Back in May, a bunch of Metal Gear-loving modders thought they’d achieved the impossible: according to a team member, they’d gotten permission from Konami to proceed on an up-rezzed re-make of the original 1987 Metal Gear game. Work was coming along nicely too, with pro developers on board to help. But now the project is dead.
The first appearance of Snake wasn’t playable for a long time before getting included with Metal Gear 3: Subsistence and the Metal Gear Solid HD Collections. Mod team Outer Heaven was working on a project in Valve’s Source engine — initially reported by fansite Metal Gear Informer back in May — that would have re-imagined that original game for the current day.
According to posts made by Ian Ratcliffe — one of the re-make’s organisers — a Konami rep said that the project could go ahead as long as it wasn’t going to be made for profit. Outer Heaven was looking to add members to its team as recently as June and had gotten longtime Snake voice actor David Hayter to contribute lines to a trailer. (Ratcliffe told me that Hayter contacted him after fans bombarded him with tweets asking him to play Snake and that Hayter said “he’d love to do the gig.”) But new posts from Ratcliffe on MGSForums say that the shutdown seems to have happened because Konami’s various divisions couldn’t agree as to whether the Metal Gear re-make should go ahead.
When contacted by Kotaku, Ratcliffe gave his side of the story, saying that the agreement he got from Konami was a verbal one:
The agreement was made verbally, we first got approval a couple of months back after being told to take the moddb page down. Following that Jay Boor from Konami UK, told me that the agreement was getting written up by Japans legal team. (We were contacted by a couple of guys from Japan initially but since it’s all been through Jay.) We were told to keep the page down as they wanted to make the announcement once E3 was out of the way.
I’m not really sure what happened to be honest, we had a lot of back and forth with Jay and he was in full support of the project. It seems that the whole of Konami was divided on whether we should go ahead or not but I think ultimately it was Japans decision.
I totally understand their reason in doing so, not matter how disheartened the team is, we thank them from the bottom of our hearts for all that they have done, Jay especially. Not to forget the huge amount of support we got from the fans, to which we’re more than grateful for. We got to work alongside industry professionals, it’s been really inspiring and I feel privileged to have been a part of it. We aren’t gonna be sour about the whole thing it’s the experience that counts.
We’re now in the planning stages of making our own IP, in the words of Liquid Snake – “It’s not over yet!”
While rare, there is a precedent — in the form of 2012’s Street Fighter vs. Mega Man — for fan games released with the support and blessing of publishers. But it seems this won’t be happening with the Metal Gear re-make. Ratcliffe said he heard from Boor this morning that Konami doesn’t want the project to continue. Kotaku has contacted Konami for comment on this story and will update it if they respond.
Comments
14 responses to “Konami Approved Then Cancelled Metal Gear Fan Remake, Devs Say”
What does Konami even have outside of Metal Gear anymore? Last Konami published title I bought was Skull Girls and they absolutely screwed those developers over.
Konami does Castlevania, right? Don’t they also do Yu-Gi-Oh and stuff too?
More like “Konami does fuck all with Castlevania”.
Also Silent Hill, Bomberman (through their purchase of Hudson) and Pro Evolution Soccer to name a few more.
Pokies.
They have fitness centers. That’s really their two major sources of revenue; metal gear and fitness centers.
What a bummer. I don’t see any downside to this for Konami?
Unless Konami had / have plans to re release an HD remake themselves.
Yeah, but somehow I doubt it? If so, they probably would have known this back in May and could have nixed it from the get-go.
not necesarily, considering they were only verbally given the go ahead from one bloke at Konami UK. It’s only Konami Japan that has any say in anything.
Yeah you stick it to ’em Komani. You protect that scarcely available, 27 year old video game from these horrible, nasty, not-for-profit modders! How dare they try to do something creative and fun with your Intellectual Monopoly at absolutely no benefit to themselves!
Konami have quite a few franchises. Apart from Metal Gear, they have Frogger, International Track and Field, Silent Hill, Dance Dance Revolution, Pro Evolution Soccer and quite a few more which are more for the Japanese market. They are more involved with slot machines and arcade games than home games, however. I can’t see why they would do this, but they do have the right to do so.
Could they just rename it a bit and release it anyway? Metal… cog?
Maybe Kojima’s ego got in the way, perhaps he wasn’t available or invited to oversee and ensure everything was to his liking and pushed to have the project cancelled or benched until he had time to take credit for it himself and also add more cut-scenes. But this is just a guess.