There are plenty of memorable and iconic things about the Metal Gear series. From Snake’s eyepatch, to the sound cues, and, of course, the Metal Gears themselves. However, it seems we may not have gotten Metal Gear at all if it wasn’t for one of these trademark features – and you won’t guess which one it is (unless you read the headline, of course).
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Thanks to Shmuplations, we’re finally privy to retro Japanese developer interviews. In one of their latest pieces, they presented a 1999 Nice Games interview with Hideo Kojima, who was still at Konami at the time (thanks, GamesRadar+). In the conversation, Kojima spoke about the one little feature that convinced the top brass to go ahead with Metal Gear.
Kojima spoke about how the senior leadership was very dismissive of his ideas at first, almost making him consider leaving. However, he managed to talk to one of the older employees who managed to throw him a line.
“Taking the lead, he called everyone in the office for a presentation about the game, and after that, the people around me started to change their attitude. It wasn’t exactly a “rebirth” of the Metal Gear project, but it was finally able to start moving in a positive direction,” said Kojima.
“Of course, everyone still had their doubts about the basic premise. They were all asking, “will an escape game really be fun…?” But once we got a working build running, and they saw that exclamation mark pop up when the enemy gets surprised, that sold them on the concept. They all changed their tune then: ‘This is gonna work!'”
The iconic exclamation point and sound cue is synonymous with the Metal Gear series. It has become so popular, in fact, that I’ve heard it as a mobile notification sound for seemingly non-gamers all the way here in India. I’m not sure how it got there, but I’d recognise that sound anywhere.
It’s easy to see why the simple exclamation point may have convinced Konami to give the go ahead. When put together with the sound cue it actually makes you feel like you’ve been caught doing something that could get you in trouble.
