10 Iconic Video Game Features That Were Invented By Accident
5. Metal Gear's Stealth Element
The Metal Gear franchise has gone down in history as the “progenitor of the stealth genre”. So iconic is its enemy alert sound, which plays when Solid Snake is detected, that it couldn’t possibly be anything other than a stealth game. Right? Wrong!
Hideo Kojima originally planned for Metal Gear to be an all-out action combat game. However, issues with the MSX2's hardware regarding the number of on-screen enemies and bullets being fired at once meant that the action sequences of the game couldn’t be fully utilised. The game would have functioned sluggishly, with an immersion-breaking lack of threat, and thus Kojima revamped the gameplay to focus instead on evading detection.
The game took so many steps backwards to rid itself of its action aspects that it was originally named Intruder during early planning stages. At the time of release, Metal Gear stood out from other genres due to its uncommon stealth aspect, so were the MSX2's hardware issues actually a blessing in disguise?