Metal Gear

Metal Gear is a Japanese video game franchise created by Hideo Kojima, beginning with Metal Gear in 1987 for the MSX2 home computer, which introduced stealth based gameplay built around avoiding detection rather than direct combat, a design Kojima adopted partly because of the hardware's technical limitations on displaying multiple enemies at once. The series follows the special operations soldier Solid Snake and, in later prequel entries, his genetic progenitor Big Boss, across missions to stop the deployment of Metal Gear, a recurring bipedal weapons platform capable of launching nuclear weapons, and it is widely credited as one of the founding franchises of the stealth game genre alongside contemporaries including Tenchu and Thief. Metal Gear Solid, released in 1998 for the PlayStation, is particularly cited for its cinematic storytelling and voice acted cutscenes, which helped establish narrative driven console gaming as a mainstream expectation, and the franchise, which Kojima left Konami in the mid 2010s after completing, has sold more than 60 million units worldwide across its main series.