When most people think of the Metal Gear Solid series, masterpieces like Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater are likely the first games to come to mind. I mean, the hit ratio for bangers is exceptionally high for Metal Gear. However, there's one game that deserves its flowers, and that's Metal Gear: Ghost Babel. As this unique moment in the series turns 26, I want to take you on a trip back to the remains of Outer Heaven.
The Metal Gear games are often associated directly with Sony, thanks to the genre-defining success of Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation One. With Konami eager to expand Metal Gear Solid's appeal beyond a DualShock controller, the developer tasked Hideo Kojima and his collaborators with making a Game Boy game. Speaking to Famitsu in 1999, Kojima says, "We received a request from Europe asking us why we weren't making a Game Boy version too. They're crazy over Metal Gear in Europe, so we decided to give it a shot."
At the same time, Kojima's team had begun researching the capabilities of the PlayStation 2, which would launch first across Japan in March 2000. "While the PS2 is pretty good in terms of visuals and sounds, I wanted to be bold and re-explore the question of 'what is a game'. Naturally, we couldn't use polygons, but I thought we would re-evaluate the essence of Metal Gear in sprite form." You see, Metal Gear: Ghost Babel isn't a straight-up port of Metal Gear Solid. It's not even canon to Metal Gear's dense and mind-bending lore.
Instead, Ghost Babel acts as a sequel to the original Metal Gear, released for the MSX2 in July 1987. It's an alternative take, set years after Operation Intrude N313, where Solid Snake is tasked with taking the TX-55 Metal Gear and eliminating the Outer Heaven's main antagonist, Big Boss. Well, not that Big Boss. It's all a bit complicated. All I will say is you should play The Phantom Pain, too. Plot details aside, Ghost Babel is super ambitious for the time.
Directed by Shinta Nojiri alongside Kojima in a producer role, I still think it's a technical marvel. Small quality-of-life changes like enabling diagonal movement, removing the need for flip-screen scrolling (think early Zelda games), and making the most of the Game Boy Color's hardware make it pop. On those flip-screens, Ghost Babel sheds them so the screen scrolls naturally along with Snake. Just the level ready and raring to go, no matter which direction you take. It serves as a great bridge between MSX2 nostalgia, while retaining a few gameplay beats from Metal Gear Solid.
Even without all of the polish of the PlayStation One, Nojiri's team undoubtedly gets the most out of the Game Boy Color. There are flourishes of the design language of its console predecessor, while embracing what made the MSX2 entry so enduring. The reason it looks brilliant is that Ikuya Nakamura returns as an artist.
For those of you who don't know, Nakamura aided in creating the textures for MGS on the PS1. Seeing Snake's bandana move with the wind never fails to make me smile. Norihiko Hibino and Kazuki Muraoka's score is also exceptionally sauced up. Musical stings like Intimidation are earworms, but Reminiscence's melody is a surprisingly contemplative tune that you wouldn't expect to come from your Game Boy Color's speakers.
What really works for me is that Ghost Babel doesn't feel like a compromise of the series's signature stealth. It's an experiment, one that would yield two more entries from Nojiri, Metal Gear Acid 1 and 2 on the PSP. They're hardly among the best PSP games for me personally, but I do applaud the vision all these years later. Throughout its 13 levels, you get the same taste of espionage action the series thrives on, with plenty of lore nuggets to seek out.
I find it fascinating that it makes reference to Sons of Liberty, as the VR missions put you in the shoes of a soldier called Jack. Is that our boy Raiden? It could well be. 15 years after its release, The Phantom Pain even contains a couple of nods to Ghost Babel, from in-game posters to throwaway lines of dialogue. For a long time, though, it felt like Ghost Babel would remain inaccessible outside of owning a cartridge or seeking it out through other means.
Luckily, 2026 is a massive year for it, as it becomes a new Switch game to look forward to. You can experience Ghost Babel within the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol 2 release in August. It comes with a few modern-day tweaks, including remapable controls, visual updates, and the ability to rewind gameplay.
There's every chance Konami could mess this up, but I'm hopeful that it'll do the game justice on the Nintendo Switch 2.