Metal Gear
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Metal Gear is a series of stealth-based games created by Japanese game-designer Hideo Kojima and published by Konami. The star of the games is Solid Snake, an elite commando fighting to save the world from the latest incarnation of the dreaded "Metal Gear", a gigantic, bipedal, nuclear-armed tank.

The games focus on stealth and finesse, rather than brute-force combat. In the first game, you don't start with any weapons at all. On the highest difficulty settings of some games in the series, being seen by an enemy even once is enough to bring certain defeat. Through the course of the game, Solid Snake gathers equipment and weapons to help accomplish his mission objectives, and gathers information by rescuing captives.

The series (main timeline) consists of the following games:

• Metal Gear (MSX, 1987)
• Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX, 1990)
• Metal Gear Solid (PlayStation, 1998)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (PlayStation 2, 2001)
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PlayStation 2, 2004)

There have also been a number of spinoffs and "special edition" reissues:

• Metal Gear Solid Integral (PlayStation, 1999)
• Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions (PlayStation, 1999)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance (PlayStation 2/Xbox, 2002)

The first Metal Gear game was also ported to the NES, and there was a NES-only sequel called Snake's Revenge (1990), but it was not created by any of the original Metal Gear staff and is not considered part of the official timeline. There was also a Game Boy Color game called Metal Gear: Ghost Babel (2000), which was supposed to be an "alternate sequel" to Metal Gear, much like Snake's Revenge. Also, Metal Gear Solid, the most popular game in the series, has been remade as Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (2004), a Nintendo GameCube exclusive.

Metal Gear's purported purpose within the games is to allow a nuclear strike at any location with no advance warning and no clues as to who made the attack (unlike the obvious launch of an ICBM). In principle, this would allow a hostile nation to use nuclear weapons with no fear of nuclear retaliation. (None of the games makes an argument for how this method of attack is different from one from a nuclear submarine, however...)

Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers

In Metal Gear Solid 2, the newest Metal Gear, "Arsenal Gear", is a mobile underwater fortress, defended by a fleet of amphibious mecha. It was secretly built as part of a conspiracy by the Illuminati-like "Patriots", but is largely unarmed. Instead, it carries a supercomputer designed to monitor, block, and tamper with Internet communications, in order to further the totalitarian agenda of the "Patriots".

Metal Gear Solid 3 is set in the 1960's, during the turmoil of the Cold War. It focuses on the themes of time and survival, and features a different "Snake" (rumored to be the mysterious Big Boss, "father" of the Snake clones), who is sent to infiltrate enemy territory in order to gather information about Metal Gear, which is apparently a new weapon at the time.

The original article can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear.
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