Stealth Killer: Hideo Kojima's Sleeper Hits

With the Metal Gear Solid mastermind being promoted to VP at Konami, we're looking back at some of his gems you might not know.

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As a kid, you probably didn’t even know—or care—that NES’ Metal Gear was from Japan. All you know was it was a game, it had great grammatical translations (“I feel asleep”), and it was fun. So in all likelihood you had no idea that a young buck designer named Hideo Kojima had just laid the first true cornerstone of his legacy.

People don’t typically buy a game based on the producer’s name, though there are a few stars who can make that claim—Peter Molyneux, Ken Levine, Tim Schafer, Will Wright. The thing is, none of those guys are truly mad geniuses like Hideo. His games always contain some amazing nugget of lunacy, usually in the form of expositional monologues about human nature. Or, uh, incest. In light of Hideo’s promotion last month to VP at Konami Digital Entertainment, we wanted to pay homage to seven of his lesser known games that still bear his left-of-center signature. None of which, believe it or not, are stealth related. We know!

By Ryan Woo

7. Snatcher (MSX2/Sega CD, 1988)

Snatcher was an early window into Kojima’s love of cinema.  Billed as a cyberpunk point and click game, there were multiple “homages” to sci-fi flicks—including the Snatchers themselves, which were basically Terminator endo-skeletons.  At least he was copying good ’80s American sci-fi, and not Flash Gordon and his underpants.

6. Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand (GBA, 2003)

Who else would have been allowed to put a photosensitive light sensor on the game cartridge? Game publishers don’t usually give free reign to game directors to do crazy things like that...unless you’re Kojima. The Sun is in Your Hand indeed, encouraging skin cancer by making pasty little kids go outdoors.

5. Penguin Adventure (MSX, 1986)

We all have to start somewhere, even if it’s designing an action RPG that stars a penguin. The thing is, the game was actually great, and actually made you care about saving a penguin princess, presumably so you could marry her and then happily share the hardest life possible on planet Earth.

 

4. Stock Trading Trainer Kabutore! (DS, 2006)

It’s a stock trading game. How could Kojima possibly insert his trademark sexual spin in this one? Oh, that's right—by making it possible to purchase stocks from The Love Hotel Fund.

 

3. Lunar Knights (DS, 2007)

The fourth game in the Boktai series, Lunar Knights removed the solar functionality, but weather remained a factor, even though it was restricted to in-game mechanics rather than IRL gimmicks. The paraSOL system had several settings, including artic, desert, and tropical rainforest.

 

2. Policenauts (3DO/PC/PSX/Saturn, 1994)

The spiritual successor to Snatcher, Policenauts followed the same point-and-click format. Miraculously, Kojima managed to insert some gloriously awkward sexual tension between the protagonist and Meryl Silverburgh, who as we know would later be be subjected to plenty more sexual innuendo in Metal Gear Solid.

And we’re not talking about subtle tension detectable only by a deft mind. No, it’s the sort of vicarious stuff you’d expect to read in your 13-year-old cousin’s fanfic. Kojima may be brilliant, but he’s a man, too, man. And a man is allowed to have his regressions now and then.

1. Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner (2003, PS2)

See, THIS is how a mech game should be. Sorry, MechWarrior—a giant robot game doesn’t have to make you pilot Rosie O’Donnell going on a midnight snack run during a power outage. The Second Runner took everything great from the frantically fast first game and leveled it all up. And to this day it remains one of gaming's most infuratingly slept-on classics.

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