ABSTRACT
The “tactical espionage action” game viewers saw that day promised a vastly different experience from Final Fantasy VII or pretty much any other game, for that matter. Hideo Kojima chose to add the word solid to the title not only to acknowledge the character Solid Snake but also to emphasize the power of the game’s three-dimensional engine. Kojima had been hired by Konami to develop games for MSX, a standard for home computers developed by Microsoft and Japan’s ASCII Corporation. The story concerned a retired soldier, Solid Snake, who is called back to duty to stop FOX HOUND, a group of terrorists who have taken over a nuclear missiles facility on Shadow Moses Island. The 2011 Gamer’s Edition of the Guinness World Records declared the series’ chief protagonist, Solid Snake, the fourth most popular video game character of all time.
