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Metal Gear fans have been waiting years to be able to play the first three games in the series on the same platform. The first game, Metal Gear Solid, was limited to the PS1, while the others could be played on the PS2 and PS3. Since all those consoles are effectively dead, recent years saw it incredibly difficult to officially play the game. The Master Collection looked to change that, though recent launch issues have now divided to community.
There’s a couple of minor issues affecting the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection’s launch. For one, the first game Metal Gear Solid is capped to 30FPS. As a PS1 game emulated on next gen consoles or latest gaming PCs, fans have found this incredibly frustrating. Other issues, perhaps more minor, include issues with typos in subtitles and a lack of a CRT scanline filter. These are expected to be implemented following the launch of the game, though.
Fans of the franchise have been waiting years to finally be able to play Metal Gear Solid 3 on PC, though there seems to be a damp tinge in the air. “It’s a lazy cash grab,” says one Redditor who continues that “You get a better experience emulating the originals.”
There’s an element of truth in the issues that have been raised. The above video shows off how you modern PS1 emulators can upscale resolution by nearly 9x. A game that was once 240p can now be played in 4K, making the game look almost unrecognisable. While that’s on PC, there’s also emulators that let you do this on the Xbox Series X. Sure – Konami aren’t necessarily a company that develops emulators, but there’s no doubt a little more effort could have been put into these ports to update their graphics.
There are other members of the Metal Gear community who offer up a slightly more balanced set of opinions. “We don’t have to tell newcomers to buy a PS3 just to play these games,” writes one, while another says that “I can’t wait to play the games again. I hope they find a way to b ring 4 to modern consoles too.”
There’s definitely a contingent of Metal Gear fans who are simply happy to be able to play the games on officially supported hardware and software. If anything, I can get behind this. Not ordinarily a Metal Gear fan, the Master Collection on PS5 was my first exposure to the series. I had always wanted to play it, though having to load up emulators just to experience the PS1 games always put me off slightly. Now with a chance to play it properly, I was thoroughly excited.
My thoughts on the game note that the few graphical issues did not really bother me – especially not the lack of 4K resolution on a PS1 game. At the end of the day, the first one is a game originally designed for the PS1. Despite playing at 720p upscaled to 1080p, I did not find it impossible to play. It’s definitely an old game, but it has it charms. While Konami could have done a litlte b
