Grave Gamer News & Views — legacy collection

MGS: The Legacy Collection Skipping 360; “MGS4 is Just Too Enormous”

Despite both Metal Gear Rising and the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection  making the jump to Xbox 360 without a hitch, Konami’s newest box set, Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, will release as a PS3 exclusive.  The reason?  The hefty inclusion of MGS4 and its landslide of data.

Series mastermind Hideo Kojima recently cleared up the matter, which is apparently an issue of storage.  “I’m sorry to say an Xbox 360 version isn’t being released,“ said Kojima.  "Because an Xbox 360 version of MGS4 hasn’t gone on sale.  To explain the situation, the amount of data in MGS4 is just too enormous.”

Sony’s lean on Blu-Ray media meant Kojima Productions could stuff as much content as they wanted back in 2008 when the closing chapter in Solid Snake’s saga dropped into stores.  Porting the game to the Xbox 360’s DVD format, on the other hand, meant the developers would have to stretch their magnum opus across seven separate discs…Significantly more work than it was worth, unfortunately for Xbox fans.

And compromise in this situation would mean an incomplete package for collectors.  “If we released a version on the Xbox 360 without MGS4, then it’s not The Legacy Collection,” said Hideo.  Don’t give out hope completely, though, Microsoft loyal.  Kojima hasn’t ruled out the next Xbox as a potential home for the collection…So call it a maybe before never rolls around.

Konami Confirms Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection for PS3

Fans of the engrossing, albeit extremely convoluted, Metal Gear Solid series lit up like one of Snake’s cancer sticks when the franchise’s creator Hideo Kojima took to Twitter and teased us with this mysterious box art.  Featuring several incarnations of Snake both Naked and Solid – for the uninitiated, I apologize for your horrible confusion – the imagery hinted at the possibility of yet another gathering of the stealth-espionage games following 2011’s MGS HD Collection.

Today, Konami confirmed the artwork is for The Legacy Collection, a PlayStation 3 bound box set that groups together eight pivotal entries from the decades old franchise, slated for this June.  Here’s the lineup:

• Metal Gear Solid
• Metal Gear Solid 2: HD Edition
• Metal Gear Solid 3: HD Edition
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Trophy Edition
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD Edition
• Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions

The HD remaster of MGS3 is based on the Subsistence re-release of the game which included the MSX versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, rounding out Legacy’s roster to eight installments of warfare philosophy and crafty box disguises.  The collection is a few PSP games short of a complete deck and Nintendo’s ironclad license over The Twin Snakes means that lost gem has likely sunk with the Gamecube. 

But as far as continuity goes the Solid saga is well represented, and if you’ve somehow managed to live and act like a gamer without having played a single title in this historic series, the Legacy Collection is a great way to nuke that problem.