At this point, Konami can't make a move without causing a controversy, especially with Metal Gear fans. But my PS1 shelves are already full, so I have to thank them for allowing me to experience all the European dubs without having to buy a 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th copy of PS1 Metal Gear Solid.
When you're as deep in the hole as I am, the idea of playing the entire thing through in French actually sounds like a compelling proposition. I'm quite impressed by how seriously late-90s KCEJ approached an international release. It wasn't common to see much beyond French and German options in PAL releases, and very few games had as much writing in them as MGS1 did. Especially not spoken dialogue. Sequels stripped back on localisation efforts, with only Japanese and English audio tracks, but every single line in MGS1 had been recorded in Japanese, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. It's interesting to hear the game with different voice direction. Some of the cutscenes play a little differently with the unique interpretations of each relationship. Without exception, I think all the female characters in French MGS1 sound really great, though many of the boys lose a lot of their nuance. Like the Japanese version, Liquid mainly just sounds like a big tough guy, lacking some of the pompousness and elegance of Cam Clarke's performance. I was really looking forward to French Revolver Ocelot, but he mainly just sounds like some old geezer. Jim Houseman didn't even sound particularly well recorded. French Snake has moments of brilliance, but his delivery is a little one-note, lacking some of Akio Ohtsuka and David Hayter's range. For my money, Mei Ling is the real stand-out among the French cast, sounding much bouncier and more excitable. I never would have expected a world-class designer of military technology to sound so... cute.
I think the biggest issue with this release is in its visual presentation. I'm completely on the side of whoever decided to stick with the PS1's 240p rendering, with reverence to the original team's approach to presentation, but I don't think it's scaling to HD resolutions correctly. The visuals are far below the standard of a PS1 with a clean RGB output, with the Master Collection release blurring over the dithered texturework that I love so dearly. It's perhaps closer to the composite signal that the majority of players will be used to, but I've grown to associate the game with a much cleaner image. Apparently this port is from M2, most widely known for their brilliant SEGA AGES releases, but I think this is their first time working with a PS1 game, and the lack of tweakable emulation settings may be the result of that. Scanlines are reportedly on their way via a patch, but I really hope display settings go much further than that. Throw in a Duckstation-style hi-res mode for the kiddiwinks if you must, but please give me a mode that presents those original 76,800 pixels as sharply as possible.
The extras in the pack aren't all that exciting. I've heard alternating reports of what the "Master Book" actually is, with some claiming it's a new English version of an old Konami MGS1 book. No. It's new. The fact that it's new might actually be the most interesting thing about it, as it presents the series' timeline with knowledge of all the retcons and inconsistencies that have been injected into the series up to the end of The Phantom Pain. There's even a page that bluntly explains everything that's said about Ocelot's backstory in MGS1 is a bare-faced lie. This is "the official version" of the series' story, although I'd never suggest that those who play Metal Gear 1 for the first time today ought to be thinking about Major Zero and Venom Snake. The book's fine, though its presentation is a little closer to a modern Konami website than a Japan-only 1998 MGS1 book, which would typically be filled with bespoke artwork, debug-mode screenshots of each environment, and often, interviews with the game's key staff. There's a lot of notes on secrets and checklists to follow through the game, but it can't be accessed while you're playing, so it could be a little more useful.
The script book is a little cooler. There have been officially-released script books for MGS1, 2, 3, 4 and Peace Walker in Japan, though I think western fans are being presumptuous about the vintage of these. They're based on the games' English localisations, and I'd assume the direction notes are newly-written, as opposed to insight into how the games were originally written. I'm pretty sure the Metal Gear 1 & 2 script books are entirely the result of someone playing the games and transcribing all the text, instead of someone digging into Kojima's decades-old production notes. Nonetheless, they're still pretty neat. It's nice to have easy access to all the CODEC conversations without having to experiment with every single variable in the games to potentially trigger alternate dialogue. It would have been cooler if you could access each of the scenes - with their audio - from within the book, but that would have been much more of a logistical nightmare.
The Master Collection release of MGS1 is a pretty cool package for hardcore fans of the game, and it does the job of bringing MGS1 to new hardware for less demanding players, too. It's not the end-all, be-all definitive release that some seem convinced they're entitled to, but I'm satisfied enough with all the things it does to stop myself from buying those alternate PAL discs. That's an achievement. If you're not rabid enough to have bought it already, either wishlist it on the platform you find most appealing, until it's inevitably on sale for a good discount, or stick with an emulator you already like. There's not much real value in investing in the wider online discourse.
When you're as deep in the hole as I am, the idea of playing the entire thing through in French actually sounds like a compelling proposition. I'm quite impressed by how seriously late-90s KCEJ approached an international release. It wasn't common to see much beyond French and German options in PAL releases, and very few games had as much writing in them as MGS1 did. Especially not spoken dialogue. Sequels stripped back on localisation efforts, with only Japanese and English audio tracks, but every single line in MGS1 had been recorded in Japanese, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. It's interesting to hear the game with different voice direction. Some of the cutscenes play a little differently with the unique interpretations of each relationship. Without exception, I think all the female characters in French MGS1 sound really great, though many of the boys lose a lot of their nuance. Like the Japanese version, Liquid mainly just sounds like a big tough guy, lacking some of the pompousness and elegance of Cam Clarke's performance. I was really looking forward to French Revolver Ocelot, but he mainly just sounds like some old geezer. Jim Houseman didn't even sound particularly well recorded. French Snake has moments of brilliance, but his delivery is a little one-note, lacking some of Akio Ohtsuka and David Hayter's range. For my money, Mei Ling is the real stand-out among the French cast, sounding much bouncier and more excitable. I never would have expected a world-class designer of military technology to sound so... cute.
I think the biggest issue with this release is in its visual presentation. I'm completely on the side of whoever decided to stick with the PS1's 240p rendering, with reverence to the original team's approach to presentation, but I don't think it's scaling to HD resolutions correctly. The visuals are far below the standard of a PS1 with a clean RGB output, with the Master Collection release blurring over the dithered texturework that I love so dearly. It's perhaps closer to the composite signal that the majority of players will be used to, but I've grown to associate the game with a much cleaner image. Apparently this port is from M2, most widely known for their brilliant SEGA AGES releases, but I think this is their first time working with a PS1 game, and the lack of tweakable emulation settings may be the result of that. Scanlines are reportedly on their way via a patch, but I really hope display settings go much further than that. Throw in a Duckstation-style hi-res mode for the kiddiwinks if you must, but please give me a mode that presents those original 76,800 pixels as sharply as possible.
The extras in the pack aren't all that exciting. I've heard alternating reports of what the "Master Book" actually is, with some claiming it's a new English version of an old Konami MGS1 book. No. It's new. The fact that it's new might actually be the most interesting thing about it, as it presents the series' timeline with knowledge of all the retcons and inconsistencies that have been injected into the series up to the end of The Phantom Pain. There's even a page that bluntly explains everything that's said about Ocelot's backstory in MGS1 is a bare-faced lie. This is "the official version" of the series' story, although I'd never suggest that those who play Metal Gear 1 for the first time today ought to be thinking about Major Zero and Venom Snake. The book's fine, though its presentation is a little closer to a modern Konami website than a Japan-only 1998 MGS1 book, which would typically be filled with bespoke artwork, debug-mode screenshots of each environment, and often, interviews with the game's key staff. There's a lot of notes on secrets and checklists to follow through the game, but it can't be accessed while you're playing, so it could be a little more useful.
The script book is a little cooler. There have been officially-released script books for MGS1, 2, 3, 4 and Peace Walker in Japan, though I think western fans are being presumptuous about the vintage of these. They're based on the games' English localisations, and I'd assume the direction notes are newly-written, as opposed to insight into how the games were originally written. I'm pretty sure the Metal Gear 1 & 2 script books are entirely the result of someone playing the games and transcribing all the text, instead of someone digging into Kojima's decades-old production notes. Nonetheless, they're still pretty neat. It's nice to have easy access to all the CODEC conversations without having to experiment with every single variable in the games to potentially trigger alternate dialogue. It would have been cooler if you could access each of the scenes - with their audio - from within the book, but that would have been much more of a logistical nightmare.
The Master Collection release of MGS1 is a pretty cool package for hardcore fans of the game, and it does the job of bringing MGS1 to new hardware for less demanding players, too. It's not the end-all, be-all definitive release that some seem convinced they're entitled to, but I'm satisfied enough with all the things it does to stop myself from buying those alternate PAL discs. That's an achievement. If you're not rabid enough to have bought it already, either wishlist it on the platform you find most appealing, until it's inevitably on sale for a good discount, or stick with an emulator you already like. There's not much real value in investing in the wider online discourse.