Video GameSeries· 2004· Action

Metal Gear

by 小島 秀夫 Hideo Kojima

Metal Gear: it draws on 2 recorded sources.

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What influenced Metal Gear

The works this one is recorded as drawing on.

Escape from New York

Film · 1981

InfluenceHIGH

Kojima has named it more often than he has named anything else, and the borrowing starts with the name: Solid Snake is Snake Plissken, down to the eyepatch in the concept art and the lone infiltrator sent into a sealed hostile zone because he is expendable and good. What carries: a one-man infiltration of a walled-off territory the state has written off, a countdown, a handler on the radio who is not telling him everything, and a hero who is a soldier the people giving the orders are using rather than a hero. Kojima went further than acknowledgement. Kurt Russell was his first choice to voice the character, and Metal Gear Solid's cast and cutscene grammar are built out of the action cinema Carpenter's film sits at the centre of.

James Bond

Film · 1962

InfluenceMEDIUM

Hideo Kojima has named the Bond films among his foundational influences, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater makes it explicit: a 1960s Cold War setting, a gadget-supplying support team, a Bond-style title sequence and a theme song written as a pastiche of a Bond ballad. The series' mix of espionage, absurd villains and set pieces comes from there.