Metal Gear NES

Metal Gear is Konami’s 1987 stealth-action game, directed by Hideo Kojima and originally released for the MSX2 home computer in Japan before this reworked NES conversion, handled by a different Konami team without Kojima’s direct involvement. You infiltrate a fortified base as Solid Snake, avoiding guard sightlines and alarms rather than fighting head-on, to stop a walking battle tank called Metal Gear.

Its emphasis on avoidance over combat — hiding from patrols, sneaking past cameras — was a significant departure from the action-heavy conventions of most contemporary console games, and it’s widely credited as one of the earliest and most influential stealth games in the medium. The NES version’s altered level design and translation differences from the original MSX2 release are still debated among longtime fans of the series.