Play Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake Online

Summary

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake rolled onto the MS X2 as Konami’s follow‑up to the original Metal Gear, penned by series guru Hideo Kojima. He sparked its development as a counter‑point to the parallel NES sequel Snake’s Revenge, which was aimed at Western markets. Though the MSX2 version never launched outside Japan, it resurfaced years later with a full English translation bundled in the Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence remake for PS2, and again in the HD Edition and the Master Collection.

The game takes stealth to a new tactical level: enemies now patrol across multiple screens, possess a 45‑degree field of vision and react to sound, triggering an on‑screen alert counter that ticks down once they lose track of you. Players can kneel, crawl, use a 3×3 radar grid, set mines, launch Stingers, and distract guards with robotic mice or a camouflage mat, while new rations and a revamped transceiver (now face‑based and context‑sensitive) broaden the toolkit.

Character portraits borrowed Hollywood faces—Snake echoing Mel Gibson, Big Boss channeling Sean Connery—and the soundtrack benefitted from Konami Kukeiha Club’s compositions on the MSX2’s custom SCC sound chip, delivering richer music and effects than the system’s standard audio.

Storyline

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (often called Metal Gear 2) takes place in 1999, four years after the original. Solid Snake, a retired FOXHOUND operative, is called back by Roy Campbell to infiltrate Zanzibar Land, a heavily fortified Central Asian state. His mission is to rescue the kidnapped Czechoslovak biologist Dr. Kio Marv, who engineered the algae OILIX that can produce petroleum‑grade hydrocarbons, and to stop the new nuclear‑armed Metal Gear D.
Snake receives radio support from Campbell, McDonnell Miller, George Kasler and Yozev Norden, while on the ground he works with CIA operative Holly White, StB agent Gustava Heffner, and the original Metal Gear designer Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar. The story reveals that Big Boss survived the first game and now leads Zanzibar Land, and that Gray Fox pilots Metal Gear D.
After battling bosses such as Black Color, Running Man and Ultra Box, Snake destroys Metal Gear D, defeats Gray Fox and a wounded Big Boss using a makeshift flamethrower, and escapes with Holly, delivering the OILIX formula to Campbell.