User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri May 21, 2021 9:34 am

metalgear_01-1.png

One of the best-selling games of all-time on the MSX home computer was Metal Gear, released in 1987. The MSX was the "big boy" in the Japanese market before the NES showed up, built primarily by Sony. Interestingly it was co-created by Microsoft and the ASCII Corporation but never really saw the light of day in the US.

Metal Gear is a classic action-adventure military-themed button masher originally designed by Hideo Kojima. It had the look and feel of an arcade beat em up, even though it was created on and for the MSX2.

The game was soon ported to the NES and C64, but those ports were shells of the original. There had been rumors the Amiga would get a port, too, but it never actually happened.

Until now.

metalgear_03-1.png

Well-known Amiga dev and musician Hoffman ported code from Z80 to 68000 assembly. It was made to run on either PAL or NTSC machines with zero slow-downs or sprite flicker. All you need is an Amiga with 512K Chip and 512K Fast. That nearly covers every Amiga out there.

More specs and credits listed by Hoffman:
  • Enhanced Amiga Soundtrack and SFX by Hoffman
  • Optional emulated MSX / PSG Music and SFX
  • Full support for CD32 gamepad for keyboard-less gameplay
  • Additional character graphics by Toni Galvez
  • All new ending / credits section
  • For any Amiga with 512kb Chip Ram + 512k Other Ram
  • Bootable disk image for low spec Amigas
  • WHDLoad installer by Psygore
  • Multiple languages support
metalgear_06.png

You can find the download to the game here at the bottom of the page, for free.

User avatar
JoeUser
Dallas, TX

Posted Fri May 21, 2021 1:07 pm

Very cool, thanks!

I remember when the MSX was introduced, but it was a Far East phenomenon, IIRC. It's too bad that it didn't make more headway in the U.S., but perhaps the market was too saturated at the time (coming into the fray a little late).

I'll bet those MSX machines are like hen's teeth nowadays, though...

Thanks again for sharing!

User avatar
fxgogo
Twickenham , U.K.

Posted Fri May 21, 2021 5:36 pm

Been playing it tonight. Amazing game and the music is very cool. Super clean. Damn difficult though. Seems the save only works when you get past certain check points.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri May 21, 2021 7:23 pm

I watched one of my favorite streamers on Twitch, Hayesmaker64, play it tonight. He usually plays C64 games but Amiga makes the rounds sometimes, too.

It looks and sounds superb. It's the kind of port where, when you witness it, think to yourself, "Good lord, if more games had been made or ported to Amiga with this level of quality, who knows what might have happened?" So many arcade ports were just awful. But from a technology standpoint didn't have to be that way. Granted this wasn't an arcade - it was port from a Japanese computer. But still - it's just fantastic.

Both thrilling and oddly sad in a weird way at the same time.

:joystick:

P.S.
Makes me want to get a CD32 controller to play this game, but holy smoke those are spendy these days.

User avatar
Wavemaker
Poland

Posted Sun May 23, 2021 12:53 am

Had a MSX as a kid, great system, easily the best 8 bit platform and incredibly user friendly. I´m planning on getting one again as they´re pretty easy to find in Europe - they were only popular in a handful of countries, Japan, Brazil, Netherlands, Spain and Italy yet still became one of the best selling 8 bit systems as they sold over 5 million in Japan alone.





Return to “Games”