The Japanese use of the circle button. The overhead view. The fourth-wall breaking. The endless codec conversations, full of unique dialogue. The bizarre touches like sleeping guards, exclamation marks above rats heads, impenetrable easter eggs.

If the Genesis, SNES, and NES were my gaming preschool, the Playstation and Playstation 2 were my gaming education. I was only two or three when my dad brought home the PS1. He brought it home with some racing game, Contender 2, and a Pizza Hut demo disc. The very same disc featured in the first demo derby.

I remember stumbling through the Tomb Raider III demo but never figuring it out, watching my dad play the Metal Gear Solid demo, and shortly graduating to playing it myself--endlessly! I bet I've played Metal Gear Solid (and it's demo) more than I've played any other game, ever. The inimitable language of Metal Gear is one that has been burned into my brain before I had most of my phonetics down. I even brought the game case to Thanksgiving once, so I could look at the case and manual. I remember talking to my great grandma. "This game has mature themes (I pronounced it them-s), but I can handle it." I remember zooming in on the knocked out guards pixelated butt. You can see it if you zoom in far enough.

Watching Metal Gear Scanlon has been extremely eye-opening for me because I've never truly got to realize the games greatness, or strangeness! I'm mostly taken aback by how different Metal Gear has managed to be throughout the years, even as its moved towards traditional western conventions, yet nothing is really like it. Metal Gear is influential, yet it has no imitators.

I wrote a post about Wolfenstein and difficulty in games earlier this week, and realized that whenever the guards in that game went into alert status, I would take it as undesirable, if not totally recognizing it as some sort of interactive failure. This is a side effect of my stealth-heavy Metal Gear education. For better or for worse, my extensive time with Metal Gear Solid has informed every game I've ever touched in my life in some way. The series here on GB has made me re-appreciate it in a lot of ways.

I've been thinking. Has any other wildly successful game been so different, and remained so different and isolated? Has anybody else here ever grown up with a game so much that it changed the way they played games forever, without even realizing why?

Great read. Metal Gear too changed the way I played games forever. I would also say Ocarina of Time, made me want to search every nook and cranny every time I picked up a new adventure game. I only realized this as I got older and didn't have as much time to dedicate to gaming. Also I think Goldeneye changed the way everyone played FPS's.

@bboys2231: For sure! I had all the time in the world when I first got acquainted with Metal Gear, I would find everything and think nothing of it. Watching Metal Gear Scanlon, I think the body armor is the only thing I've never gotten-that was a shocking surprise seeing that.

A really mundane "shocking" surprise, but I thought I knew all their was to know about that game in a way. Do you think that Goldeneye changed the FPS landscape more, or Call of Duty 4? Was CoD4 influential in anyways beside the way they handled the multiplayer?

Iron-sights. Every FPS from now on will have iron sights because of CoD4.

@corevi: That's a great point, I don't know if I would've thought of that. Were FPS games just from the hip (more or less) to that point?

I wasn't born in 2007, I just played a lot of third-person stuff. The only other FPS games I really remember playing the shit out of were 007: Agent Under Fire and 007: Nightfire.

@regularassmilk: It was basically this.

@corevi said:

@regularassmilk: It was basically this.

HAHAHAHA! I love this.

My first Metal Gear experience was going into the water in the beginning. There was glare in the room and I couldn't see what was happening so I was ready to bring it back to Blockbuster.

I gave it a shot later in the day and had my mind fucking blown. So returning to it was an incredibly important decision. Especially since MGS 3 got me back into games after quitting for a few months because of college. The series is essential to my gaming life.

As far as growing up with something? Sonic 3 & Knuckles was the first time where I really dug into a game. Finding all the secrets, mastering the gameplay, becoming obsessed with the damn thing. Over the years, that game really turned me into the hardcore video game man I am today.

That's a tough call. I think Goldeneye created the foundation, and CoD4 brought that foundation to a whole new level with not just multiplayer, but really giant, movie like set pieces. I fee like before CoD4, our FPS's put the story on a back burner. While a lot might argue CoD's story isn't very good (I would probably agree), there is a priority from the team to create a narrative experience, besides creating solid mechanics.