I Revisited Metal Gear Solid (PS1), and Holy Shit.

I Revisited Metal Gear Solid (PS1), and Holy Shit.

I Had Forgotten...

I couldn’t tell you what year it was exactly—mainly because I didn’t get a PlayStation until well into its life cycle. We were never the kind of family that could afford consoles when they were new. But I do remember the first game I ever owned: Tomb Raider, the original, with that blinding neon green "Greatest Hits" spine. Alongside it? A stack of demo discs, handed down through gaming magazines like holy scripture for broke kids.

I remember thinking Tomb Raider’s graphics were the most mind-blowing thing I had ever seen. I remember wrestling with the idea of controlling someone in three dimensions, like my brain just couldn’t process it. I remember—let’s be honest—thinking Lara Croft’s polygonal pyramid boobs were beautiful.

And somehow, when I think back on it now, I remember it all in perfect high definition. Like my childhood brain rendered every jagged edge into 4K. That’s the thing with memory—it doesn’t remember what was there, it remembers how it felt. Remakes don’t look better than the originals. They just try to match how you saw them at the time.

But while I was falling in love with Lara and her tank controls—the only game I had for a good long while—I found myself more and more drawn to the demo discs. Those single-stage windows into full games I’d never get to own, never get to finish, and honestly? Probably never find again. But for a kid without much, they were lifelines. Little doorways into impossible worlds.

Tekken 3. Einhander. Spyro the Dragon. Gex. MediEVIL. Jersey Devil. Half of them I never owned. Most of them I barely even understood. But I played them—over and over—burned them into my brain one stage at a time. Tekken 3 only let you play as Ling Xiaoyu or Eddy Gordo. Einhander gave you a single level up to the first boss. Spyro let you save one lonely dragon before sending you back to the title screen. But those tiny fragments? They were enough. They kept me company when Tomb Raider's tank-like controls became unbearable or when Lara’s low-poly charm stopped being enough to carry me.

And out of all those bite-sized previews, one demo stood out.

One disc that gripped me tighter than any other. One that pulled me back again and again, until it practically wore a groove into my childhood.

The Mighty Playstation Underground JAMPACK Winter '98 Demo Disc

I had to do a little digging—just now, as I was writing this—to figure out exactly which demo disc it was. But yeah, no question about it. Jampack: Winter '98. That’s the one. Which I guess also means that Christmas of ‘98 was the moment I finally got my hands on Metal Gear Solid proper. But we’ll get to that—believe me, we’ll get to that.

The Metal Gear Solid demo was simple. You didn’t get far. No bosses. No deep-cut story beats. You barely scratched the surface of what the full game had waiting. But even so—it felt like a complete game.

Not in terms of length, obviously. I think it ends just after the elevator in the tank hangar. But the depth? The options? The sheer freedom to approach things however the hell you wanted—stealthy or guns-blazing, fists or pistol, sneak past or box up and play possum—that was what made it feel big. It had secrets, it had branching dialogue depending on how you handled the first encounters, it had that SOCOM pistol stashed in the back of the truck like a secret handshake between the devs and the player. It gave you play. Not just a sample.

It didn’t feel like a demo. It felt like a tease. Like someone handing you the first bite of a meal they knew you’d crave afterward. It gave you gameplay, mechanics, atmosphere, character—all in one tight, unforgettable package. Not because it over-delivered for a demo... but because Metal Gear Solid was just that good.

So good, in fact, that I played that disc literally to death. The only game disc—ever—that I wore out from sheer repetition. I don’t mean scratched or misplaced. I mean used up. Like a candle burned to the wick.

Over and over and over again. I knew every guard route, every camera sweep, every line of codec dialogue. But I still wanted more. I needed more. That demo was gateway drug. And I knew, the second I ever got a new game for my PlayStation, exactly what it had to be.

And it Was...

Christmas that same year proved it.

I woke up to Metal Gear Solid in all its two-disc, white-and-red-labeled glory. Not just the game itself, but the Tactical Espionage Action: Metal Gear Solid Official Mission Handbook—that thick, gorgeous "Ultimate Strategy Guide" by Millennium that felt like it weighed more than the console itself.

I hadn’t just been given a game.

I’d been handed the fucking Holy Grail—and the map to find it.

The power was mine.

And I dove in, headfirst.

Obsessed doesn’t even begin to cover it. From the moment that title screen loaded, I was all in. Hooked on every second. The graphics? Lightyears ahead of their time. The enemy AI? Smarter than any game I’d touched. Snake? Coolest motherfucker I’d ever seen. Mei Ling was a total cutie, Naomi was a straight-up goddess, and every villain dripped personality like they were pulled straight out of a twisted Bond film.

Every room felt alive. Every area had layers. Every boss fight felt like its own handcrafted puzzle box. And the lighting, the tension, the sound design—god, the atmosphere. It wasn’t just good. It was perfect.

And above everything else—it gave me freedom.

Freedom to play how I wanted. To go loud or stay silent. To knock a guy out or snap his neck. To crawl, sneak, hide, backtrack, explore, experiment. Do I choke out the guard at the urinal? Do I leave him? Do I pop him in the head and risk the noise?

No game had ever let me think like that before.

It was the first time I realized a game could respect you. Could trust you to make decisions instead of herding you through scripted corridors.

And no, it wasn’t “open-world” in the way games are today—but it felt bigger than that. It was a sandbox in every way that mattered. You could go back, poke around, test strategies, see how things changed depending on your approach. It was wide open in spirit, and that was enough to make it feel limitless.

I go back to it now—decades later—and you know what? It hasn’t aged a fucking day.

Still just as sharp. Just as haunting. Just as iconic.

But hey… maybe you didn’t grow up with it. Maybe you’ve only heard people whisper about it like some sacred text. Maybe you’ve seen screenshots and wondered what the big deal is.

So let me break it down for you.

One of the Greatest Video Game Narratives Ever

Metal Gear Solid isn’t just a video game. It's a masterclass in design, storytelling, and pure goddamn vision. It’s the kind of experience that redefines what you thought a game could be.

At the center of it all is Hideo Kojima, a director who has always thought outside the box. Metal Gear Solid (MGS) was his operatic, high-tech war drama—equal parts espionage thriller, anime fever dream, and psychological character study—rendered through the chunky polygons of 1998 and somehow still more emotionally resonant than 90% of what’s out today.

The game follows Solid Snake, a retired infiltration expert dragged back into the fray to neutralize a terrorist threat on Shadow Moses Island. A rogue nuclear weapons disposal facility has been overtaken by FOXHOUND, a black ops unit gone rogue, and Snake is the only one capable of stopping them.

But this wasn’t just your standard "kill the bad guys" affair. No. Snake wasn’t just a badass with a gruff voice and a cigarette. He was tired. Haunted. A tool sharpened too many times. And the villains? Liquid Snake, Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven—they weren’t just bosses. They were characters, each with motives, pain, personality. They talked to you. They challenged you combatively and philosophically.

One minute you’re dodging surveillance cameras and crawling through air ducts. The next, you’re being forced to swap controller ports to defeat a psychic, or choosing whether to save a life at the cost of your own morality. The game literally broke the fourth wall and expected you to keep up.

And somehow, amidst all the nanomachines, nuclear deterrents, and cardboard boxes, it tackled war, identity, free will, and the human cost of conflict. You weren’t just sneaking past guards—you were unraveling a conspiracy wrapped in tragedy and whispered through codec calls between damaged people trying to cling to purpose.

The voice acting? Top tier. David Hayter’s performance as Snake became the voice of a generation. The score? Melancholic and cinematic. The pacing? Razor-sharp. And the freedom of approach—kill, sneak, knock out, crawl, or distract—felt like a revelation.

There’s a reason why Metal Gear Solid is still held up as one of the greatest games of all time. It erased genre boundaries. It made a generation of gamers realize that the medium could be just as powerful as film or literature. That it was art. That gameplay could be story, and story could be gameplay.

When people debate whether video games are art, I always come to MGS first to say "Yes, they absolutely, 100% are."

And Metal Gear Solid is a Louvre level masterpiece, even to this day.

I Literally Just Played it Again

And I’d kind of forgotten.

Forgotten just how much time I actually poured into this game. How obsessively I squeezed every drop of content from it. I beat it on every difficulty. Explored every corner, uncovered every secret, triggered every alternate codec line and boss interaction. I tested every escape route from the prison cell—under the bed, with the ketchup trick, didn’t matter—I did them all.

I caught up to Meryl fast enough to see her in her underwear. Stared at her long enough to make her blush beet red. Fought every boss in every way the game would let me. Studied every system, every room, every mechanic until I could practically live on Shadow Moses without a map.

Whatever there was to do in Metal Gear Solid, I did it. Twice. Then again. Then again. Then again.

But somewhere along the way, I forgot just how much this game meant to me.

Until I booted it up again, just last week.

And holy hell—there it was. All of it. Like stepping into a dream you forgot you ever had, but your body remembers. That deep muscle memory of love.

Because here’s the truth: no matter how many sequels came after, no matter how hard they tried (and failed) to recapture the magic with Twin Snakes, the original Metal Gear Solid still holds a power that hasn’t dulled with time.

If anything, its brilliance is even sharper now.

Twin Snakes? Too smooth. Too polished. It strips the original of its grit, its texture, its color. The voice acting? Flatter. The music? Less haunting, less dynamic. Everything is technically “better,” but soulless. A sterile echo of something that once breathed fire.

Because the magic of the original Metal Gear Solid didn’t just come from what it could do. It came from what it had to do, working within the limits of its time—and transcending every single one of them.

Six bosses, maybe. Each on screen for what, ten minutes max? And yet you knew them. You understood them. Felt for them. They were real. The game builds its world and its people with such elegant precision that nothing feels wasted. Nothing feels empty. It’s packed—overflowing—with style, substance, and soul.

Romance. Action. Cool chicks. Tough dudes. Genius mechanics. Graphics that still punch above their weight. Controls that, to this day, feel smooth as butter. Sound design that matters. Storytelling that threads isolation and intimacy through every hallway and codec call.

And Solid Snake? The guy’s a walking contradiction in the best way. Gruff, stoic, smooth-talking, irresistible. Every woman falls for him not because the script says so—but because he’s fucking Solid Snake. And somehow, it works. It all works.

The sniper. The psychic. The cyborg ninja. Every single character and concept that should feel like a wild tonal shift instead lands perfectly because Kojima, somehow, sells it. Makes it make sense. Grounds it in emotional weight and narrative cohesion.

There’s nothing clunky. Nothing cheap. Nothing wrong.

It’s just... perfect.

Even now. Nearly 30 years later.

The Game Really is Solid

Eventually, I’ll put together a top 10. Maybe even a top 20. Favorite games of all time. And Metal Gear Solid—the original, the PS1 classic—will absolutely be on it. No hesitation. No debate. No “well, technically…”

It’s just in.

Because after replaying it recently, I can say with absolute confidence—it’s not nostalgia. Not even close.

Nostalgia is what makes you forgive the cracks. The rough edges. The janky camera or the weird voice direction or the blocky hands. But Metal Gear Solid? It doesn’t need your forgiveness. It doesn’t ask for nostalgia.

It’s still that smooth. Still that sharp. Still that smart.

Everything—everything—about this game holds up. The pacing. The characters. The cinematic ambition. The gameplay systems. The level design. The structure of the whole damn thing. Every element feels intentional, like Kojima and his team had one shot to prove what video games could be—and they nailed it.

The story has weight without wasting time. The mechanics feel modern even now. The performances—gritty, raw, honest—still land. It’s not a perfect game because you remember it being perfect. It’s perfect because it is.

Now don’t get me wrong, the Metal Gear series as a whole is one of gaming’s most iconic franchises. It goes all the way back to the MSX2 in 1987, when a little pixelated Snake had to infiltrate Outer Heaven. It survived console jumps, hardware generations, publisher fallouts, even Kojima’s own departure from Konami. It gave us Sons of Liberty, Snake Eater, Peace Walker, Guns of the Patriots, Ground Zeroes, and The Phantom Pain.

There are so many brilliant entries. Some of them are legendary in their own right. Snake Eater is a masterpiece of tone and theme. The Phantom Pain is an open-world sandbox of systems colliding in glorious chaos.

But none of them—not a single one—hit the same way the original Metal Gear Solid does.

None are as tight. None are as focused. None are as flawlessly executed from beginning to end.

It is lightning in a bottle.

A moment in gaming history where everything—hardware, vision, ambition, restraint—came together and made something transcendent.

And if you’ve never played it—or haven’t played it in years—then you owe it to yourself to change that.

Seriously.

Here’s the Steam link to the Master Collection Go. Right now. Download it. Play it. Don’t read about it. Experience it.

Then come back here—when the credits roll and your heart’s still pounding—and re-read all of this.

And nod along with every word.

Because you’ll get it.

You’ll finally understand why some of us never left Shadow Moses.