Kurt Kalata is an ardent video gamer from New Jersey. He has founded websites such as The Castlevania Dungeon, which focuses on Konami's long running, vampire slaying series, and Hardcore Gaming 101, which gives comprehensive reviews focusing on the history of gaming. In addition to his own sites and books, his writings have appeared in Retro Gamer magazine, The Overstreet Guide to Video Game Collecting, and at 1up, Nintendo Life, Siliconera, and Gamasutra (now Game Developer).

HG101 Presents: Metal Gear, Silent Hill, and Other Konami Classics by Kurt Kalata

Metal Gear Solid. Silent Hill. These two Konami franchises defined the company through the late 1990s and 2000s, pushing forward video game storytelling with their cinematic production and elaborate stories. Join retro video game website Hardcore Gaming 101 as we extensively explore the histories of both series, including a look at Metal Gear's roots in the Japanese PC scene. Additionally, learn the history of Snatcher and Policenauts, two other games by Hideo Kojima which also have close ties with Metal Gear Solid. Also included is the mecha series Zone of the Enders, Konami's homage to classic anime presented with stylish grace.

CURATOR'S NOTE

Metal Gear and Silent Hill are two series which kept Konami in the pop culture consciousness throughout the early 2000s, both based heavily on American movies but with a particular Japanese spin. This book covers the complete history of both of these, along with other works from Hideo Kojima like Snatcher, Policenauts, and Zone of the Enders. – Kurt Kalata

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

By the late 1980s, Konami was a well known entity in the broad culture and industry that grew around the new medium of video games in Japan. Starting out making successful arcade games like Frogger, Time Pilot, and Contra, the company quickly jumped into the burgeoning world of home consoles, following the success of devices like the Famicom, Commodore 64, and MSX. More games needing to be made meant more people needed to make them, so the company staffed up quickly. College graduates were scooped straight from graduation and placed on projects, no matter their grasp of Assembly, C, or BASIC. These new hires were often handed a brief proposal for a game idea, usually following some trend or demand, and given a short amount of time, sometimes only a handful of months, to put everything together.

Hideo Kojima was one such hire, brought into Konami to develop for the MSX platform. After working as Assistant Director on Penguin Adventure, a sequel to one of the company's early forays into console development, he was promoted to Director for his next project and handed a proposal for a war action game, a popular trend at the time. Only, the game materialized with a very different design, one that emphasized evasion rather than confrontation. Initially dubbed "Intruder", the name that was eventually settled on was "Metal Gear", after the bipedal mecha that is of central importance to the story, when it was released in July 1987 for the MSX2 in Japan.