Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection (Vol. 1 - 24th October 2023; Vol. 2 officially in the works)

[Julius]

On 5/25/2023 at 4:08 PM, Julius said:

I'm curious to see if they do have Mantis reading your "memory card" this time, too, considering that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and (hopefully) Suikoden will both be out on modern consoles by then, but given this is Konami, I could see them giving it a complete pass. I think I remember reading something about the PC version skipping that dialogue? 

Well here's the answer to that question! You'll be able to create save data for any PS1 Konami titles not released on modern platforms to recreate the memory part of the Psycho Mantis battle. 

Kind of blown away by some of the extra flourishes Konami are adding to this collection, got to give credit where credit is due!

Also, it's been a long minute since I've booted up a PS1, so I might be off here, but the memory card editing screen being 3x5 is a recreation of the PS1 memory card screen, right? If so, that's really neat! 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Julius

[Dcubed]

All those nice touches, yet they can’t be bothered to ensure that the games don’t run like arse on Switch 

[Dcubed]

On 22/08/2023 at 3:04 PM, Dcubed said:

1080p on PS5/Series X is still crap, just less crap than the Switch version.

Nope.  Turns out that Konami lied.  Now that the game is out, turns out that it runs in 720p on all platforms, with a low quality bilinear upscale to 1080p (and that’s before the TV/console/PC upscales it again to 4k).  So it actually looks worse than the original HD Collection release.

#Fuckonami

[darksnowman]

I'm looking forward to getting this sometime. The Switch has been excellent for providing the opportunity to give all kinds of non-Nintendo games a go. 

[Julius]

The 'Production Line' video below has apparently detailed some upcoming updates and plans for the Collection:

Should've launched in a better state, of course, but kudos to them for plugging away at sorting the issues post-launch. 

From the summary I read (the video is in Japanese) it sounds like they teased an upcoming, larger scale event with a focus on new projects.

Volume 2, perhaps? 

Edited March 19 by Julius

[Dcubed]

How very Konami to release an "Our Game Sucks" stream.

Not exactly very confidence inspiring when they aren't comitting to enabling higher resolution rendering or 60FPS on Switch though... you know, the two most obvious glaring issues with the port...

The whole thing smacks of what happened with the Zone of The Enders HD Remaster Collection released for the PS360 back in the day...

Edited March 19 by Dcubed

[Hero-of-Time]

I recently played through MGS on this collection and had a great time.

Game is timeless. Its one of those that I never get tired of playing. What I liked about the version in this collection is that they didn't alter the graphics much. I love the jaggies from that era and appreciated that they didn't smooth them out like so many emulators do.

I've got one trophy left to do that will be a grind as it requires to complete all 300 VR missions. Not in a hurry to do it though as I wanna make it platinum 725.

[drahkon]

3 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

platinum 725.

[nekunando]

20 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I recently played through MGS on this collection and had a great time.

Game is timeless. Its one of those that I never get tired of playing. What I liked about the version in this collection is that they didn't alter the graphics much. I love the jaggies from that era and appreciated that they didn't smooth them out like so many emulators do.

I've got one trophy left to do that will be a grind as it requires to complete all 300 VR missions. Not in a hurry to do it though as I wanna make it platinum 725.

Definitely one of the greats 😃

I played through it on Switch recently too (after clearing Sons of Liberty) and it's obviously still a hell of a game but I came away feeling like it's probably not the best way to play the game, despite how glad I am own MGS 1-3 on Switch!

As much hate as there seems to be around The Twin Snakes, I'd have loved for it to be here too 🥲

[Hero-of-Time]

1 hour ago, nekunando said:

Definitely one of the greats 😃

I played through it on Switch recently too (after clearing Sons of Liberty) and it's obviously still a hell of a game but I came away feeling like it's probably not the best way to play the game, despite how glad I am own MGS 1-3 on Switch!

Do you mean playing it on a handheld?

[nekunando]

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Do you mean playing it on a handheld?

I'd say more in terms of the lack of any desire from Konami to clean it up a little (I too appreciate the PS1 visuals but it would have been nice if it was all a little crisper, especially when stretched out over a modern display) and also I felt my controls were ever so slightly behind the action. Perhaps this was having come from Metal Gear Solid 2 first but there was a noticeable delay with the original!

The other thing would be that I hoped to showcase Psycho Mantis using the power of his mind to my son but the Joy-Con + Grip combination didn't move across my coffee table at all 😅

Edited March 20 by nekunando

[Hero-of-Time]

Today I started setting about tackling all 300 VR missions and have made decent progress.

These are incredibly fun. I never played Special Missions back on the PS1 and so this is a new experience for me. There's a lot of trial and error involved and you can deviate from what the game wants you to do and think outside the (just a) box. The time trials can be a little tight at times but with a little practice and memorisation they can be beaten after a few attempts.

I've finished all the weapon challenges, both standard and advanced, and so there's just the stealth and special missions left to do.

[Hero-of-Time]

Success!

There's a cracking amount of variety in these missions and I had a blast playing through them all. There were certainly crazy Konami antics in some of them. One had me taking on a giant UFO with stinger missiles and another had me fending of 2 giant soldiers who were stomping through the city trying to kidnap Meryl.

I also unlocked and had to play through stages where you could use Ninja/Grey Fox. Amazing. Granted, there were only 3 stages to play as him but it was so much fun slicing and dicing my way through enemies. His movements are so different when compared to Snake.

Yeah, very happy to have finally played through Special Missions.

[Julius]

Debated starting a new thread for this but figured I'd attach talk of Vol. 2 to this thread, as Konami seem to be treating the Master Collection as one big 35th anniversary project. 

Anyways, to no-one's surprise, Volume 2 of the Master Collection is officially in the works, though Konami haven't quite decided which games are set to be included, limited so far potentially by what has already been remastered in HD before and potential challenges for remastering other games – Peace Walker was the only game in the HD Collection to not be included here, and the Vol. 1 was based on Bluepoint's previous work for the HD Collection, whereas MGS4 being developed for the PS3 potentially is a whole other obstacle, not to mention potential licensing issues (I mean, there's an iPod). 

These details came from yesterday's Production Hotline #02: 

Quote

Looking at the potential titles...Okay, it's like this. We had HD ports of MGS1, 2, and 3. Or, sorry, not really for 1, but the other two. But most of the titles released after those don't have a pre-existing HD port we could use. Some are in HD, but those would all be really big titles, and that comes with its own set of issues.

So with all these factors to consider with the lineup, anything along the lines of "what's in it?" Or questions like "how long will it be in development, when'll it be out..." It's going to be a little while until we can get a clear picture, but when we do, we'll let you know here.

Of course, we called the first one Vol. 1, so we are making a Vol. 2, that much is for sure. We're also worried about how Vol. 1 had a pretty rough launch, with all the issues, so we're going to do everything we can not to repeat that, but we just have to ask for everyone to give us time. And, you know... I feel like I can already see the comments. We're probably getting blasted with "you didn't answer squat!", and I knew that was pretty likely.

But I just kind of want to say, even if we can't share much, we still want to check in with everyone. We feel like that's sort of what we want the PRODUCTION HOTLINE to be.

I'm really curious to see which games get included in Vol. 2., because just from the perspective of the number of games it could include, I'm struggling to see how it pans out.

Peace Walker seems a lock-in because of Bluepoint's previous work, I'm going to assume they're going to put the work in for MGS4 to be included so that it's finally free of the PS3, but beyond that, I honestly don't know. Do they look to remaster Revengeance too? Do they go back and take a look at the likes of Portable Ops and Acid? Do they bundle in Ground Zeroes and MGSV, or is that going to make the collection too bloated? 

I also don't really see an obvious inclusion along the lines of Snake's Revenge for them to include, which I think sweetened the pot and differentiated Vol. 1 enough from the HD Collection to at least have some fans give it a second look. I know it's a Metal Gear collection, and the focus is on Metal Gear more than it is Kojima, but I do wonder if they'd potentially look to somehow include Policenauts and Snatcher in their plans – if you had one in Vol. 2 you could easily then make a Vol. 3 including the other, and the value of that would speak for itself for a lot of retro gamers and collectors, I feel. 

The biggest question of them all: do they include Survive in this Master Collection at all? I mean, it is a Metal Gear game, but surely they're not that stupid...right?