I briefly talked about it onthis week’s RetroforceGO!, but it bears repeating:Metal Gear Solidfor the Game Boy Color, originally known asMetal Gear: Ghost Babel, is probably the bestMetal Geartitle nobody’s heard of.
You’d assume that since it’s on the Game Boy Color, it’d have really ugly graphics. Given the reasonably old handheld it’s on, you’d assume that it’d be plagued by the same sort of irritatingly arbitrary enemy AI of the first and secondMetal Geargames. You’d assume the non-canon story would make the game a pointless waste of time.
You’d be wrong on all three counts. Hit the jump to see why.
Story:
That,basically. That video right there is as non-spoilerish a story summary as you’re likely to get, given the nature of theMetal Geargames.
Basically, the story is par for the course where theMetal Gearseries is concerned — which is to say, a group of terrorists steal a Metal Gear in an effort to become a powerful worldwide army and Snake is brought out of retirement to stop them. Only the names of the bad guys separate the initial scenario of any givenMetal Geargame from another.
After landing in Outer Heaven — I mean, Zanzibar Land — I mean, Shadow Moses — I mean, Galuade, Snake teams up with Holly — I mean, Meryl — I mean, Christine and Dr. Marv — I mean, Otacon — I mean, Jimmy the Wizard to destroy Metal Gear and uncover a massive US-backed conspiracy — I mean, destroy Metal Gear and uncover a massive US-backed conspiracy.
Ghost Babeldiffers mainly from the other titles in that none of it is actually canon. Not unlikeSnake’s Revenge,Ghost Babelfunctions as an alternate sequel to the firstMetal Gear, as a parallel universe version ofMetal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
In an odd way, that’s what makesGhost Babelreally stand out: theMetal Geargames are primarily appreciated for their epic, sprawling storylines, yetGhost Babel‘s is more or less irrelevant to the overall series and the game still remains surprisingly enjoyable.
Gameplay:
Ghost Babelborrows some mechanics from both the originalMetal Geargames, and the more technologically advancedSolidtitles. As a result,Ghost Babelworks as a neat sort of hybrid which successfully bridges the two series in gameplay terms, if not narrative ones.
The bad guys don’t have big, blue cones of vision, but their impossibly difficult AI has been significantly scaled down from the original MSX titles. I can’t get more than a half hour into the originalMetal Gear, but I beatGhost Babelwithin a few weeks; it’s difficult, but fair (and is nicely divided up into stages, to make it easier for occasional play). Enemies won’t magically see you through boxes after a minute of standing around, and the security cameras have a well-defined field of vision.
Many of Snake’s gadgets and weapons fromMetal Gear Solidare back, along with some familiar faces including Colonel Campbell and Mei Ling. The sexy-as-hell 2D graphics have the fluidity of a PSOne game mixed with the NES’s color palette and pixel count.
In a way,Ghost Babelmanages to take all the good stuff from the originalMetal Geartitles, while replacing all the bad stuff withMGSmechanics and ideas. The boss fights are wonderfully different from one another , the story is reasonably engaging considering one of the bosses is actually named “Marionette Owl,” and the stealth gameplay works better than you’d expect it to on a handheld.
Actually,Ghost Babelincludes two moments that, in my mind, actually outdo theMetal Gear Solidgames in some respects. Firstly, the final confrontation against Metal Gear (viewable below), where the player must run from the stomping behemoth and trick it into stepping on land mines before attacking it directly with grenades, may actually be my favorite fight against the actual Metal Gear robot in the series’ history. Where the boss strategy at the end of the firstMetal Gear Solidtitle could be easily summarized as “shoot a bunch of stinger missiles at that big robot,”Ghost Babel‘s fight against the bipedal nuclear tank actually consists of several stages.
Secondly, there’s a bit at the end ofMetal Gear Solidwhere Liquid tells Snake that he only signed up for the mission because “you enjoy all the killing.” Snake grunts, “WHAT?!,” as he tends to do, and then the conversation continues without Liquid really pointing out any concrete evidence behind his assertion. InGhost Babel, however, the main bad guy has roughly the same argument with Snake…except he’s got some numbers to back it up. After condemning Snake for his bloodlust, the villain actually tells Snake exactly how many enemy soldiers he’s killed throughout the course of the game; generally speaking, this tends to hover around at least 50 people, and it really makes Snake (and the player) consider the bad guy’s point. The entire scene functions as a cool sort of precursor to the boss fight with The Sorrow inMGS3, where the player has to manuever around the ghosts of every soldier he’s killed.
I thought it was cool.
Why you’re probably not playing it:
For starters, the English localization team stupidly decided to call itMetal Gear Solidrather thanMetal Gear: Ghost Babel. As a result, I’m sure many American consumers figured the game to be a low-fi remake or port of the PSOne classic rather than a standalone game in its own right.
Secondly, itison the Game Boy Color. I know a lot of people bought a GBC (I still have mine right next to my Game Boy Camera), but that little handheld exists in the period after true relevance, but before nostalgia. If you’ve got one, great; if you don’t have one, you’re probably not rushing out to find one on eBay.
Should you check outGhost Babel? If you really love the gameplay behind theMetal Gearseries, I can’t recommend it enough. If you’re more into the storylines and don’t really care about the gameplay, it might be worth taking a look if only out of curiosity. It’s absurdly easy to NOT emulate, all things considered, and maybe one day it’ll hit the Virtual Console.
