Metal Gear Solid is sitting pretty on Japan’s PlayStation Store. Metal Gear Solid also arrived in North America as part of the Metal Gear Solid: Essential Collection earlier this week. So, which version plays better on the PSP? I personally don’t know! However Siliconera superstar Angelous did all of us a favor by comparing the two releases.
On Metal Gear Solid bundled with the Essential Collection Angelous notes in the comments:
“Ok, so I’m playing MGS on my PSP via remote play and I can’t selec[t] my items with the PSP “L” and “R” buttons. That sucks. Now I’m interested to know how the PS3/PSP version is optimized for the PSP. I’ve got 600 yen left in my JP PSN account, guess I’ll be buying MGS tonight. I’ll post an update later.”
Later he followed up by trying the downloadable re-release.
“So the MGS digital download for PS3/PSP weighs in at a hefty 775mb. So one might need to clean up their PSP mem stick before the load it on. As far the controls go, the L2 and R2 item swapping functions is mapped to the analog stick. Push left for L2 and right for R2.
The graphics seems cleaner when running the game on the PSP versus the PSX version via remote play. But this may be cause the game is running natively instead of being streamed. Also, you don’t have the half second delay in button presses that you get when you[‘re] playing with remote play. To me, this reinforces the fact that remote play with PSX game is best left to RPGs.
One other change I noticed is that there is no vibration setting option when you[‘re] playing the PSP, it’s removed from the menu all together. Of course, this is makes sense since the PSP has no vibration.
I have to say, MGS has aged very well for a game from 1998. There are some PSX games I can’t stand to play today due to their graphics and translations (I’m looking at you FF VII). Kudos to Hideo Kojima, KCE Japan, and Konami USA for producing an awesome game (not to mention series) that stands the test of time. Hopefully Konami USA sees fit to give us the English version of MGS on PSN in the future.
One last thought, MGS looks WAY better on the PSP’s screen that it does running on the PS3 over HDMI, upscaled to 720p, on a 42 inch DLP.”
Notes taken and it sounds like a digital download is the best way to experience Metal Gear Solid on the go! Angelous, thanks for the excellent write up, I’m sure this information will help other readers.
