Back in May, a bunch of Metal Gear-loving modders thought theyâd achieved the impossible: according to a team member, theyâd gotten permission from Konami to proceed on an up-rezzed re-make of the original 1987 Metal Gear game. Work was coming along nicely, too, with pro developers on board to help. But, now, the project is dead.
The first appearance of Snake wasnât playable for a long time before getting included with Metal Gear 3: Subsistence and the Metal Gear Solid HD Collections. Mod team Outer Heaven was working on a project in Valveâs Source engineâinitially reported by fansite Metal Gear Informer back in Mayâthat would have re-imagined that original game for the current day.
According to posts made by Ian Ratcliffeâone of the re-makeâs organizersâ a Konami rep said that the project could go ahead as long as it wasnât going to be made for profit. Outer Heaven was looking to add members to its team as recently as June and had gotten longtime Snake voice actor David Hayter to contribute lines to a trailer. (Ratcliffe told me that Hayter contacted him after fans bombarded him with tweets asking him to play Snake and that Hayter said âheâd love to do the gig.â) But new posts from Ratcliffe on MGSForums say that the shutdown seems to have happened because Konamiâs various divisions couldnât agree as to whether the Metal Gear re-make should go ahead.
The agreement was made verbally, we first got approval a couple of months back after being told to take the moddb page down. Following that Jay Boor from Konami UK, told me that the agreement was getting written up by Japans legal team. (We were contacted by a couple of guys from Japan initially but since itâs all been through Jay.) We were told to keep the page down as they wanted to make the announcement once E3 was out of the way.
Iâm not really sure what happened to be honest, we had a lot of back and forth with Jay and he was in full support of the project. It seems that the whole of Konami was divided on whether we should go ahead or not but I think ultimately it was Japans decision.
I totally understand their reason in doing so, not matter how disheartened the team is, we thank them from the bottom of our hearts for all that theyâve done, Jay especially. Not to forget the huge amount of support we got from the fans, to which weâre more than grateful for. We got to work alongside industry professionals, itâs been really inspiring and I feel privileged to have been a part of it. We arenât gonna be sour about the whole thing itâs the experience that counts.
Weâre now in the planning stages of making our own IP, in the words of Liquid Snake â âItâs not over yet!â
While rare, there is a precedentâin the form of 2012âs Street Fighter vs. Mega Manâfor fan games released with the support and blessing of publishers. But it seems this wonât be happening with the Metal Gear re-make. Ratcliffe said he heard from Boor this morning that Konami doesnât want the project to continue. Kotaku has contacted Konami for comment on this story and will update it if they respond.
