other game. Terrible, because when they eff it up, like they seem to do with every even numbered game in the series, it's just sad.

Roto13 Freelancer Mar 19, 2012

The most wonderful things about MGS2 are the things nobody seems to actually get and be able to appreciate. It's kind of sad.

zippdementia Mar 19, 2012

I went back and played it recently. I still enjoy all the rampant symbolism. I enjoy less that characters constantly point out that symbolism as if I'm somehow both blind and have the exposure level of a four year old. And I'm sorry, but Raiden just sucks in that game. It has nothing to do with the fact that he's not Snake and more to do with the fact that he's more of a pansy than Lester the Unlikely.

bbbmoney Mar 19, 2012 edited

I strongly prefer the Raiden in MGS2, it's a shame Kojima felt he had to destroy a character because of the backlash (which really stemmed from lack of Snake, and how Raiden wasn't like him).

Anyways,I enjoyed the MGS's run on the PS2 quite a bit. MGS4 was pretty cool fan service in terms of wrapping things up, but the game was very lacking, and the cutscenes were really thrown in there. The ending fight should of been to a much better game, because that part was perfect.

JoeTheDestroyer Staff Mar 20, 2012

I actually liked MGS2. Maybe I wasn't the biggest fan of Raiden, but the game as a whole was enjoyable.

darketernal Mar 20, 2012

MGS2 still holds the highest mark on Metacritic of all MGS games, I think. MGS 3 which was my personal favorite has a 91 while 2 which was fantastic(though I admit I prefer Snake much-much more to Raiden) has a 96.

zippdementia Mar 20, 2012

I agree, holdphone, that Raiden became really dumb and pointless in MGS4, but his role in MGS2 was no less meaningless. I know what Kojima was going for... he was going for an innocent soldier, the kind of soldier that actually had emotions and reactions to his situation, to counter Snake's cold cynicism and monotone acceptance of his role. It was a cool concept but Hideo's writing skills (or the writing skills of his team) were not up to capturing that in dialogue. It came off as stilted, overblown, and unrealistic. The running theme of Raiden not remembering what day it was had small enough value that it should have been scrapped and replaced with something more identifiable, and any humanity that WAS contained in the character was washed away by the colonel turning into an alien and saying shit like "I like flowers."

In other words, MGS2 lost its focus.

Roto13 Freelancer Mar 20, 2012 edited

The point of Raiden is that Raiden is you.

His VR training was your MGS1. His admiration for Snake and seeing him as some kind of mythical supersoldier was yours. His constantly being lied to and misinformed (which is the core of the story of MGS2) was you thinking MGS2 was going to be about Solid Snake and have Vulcan Raven in it and stuff.

The story of MGS is about an AI that can filter information to make the masses believe whatever it wants them to believe. By selecting what to make known, it can make the world believe anything is true. All of the media leading up to the release of MGS2 showed Snake on the tanker. Every eight-minute trailer was carefully crafted to intentionally mislead you and make you believe that MGS2 was something it wasn't, just like the AI in the story does.

The greatness of MGS2's story couldn't be contained by the game itself. MGS2 never lost its focus. It was so focused, you were already in the story long before the game was released.

zippdementia Mar 20, 2012 edited

Yeah, except again the writing is so bad that the point is completely lost. Watson, of Sherlock Holmes fame, was an everyman. The Onion Knight in Game of Thrones was an everyman. Togusa in Ghost in the Shell. Shinji Ikari in Evangelion. The point is that these characters were well-written and felt real because of it. Then the audience identified with them and was really identifying with itself... it was a cool thing that happened.

Not the case in MGS2.

No matter how grand the concept, it's pointless if it isn't executed well. The fact that Raiden was completely despised by the majority of people who played the game isn't some sort of interesting reflection on self loathing, it's a sign of how poorly written the character was. Of course, Raiden's only one instance in a string of poorly written characters. Johnny Sasaki from MGS4 springs instantly to mind as the pinacle of bad writing from the MGS series.

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