Released in 2008, Metal Gear Solid Mobile was created by Ideaworks3D, Ltd. for Qualcomm's BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) platform.
You can be forgiven for not having heard about it, as its release was limited to a few handsets – including the ill-fated Nokia N-Gage, which gained bonus content and additional controls.
While the name suggests that it's a port of the original Metal Gear Solid, it's actually set between the events of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and sees Solid Snake and Otacon's anti-Metal Gear organization Philanthropy aiming to eradicate all Metal Gears.
As you can see from the footage below, the visuals and gameplay are very much on par with the PlayStation version:
If you fancy trying out this unique piece of Metal Gear history, then we've got some good news – it has been dumped and preserved from a Motorola V3m phone and can now be played via emulation:
The bad news? Well, beyond being a unique piece of history, it's not a good game. The controls are terrible and the story feels like it's been taken from an unofficial fan-fiction. Even so, having a full-3D Metal Gear solid on your phone was something of a revelation back in 2008, so if you fancy checking it out, head in this direction.
Comments 3
It's sad that people have to jump through so many hoops to preserve gaming history, imagine the sheer number of games that are lost forever because the last floppy disk with them on it died...
We really need an organized, legit way to preserve old games.
@MysticX There are so many, this article is literally about someone doing it.
I've been wanting to play this for ages but was never able to work out the emulation side of it. I even tried buying and hacking an old N-Gage 2 supported handset and failing miserably.
So if memory serves me correctly, this was actually released for the N-Gage 2.0 platform which I don't think was a single phone like the original N-Gage. Rather it was a platform available on multiple Nokia phones of the era.
I don't think the ROM has actually been "lost" for ages, I managed to find it online during the start of the pandemic. But beyond hacking original hardware, there was no suitable emulator at the time that I was aware of.
I'm just really glad it's available now anyway and I will try it out!
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