I recently decided to play a phenomenal old game called Metal Gear Solid about the recently published Metal Gear Solid Master Collection, hoping to show my friends the scene where I was able to see a m an’s bare bottom after his lights were turned off and his clothes were stolen. But the censors struck again when I discovered that this essential part of my childhood had been robbed from me by a pair of digital boxer shorts.
Too bad, Konami.
If you are unfamiliar with the game or this scene, allow me to explain. Shortly after protagonist Solid Snake attempts to free an NPC from a cell, the prisoner next to him (Meryl) breaks out, incapacitates a guard named Johnny and steals his clothes. He lies naked on the floor, his butt facing the ceiling, a pixel effect visible over his naked butt. At least that was the case with my North American copy of the game in the late 90s.
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After a tense shootout with some guards, in a bold act of freedom you could actually defy the censors by crawling up to Johnny’s ass, pulling out your binoculars and zooming past the censorship line to reveal crack and all in glorious 1998 graphic fidelity.
But in the versions reissued in 2023 you will find the Master collectionKonami has given in to modern, Western demands for modesty and censored this scene by dressing Johnny in a pair of boxers that, no matter how hard I try or from all angles, no matter how many hours I stare at it, I find myself staring at it on Digital Asshole, I can’t zoom past.
It’s not just about expression. This censorship interferes with the actual tradition of Metal Gear Solid, which is sacred to me and about which I can lecture you for hours. For 25 years I’ve wondered why Meryl stole Johnny’s underwear in addition to his uniform. Or did Johnny choose not to wear any underwear at all? A strange decision, especially given his very unpredictable bowel movements.
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Konami has added little else to this collection. No proper frame rate or Resolution options above 1080pThere is no clear way to fix terrible screen tearing on PC. No mouse and keyboard support. Just a port of some old copies of the game, stitched together with a low-effort menu system that requires multiple executables on the PC to launch and often causes audio problems when streaming.
And don’t tell me that just because I can still climb up and out of the ladder in the cell multiple times to unlock a scene of Meryl doing situps in her underwear that I should be happy with the content, or that I can quickly follow her to the bathroom to chat with her in her underwear, or that Sniper Wolf still has her shirt open to her navel.
If Konami and others have their way, I’ll soon be without naked video game characters. How can we tolerate something like that?
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