I recently decided to play a phenomenal old game called Metal Gear Solid via the recently released Metal Gear Solid Master Collection, hoping to show my friends the scene where I could see a man’s bare ass after he gets his lights knocked out and his clothes stolen. But censorship has struck again as I came to find this essential part of my childhood robbed from me via a pair of digital boxer shorts.
Shame, Konami. Shame.
If you’re unfamiliar with the game, or this scene, allow me to explain. Shortly after protagonist Solid Snake attempts to free an NPC from a cell, the prisoner next to him (who he later learns is Meryl) breaks out, incapacitates a guard named Johnny and steals his clothes. He’s left naked on the floor with his ass pointed toward the ceiling, a pixely effect displayed over his naked ass. Or such was the case in my North American copy of the game in the late ‘90s.
After a tense shootout with some guards, you could actually defy censorship in a bold act of freedom by crawling up to Johnny’s ass, taking out your binoculars, and zooming past the censorship bar, revealing crack and all in glorious 1998 graphical fidelity.
But in the 2023 reissued versions found in the Master Collection, Konami has caved to modern, Western demands for modesty and censored this scene by clothing Johnny in a pair of boxers that, no matter how hard I try, or however many angles I try to look at, for however many hours I stare at this digital ass, I can’t zoom past.
This isn’t just about expression either. This censorship cuts into the very lore of Metal Gear Solid, which I hold sacred and can lecture you about for hours at a time. For 25 years I’ve wondered why Meryl stole Johnny’s underwear in addition to his uniform. Or did Johnny choose not to wear underwear at all, an odd choice, especially considering his very unpredictable bowel movements?
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Konami added little else to this collection. No proper frame rate or resolution options above 1080p, no clear way to fix the horrendous screen tearing on PC. No mouse and keyboard support. Just a port of some old copies of the game slapped together with a low-effort menu system that requires multiple executables on PC to launch, and gives me frequent audio problems when I try to stream.
And don’t tell me that I should be happy with the content just because I can still climb in and out of the ladder multiple times in the cell to unlock a scene with Meryl doing situps in her underwear, or that I can follow her quickly into the bathroom to chat with her in her underwear, or that Sniper Wolf still has her shirt open all the way down to her navel.
If Konami and others have their way, I’ll soon be without any naked video game characters. How can we stand for such a thing?
(Editor’s note: I’m gonna come back on Monday to a comments section full of people that can’t interpret sarcasm on a page, aren’t I? — David)
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