The game

Metal Gear (Konami, 1987, RC-750) is the first game of the saga, for the MSX2. Snake goes into Outer Heaven alone and unarmed, and has to reach Metal Gear. Everything on this page comes from the cartridge's tables.

Rooms and zones

The room index (p13:6000) has 251 entries, 16 of which are not rooms (their pointer falls in the nibble table): that leaves 235 rooms. Each room is 6 × 8 metatiles of 4 × 4 tiles (p13:61F6, p13:6274), from one of 8 tile sets.

Rooms are joined in two ways:

• by their sides: each room with neighbours has four in p05:8E0E, in the order up, down, left and right (p01:63FC decides which side you leave by);
• by doors: p15:A7C0 gives, room by room, 5-byte records [door][type][Y][X][target room]. There are 154 numbered doors, and each appears in both rooms it joins.

Following the neighbours gives 9 zones. The rooms reached only through a door go in a strip under their zone's map.

The maps of the nine zones, full size: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Lifts

Rooms 0xF0 to 0xFA are lifts. p05:8DA8 gives their stops; the car stops at heights 0x38, 0x78 and 0xB8 (p09:AD69). F8 and F9 have no stops.

Doors

The door type decides how it is drawn (p01:773C): types 1 to 5 are tiles from page 1, 6 is the lift and 7 to 19 are bank 15 drawings. The class (p15:B046) decides how it opens (p01:78F4): facing it, with the card selected (classes 2 to 9 = CARD1 to CARD8), with punches, with the P.BOMB or with a flag set by a text.

Weapons and items

Eight weapons (p06:B865): HAND GUN, SMG, GRENADE, ROCKET, P.BOMB, L.MINE, MISSILE and SILENCER. Twenty-five items (p06:B8F6): ARMOR, SUIT, LIGHT, GOGGL, MASK, CIGAL, DETEC, ANTEN, SCOPE, BOMBE, COMPAS, PARAC, ANTID, CARD1 to CARD8, RATIO, TRANS, UNIFO and BOX. What each adds when picked up is at p05:8AE8; the ammunition and ration maximums depend on the CLASS (p02:9101).

Actors

64 actor types. Each has its number of sprites (p05:971B), its colours (p05:975A), its stamina (p05:984F), its hit box per weapon (p05:8951, p05:8992) and its damage per weapon (p05:87B7). Their 143 frames are at p05:9890, and their patterns in 31 sprite sets (p10:6185, p10:6280). The type names quoted are Manuel Pazos's.

Snake has 53 poses (p10:6000) in patterns 0x00-0x37; the room's start at 0x38.

The tile bosses

Metal Gear and the Hind D are not sprites: they are bank 15 tile drawings (p15:B595, p15:B431) that p00:44AF puts over the room.

Metal Gear only breaks with the P.BOMB and with the 16 hits in the order of p02:8D3B. After that a countdown from 3000 runs, and the ending is reached by leaving room 0xE2 at the top.

The transceiver

Seven frequencies, from 120.13 to 120.91 (p00:490C). Each room's calls are at p15:B6C6; the one that plays is the one on the tuned frequency that passes the conditions at p01:6A88.