A relatively obscure Metal Gear adventure that at one point only Verizon Wireless customers could get their hands on. Even when it was later made available to those who went with other service providers, it was as a digital exclusive for the N-Gage so if you look around online it seems not many people have played this. Oddly enough, being ported to Nokia’s ill-fated cellphone/handheld gaming console hybrid might be the sole reason it hasn’t been completely lost to time. It took some work, particularly for someone like me who isn’t very computer savvy, but after getting the EKA2L1 emulator running I was finally able to try out this lesser known entry in the franchise for myself and can hopefully give you a good idea of what it’s like.

The goal here of developer Ideaworks Game Studio was to bring the Metal Gear Solid experience you could get on home consoles back then, which at that point the latest mainline releases were the PS2 titles, to mobile devices with as few caveats as possible. Something I think they did a fantastic job of doing. With full 3D visuals and the traditional fixed-camera angles, it pulls off the series’ distinctive, instantly recognizable look with shocking fidelity. It may not be exactly graphically stunning, but that ends up not being too big of a problem as its appearance calls to mind that of the charming PS1 original’s. Mechanically, there’s everything you would expect from first-person aiming to hanging off railings and leaning against walls to peek around corners. The fact that they managed to tie so many of these actions to a single input with minimal issues is pretty incredible. Granted, I was playing with a keyboard which I imagine is a lot smoother and more responsive than an old school keypad. Regardless, it’s all seriously impressive stuff. 

Yet, while feature-wise it doesn’t feel dumbed-down even slightly, it’s when you dive into the actual content that the simplicity begins to show. The little Shadow Moses wannabe you traverse is fairly small and I was able to complete the whole affair in just over an hour-and-a-half not rushing. The enemy AI is pretty basic as well, barely offering up a threat and their numbers are so tiny you can usually walk through most areas with next to no effort. I was also able to brute-force my way to defeating the final and sole boss encounter by trading shots whilst standing entirely out in the open and relying on my reserve of 4 rations to let my health bar outlast his.

Now, none of that is necessarily terrible per se, but means things may not prove exciting enough for everybody to justify hunting this down for a side-story of debatable canonicity at best since it’s never been featured in any officially recognized encyclopedia or database of Metal Gear lore. A shame, because it’s a decent tale. Told without the property’s typical cinematic flair and strictly through text codec calls as there’s no voice acting, but providing a nice bridge between the first and second Solid nonetheless. One that contains plenty of the themes from Sons of Liberty, dealing with topics such as virtual reality and concepts like AI designed to seduce people. Yeah, I’m sure that will never happen…

Overall, Mobile is more along the lines of an extremely enticing tech demo rather than the true fulfillment of our wildest and probably highly irrational dreams of the series on cellphones, but the sheer novelty of witnessing full-fledged MGS gameplay in this manner and format cannot be overstated. It leads to an amusement factor that is sure to delight anyone similar to myself who takes pleasure in seeing what was being attempted back in this almost seemingly unrestrained era of experimentation in retro cellular technology. As for the tactical espionage action juggernaut’s fanbase? Well, I’d say strictly its most hardcore devotees would find this truly worth digging up, but all might get a slight kick out of it with an open mind.

7/10