[00:00:00]
Hey guys, Alessio Somerfield here because you don't hear me talk enough.

[00:00:04]
But I got something special to say this time.

[00:00:06]
This is an old episode.

[00:00:08]
We're on that new shit now.

[00:00:10]
So I'm coming from the future to tell you to go to patreon.com.

[00:00:13]
Slash Metal Gear Mondays, Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, all that shit.

[00:00:17]
Metal Gear Mondays, except for Twitter.

[00:00:19]
It's Metal Gear Monday.

[00:00:21]
And that's it.

[00:00:21]
Enjoy the episode.

[00:00:22]
Have a great day.

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Alessio, Alessio, it's the future.

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We need your help.

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Oh, I'm coming.

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Sorry, guys.

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Bye.

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Oh,

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Hey, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is Alessio Somerfield

[00:00:51]
and you're listening to Metal Gear Monday, episode six.

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This week I've got Cameron Hill on with me.

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Hello.

[00:00:57]
And we are going to be covering Metal Gear Ghost Babble or as it's known in the United States,

[00:01:03]
Metal Gear Solid for the Game Boy Color, which is a very, very interesting kind of little

[00:01:09]
offshoot side story, a guide in, if you will, of Metal Gear.

[00:01:15]
And I had not played this game in an extremely long time.

[00:01:19]
And so to prepare for this, I was going to emulate it on the computer, which I know is not

[00:01:25]
the best way to do these things, but it is the easiest.

[00:01:28]
But instead, I took a couple of things down to my local little ma and paw game shop.

[00:01:34]
And I'm going to shamelessly plug eight is the games.

[00:01:37]
And I traded some things and got a like mint condition PSP, which I then modded in like

[00:01:44]
two seconds and put it on there to play it.

[00:01:47]
The negative to that is that the PSP reeks of like cigarettes.

[00:01:53]
Like any time I take it out of the little case, it's like the whole room that I'm in

[00:01:57]
just like smells like a new port.

[00:02:00]
But besides that, it's been pretty good.

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Cameron, you got some sugar to spit for eight is it?

[00:02:05]
I love those boys, but I'm real sad that they've got you smell like new ports right now.

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So, you know, I know that's a little out of their control.

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Hopefully they kind of overcharge the person who sold them that.

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Yeah, I'm just saying, ah, it smells like new ports.

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I mean, I wish it smelled like any other tobacco except for new ports.

[00:02:22]
Yeah, it really does.

[00:02:23]
Like I and it's not even me like embellishing like it smells like menthols.

[00:02:26]
Like I don't know.

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It's weird, nasty.

[00:02:31]
But they gave me a good deal and they gave me a free game.

[00:02:34]
So they always do it.

[00:02:36]
They're always sweet talking to less.

[00:02:37]
Yeah, it's adorable.

[00:02:39]
I'll walk in and say, hey, I've got this got this one copy and they're like, you know,

[00:02:43]
you can have whatever you want.

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Really?

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I think the lady owner has a little some some for less.

[00:02:50]
Yeah, who knows?

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Um, she's sweet.

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Yeah, she's she's I think it's really because when we go in there, it's we're

[00:02:57]
the only people that actually buy anything.

[00:02:59]
There's like a horde of people who can afford to have gas money to drive down

[00:03:03]
to this place and just stare at these five dollar games.

[00:03:07]
And they're like, ah, next next Friday, I'll be back.

[00:03:10]
I'll be back for that.

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I'll uphold it for me.

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I'll be back.

[00:03:13]
And that's about half the population of the people, more than half the people

[00:03:18]
that go into that store.

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Yeah, buddy.

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No, it's a good place.

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It's a good place to be.

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May have to post some photos or something or do a little write up on them at some point.

[00:03:28]
Yeah, they're also amazing artists.

[00:03:33]
What they've done to their building is revolutionary and we'll definitely need to

[00:03:38]
post some pictures of that.

[00:03:39]
Yeah, totally.

[00:03:41]
All right.

[00:03:41]
Well, getting into it again, much like last week, which was a micro episode on

[00:03:46]
sort of some of the interstitial releases between the main sort of cannon.

[00:03:51]
We had a 20 30 minute episode on VR missions this week.

[00:03:54]
As I said before, we're doing Metal Gear Ghost Babble and we're just going to be

[00:03:57]
focusing about 20, 30 minutes.

[00:03:59]
However, there is enough content in this Game Boy game to do like a three hour

[00:04:04]
episode like we would anything else.

[00:04:06]
If you're interested in something like that, a little bit longer form.

[00:04:09]
I would definitely check out duck feed.tv's watch out for fireballs episode on

[00:04:13]
Metal Gear Ghost Babble.

[00:04:15]
They definitely had some sugar to say about the game as well.

[00:04:19]
And it's a damn shame.

[00:04:20]
I know it made the list of games radars like most wanted 3DS virtual console

[00:04:26]
Game Boy games.

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However, it's still not on there and I really don't think it ever will be.

[00:04:31]
So it's sad that this game kind of lived and died with the Game Boy color and you

[00:04:35]
can't find it any other way.

[00:04:37]
Yeah.

[00:04:37]
Well, like I discussed last time, it's crazy.

[00:04:40]
Palin the 3DS, you can't get certain games, but I was able to play this game

[00:04:43]
simply by downloading Visual Boy Advance on my phone and getting an

[00:04:49]
emulator, getting the ROM.

[00:04:51]
Totally.

[00:04:52]
Yeah, it's super easy to find that way as well.

[00:04:55]
I believe I was playing on Master Boy for the PSP, which is a Sega Master

[00:04:59]
system and Game Gear and Game Boy color emulator, which is a weird combo.

[00:05:06]
But yeah.

[00:05:07]
So did you emulate a Super Nintendo and then emulate that Super Nintendo game

[00:05:13]
that allows you to put Game Boy color games in to play?

[00:05:17]
I wish.

[00:05:18]
I wish.

[00:05:19]
Now, sadly, the Super Game Boy doesn't work with Game Boy color.

[00:05:22]
I don't think.

[00:05:22]
I don't know.

[00:05:23]
I'm not an expert, so I wouldn't quote me on that.

[00:05:25]
But I think it's just vanilla Game Boy games.

[00:05:29]
Anyway, a little bit of background on Metal Gear Ghost Bab.

[00:05:33]
Western Territories, it's called Metal Gear Solid.

[00:05:36]
It was originally supposed to be a portable version of the PlayStation

[00:05:40]
Metal Gear Solid.

[00:05:41]
It was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan, which would later

[00:05:45]
become Kojima Productions.

[00:05:47]
They were commissioned by Konami's European team to do a portable version

[00:05:51]
of the 1998 PS1 game.

[00:05:54]
The game shifted during development due to some of the constraints of the

[00:05:59]
hardware that was developed.

[00:06:00]
So they were not able to do like a copy paste clone of Metal Gear Solid 1.

[00:06:07]
And for whatever reason, instead, they decided to completely change the

[00:06:12]
story and make it like its own little what if scenario.

[00:06:17]
But the interesting thing is like through replaying it for the show,

[00:06:21]
there is a lot of shit that comes back from Metal Gear Solid.

[00:06:24]
So like a lot of the style of boss fights and a lot of the scenarios that

[00:06:29]
come back, not in like a huge kind of like rip off kind of way, but like you can

[00:06:33]
tell that that would have been what it was in Metal Gear Solid during the

[00:06:38]
original kind of development.

[00:06:41]
Apparently, this is not directed by Hideo Kojima, unlike the previous games.

[00:06:49]
Hideo Kojima was just a producer.

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The designer and the director is Shinta Nojiri.

[00:06:55]
And Kojima's kind of co-producer on it is Motoyuki Yoshioca.

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I hope I didn't fuck any of those up.

[00:07:01]
Those sounded pretty good to me.

[00:07:04]
But it came out in 2000 for the Game Boy Color April 27th in Japan and May 5th

[00:07:10]
in Europe and North America.

[00:07:13]
It plays like the original Metal Gear games, essentially Metal Gear 1 and 2

[00:07:17]
for the MSX, except I'd say it was a little bit of a game.

[00:07:23]
Except I'd say way sharper.

[00:07:26]
I think the Game Boy Color hardware may be able to essentially produce an image

[00:07:33]
and like animation and sound that's a little bit better than the MSX.

[00:07:38]
So it just looks way better.

[00:07:40]
Cameron, I know both you and I did not finish the game because spoiler alert,

[00:07:45]
the game is way longer than you think a Game Boy Color game should be.

[00:07:49]
And we kind of casually took it on.

[00:07:51]
I know I got further than Cameron, but I was still putting in like probably like

[00:07:56]
one or two hours at the end of my day every day before I went to bed,

[00:08:01]
just kind of like towing around with it.

[00:08:02]
And after even like a week and a half, I didn't finish it.

[00:08:06]
How far did you get, Cameron?

[00:08:09]
I really only got kind of past that first initial where you land stage.

[00:08:15]
And then my game froze, which is weird.

[00:08:18]
I've never seen that happen on an emulator.

[00:08:21]
I think it had more to do with the software and like how I closed it out or something.

[00:08:26]
But it froze up and I got back to pretty much the same point

[00:08:30]
and then realized that I just didn't have the time.

[00:08:33]
Totally. Yeah. I did you watch anything?

[00:08:36]
Yeah, I watched some Let's Play and that's kind of where I realized just how long this game was.

[00:08:42]
I was expecting something a little more along the lines of

[00:08:46]
like the Metal Gear one that I played.

[00:08:49]
Yeah. So I wasn't expecting a whole lot of story and all of that.

[00:08:56]
But it's definitely there.

[00:08:59]
Yeah, there's a lot of it.

[00:09:00]
And also I want to give a shout out to YouTube user, all underscore Lord of Altima,

[00:09:07]
who did a 13 part Let's Play on Ghost Babble, which I ended up watching the last little bit of it.

[00:09:16]
Just to kind of pick up where I stopped.

[00:09:18]
And he does a really good job of like kind of a good combination of like not talking so much.

[00:09:24]
And when he does talk kind of being funny, as opposed to like the super annoying,

[00:09:29]
I'm going to talk, talk, talk throughout this entire thing kind of people.

[00:09:34]
But yeah, I just wanted to I was asking how far you went.

[00:09:37]
Not not for any specific reason other than to say this is some of the best fucking music I've ever heard on a Game Boy Color.

[00:09:44]
Yeah.

[00:09:46]
And I wanted to see what you thought.

[00:09:48]
Yeah, I definitely agree, because I was kind of doing the same thing you were doing or at least planning to just to

[00:09:57]
play in bed.

[00:09:58]
And I started it up and I heard the sweet tunes.

[00:10:02]
So I actually got my headphones in late in bed.

[00:10:05]
And I was playing it that way because the music is really, really good.

[00:10:11]
Yeah, it's I don't know.

[00:10:12]
It's surprising.

[00:10:13]
Like there are a couple little tunes that come back from other metal gear games.

[00:10:19]
But for the most part, there's a fair amount of like original music for this thing.

[00:10:24]
And it's a shame there.

[00:10:26]
I know after you finish the game that you unlock like a speed, not speed,

[00:10:32]
sound test mode where you can listen to all of the music.

[00:10:35]
And honestly, if you do have if you've got 40 bucks to burn and you've got a Game Boy Color,

[00:10:39]
I would definitely see if you can hunt down a copy on Amazon, because that way what you can do is you can like

[00:10:44]
headphone jack into a recorder and just dump the whole soundtrack.

[00:10:49]
Because it would be really cool to just like have, I will say, in producing the show,

[00:10:54]
I could not find a collection of files where people had dumped it.

[00:10:59]
So I ended up actually having to find like people's

[00:11:05]
sort of YouTube videos or let's plays or whatever where there wasn't a lot of speaking.

[00:11:09]
And essentially like pull it off of that.

[00:11:12]
But it is some pretty fantastic music.

[00:11:15]
And I'm not sure if the composer is somebody who's worked on the other metal gear games or not.

[00:11:23]
But I'm not sure. Let me double check.

[00:11:25]
Yes, apparently Norihiko Hibino is a jazz musician who's actually worked on a lot of the metal

[00:11:33]
gear solid games and the Zone of the Enders games.

[00:11:36]
So and he did all the music for.

[00:11:39]
Ghost Babel.

[00:11:40]
So pretty sweet.

[00:11:44]
But yeah, before we kind of tear through the plot stuff and kind of talk about how it compares to the other games in the series.

[00:11:54]
As far as like playability and stuff, Cameron, what did you think of it compared to not only the MSX games, but like even compared to like metal gear solid one?

[00:12:01]
Like how did it play while you were playing it?

[00:12:03]
Um, I don't feel like I can give a fair assessment simply because playing on the emulator, it was I was definitely having some troubles with it.

[00:12:16]
But I definitely felt like over time I would overcome that like the little quirks to it and things like that.

[00:12:25]
Yeah, so I'm not sure.

[00:12:26]
Yeah, I'm never super keen on playing with like touch screen.

[00:12:31]
Yeah.

[00:12:32]
Stuff, but I don't know.

[00:12:34]
It is what it is.

[00:12:34]
I've definitely sat down and played Secret of Mana on my game on my iPhone, like jailbreak and iPod or whatever way back when.

[00:12:42]
And I don't know.

[00:12:44]
It was kind of a pain in the ass, but.

[00:12:55]
All right.

[00:12:55]
So the story of Metal Gear Ghost Babel is essentially similar to previous entries in the series, which.

[00:13:02]
We at this point, we won't see a twist on the typical Metal Gear format until Metal Gear Solid 2 where Kojima and company decide, fuck it and throw everything out the window.

[00:13:15]
However, this is still sort of in that original kind of Metal Gear tradition of Snake, these bad guys captured Metal Gear.

[00:13:25]
You need to infiltrate, stop them, dismantle Metal Gear before they can use it again and get out of there while rescuing hostages.

[00:13:34]
Kind of similar MO, Snake gets sent in behind enemy lines with no equipment and sort of has to procure everything while he's there.

[00:13:43]
Opens with a really interesting cool little like parachute scene, which other than Metal Gear 1, we would, we won't see Snake parachuting in any games until Metal Gear Solid 3 as sort of the way to

[00:13:55]
infiltrate and begin the mission.

[00:13:58]
But other than that, it sort of plays out as like a guidance story to like what if Metal Gear Solid never happened and this happened instead.

[00:14:06]
And I believe that this happens even technically the story for this happens before Metal Gear 2.

[00:14:12]
So this is like a seven years later sequel to the original Metal Gear for the MSX.

[00:14:18]
Kind of opens the same way that Metal Gear Solid does, Campbell and Co come and sort of force Snake out of retirement, which is interesting that in this canon he sort of retired after the first and only mission he's ever been a part of.

[00:14:34]
So Snake essentially is pulled out of retirement to go into South America, to go into Central Africa, because Metal Gear was being transported by the US government and it got shot down over Africa and an African sort of

[00:14:48]
sect military force took it and the military force goes by I believe GSF.

[00:14:58]
One second.

[00:15:00]
GLF.

[00:15:01]
It's the Gindra Liberation Front is the sort of I don't know.

[00:15:05]
I doubt it's a real country.

[00:15:07]
I think it's a fake country, but it's the fictional country of Gindra in Central Africa.

[00:15:13]
And potentially let me double check on this shit actually.

[00:15:17]
Is Gindra real?

[00:15:22]
Yeah, Gindra is not a real place.

[00:15:23]
Okay, I think if it's not a real place, they were like a really, really extensive background on this fucking fake country.

[00:15:29]
Yeah, it's gotta be real because the the Wikipedia on this like as a former colony of France, the country's official language and like it just kind of goes off into percentages of Muslim faith versus

[00:15:42]
Catholics in the area.

[00:15:46]
Although it's pulling up if I type in Gindra is yeah, it's there's a Wikipedia article on fictional African countries and Gindra is on the list.

[00:15:53]
Oh, I wonder if that's.

[00:15:54]
Wow, they went they went all out.

[00:15:56]
Yeah.

[00:15:57]
Hmm.

[00:15:58]
Crazy.

[00:15:59]
All right.

[00:16:00]
Um, but yeah, so essentially the Gindra Liberation Front takes over Metal Gear and what snake ends up happening what snake ends up finding out a place.

[00:16:12]
Upon entering the country is that Gindra or prior to entering the country is that Gindra is actually the African country where Outer Heaven from Metal Gear one once stood and that this Gindra Liberation Front is essentially living in the remnants of Outer Heaven.

[00:16:29]
And they are sort of holding their ground and trying to establish independence from the United States due to some crazy political things that have been going on.

[00:16:41]
Um, like I said before, the story is actually extremely complex and is essentially pitting snake against these five members of the black chamber, which is kind of the stand in for Foxhounds from Metal Gear Solid one.

[00:16:54]
The black chamber sort of members that we see in the game are black arts viper, who is the head of the whole organization.

[00:17:05]
Mary Annette Owl Slasher Hawk Pyro Bison and then later on it is revealed that Brian McBride, who is actually one of your sort of confidants is actually one of the members of the black chamber.

[00:17:18]
I wrote in my notes that the black chamber totally sounds like a fucking Wutang Clan album.

[00:17:22]
Um, and these members names totally sound like some Mega Man X fucking boss names.

[00:17:30]
Yeah.

[00:17:31]
Like Slasher Hawk.

[00:17:33]
But they're actually pretty interesting.

[00:17:36]
I can't tell if Mary Annette Owl is a man or a woman.

[00:17:39]
Um, but other than that, uh, they, I think we're actually, to me, I thought they were more interesting than the Metal Gear Solid one bosses.

[00:17:47]
Yeah, I tried to, um, in the lights plays.

[00:17:49]
I, whenever it was getting a little tedious, I definitely just tried to skip or watch some of the boss fights and they looked really, really cool.

[00:17:57]
And, uh, whatever this is done, I'm definitely going to play this game.

[00:18:01]
Yeah, totally.

[00:18:02]
Well, yeah, I'm probably still going to try and squeeze in some time to finish it up.

[00:18:06]
Um, but yeah, just to give a little bit of backstory on these guys, uh, Slasher Hawk is a Australian, um, aborigine kind of, uh, guy, or at least he was taken in by some aborigines.

[00:18:17]
And then upon the death of his parents was, uh, sort of, uh, asked to leave.

[00:18:22]
Um, and that's kind of the common theme with a lot of these bosses, much like in Metal Gear Solid one, is they're all kind of like, kind of like that Batman's in.

[00:18:30]
And then there's a syndrome where every single enemy is like holding a mirror against Batman and being like, these are people just like you, but they took the dark side.

[00:18:38]
Um, and so Slasher Hawk throws a fucking boomerang and sticks a hawk on you, which is pretty badass.

[00:18:44]
And you have to kill him with grenades, which is nuts that he can take more than a couple of those.

[00:18:49]
Um, and then he's got a pretty interesting death monologue and all of these things have like the super sick, like, I don't know if it's 16-bit or I know it's not 8-bit.

[00:18:57]
It might be somewhere in the middle, but that sort of Game Boy Color, uh, pixel art, it looks fantastic.

[00:19:04]
Yeah, it's, uh, it's definitely not, I don't know, it's really interesting.

[00:19:08]
And I've tried to place like where I've seen that in other games.

[00:19:11]
Uh, that kind of specific way of doing 8-bit, 16-bit, whatever.

[00:19:16]
Yeah, it looks really cool.

[00:19:18]
Yeah, I don't know, it's crazy.

[00:19:20]
Like all of the artwork looks cool.

[00:19:21]
Also the Kodak conversations look fantastic.

[00:19:24]
Yeah, um, I was a bit confused.

[00:19:26]
Okay, so whenever you start this game out, like most people, um, or like, like in all the other games, you know, you're gonna get a call from Campbell.

[00:19:34]
Um, you told me that this was taking place in like an alternate reality.

[00:19:38]
And the, uh, the shading on Campbell's face, I thought his face was like half stone.

[00:19:45]
Um, and I don't know why I thought that, but I was like, oh shit.

[00:19:49]
I don't know, it just, it seemed cool.

[00:19:52]
That's awesome.

[00:19:53]
I emailed Kojima and I was like, hey, you know, if you do another alternate thing, I've got a couple ideas I can toss at you.

[00:20:01]
What'd you give him?

[00:20:03]
Um, you know, I didn't want to like just give it to him outright.

[00:20:06]
Uh, because I didn't want him to be a little sneaky snake and steal it.

[00:20:10]
Um, I want him to be a solid snake.

[00:20:12]
I want him to be good and good about it and meet up with me and sign some paperwork and things like that.

[00:20:18]
Gotcha.

[00:20:19]
Well, now that he's not at Konami, uh, excuse me.

[00:20:22]
I mean, now that he's on vacation, um, you could, uh, what you guys could do is start your own, uh, Metal Gear series and call it something different.

[00:20:31]
Damn it. I sent it to Kojima at Konami.

[00:20:36]
Oh, they got it. They intercepted it, man.

[00:20:38]
Damn it.

[00:20:39]
That is going to be like the most heartbreaking thing in the world is that if he's like, oh, I fucking hate how I just spent 28 years of my life doing Metal Gear.

[00:20:47]
Um, and then he leaves and then watch somebody be like, well, you're Kojima.

[00:20:50]
I mean, you're the only thing you're known for is Metal Gear.

[00:20:52]
So let's just do a Metal Gear style game with a different name.

[00:20:55]
And then he just gets like sucked into doing the same shit over again.

[00:20:58]
Yeah.

[00:20:59]
Um, that would be hard for you.

[00:21:00]
It's hard to tell when you look at this, this young strapping young man, but like he is getting close to retirement.

[00:21:07]
I feel like he could retire if he wanted to.

[00:21:11]
Yeah, it's, it's crazy.

[00:21:14]
But I need to read up on that, uh, all this stuff with Kojima and Konami because I'm not really aware of things like that.

[00:21:23]
Yeah, there's not a whole lot of information available presently, but I will say since we are recording this around the time that this was revealed, I thought it was a funny little side thing to throw in here.

[00:21:34]
So John Carpenter just got done or the company that produced some of John Carpenter's work just got done suing somebody for completely ripping off the concept of escape from New York.

[00:21:47]
Um, and in an interview when asked why he never sued, uh, no, it wasn't why he never sued today.

[00:21:54]
Oh, yeah, I remember sued today.

[00:21:55]
Oh, Kojima, it was the French company that was suing this company for John Carpenter was like, yeah, let's go after that today.

[00:22:01]
Oh, Kojima guy too.

[00:22:02]
And John Carpenter was like, no, no, no, like I know him and he's really cool.

[00:22:06]
So I don't want to, I don't want to deal with that.

[00:22:09]
Yeah.

[00:22:10]
Um, but apparently Kojima at one point was in the crossfire for almost 100% ripping off the character of snake from escape from New York.

[00:22:19]
Um, John Carpenter was talking about how the original Metal Gear Solid is essentially the plot of escape from New York, but I'm going to completely disagree with that shit.

[00:22:26]
Yeah, I, I disagreed with that as well.

[00:22:28]
I mean, I saw the similarities and like the character and the sweet mullet.

[00:22:33]
Um, but that was, that was really bad.

[00:22:36]
Yeah, the name as well.

[00:22:38]
But I mean, yeah, I didn't see much plot wise being an escape from New York, but you know, I haven't watched that video on.

[00:22:50]
So really quickly, just to kind of top it all off, um, essentially same thing goes as always.

[00:22:57]
Snake gets in there.

[00:22:58]
Um, there's like a Meryl stand in named Chris, uh, what is your name?

[00:23:02]
Chris Jenner, actually, which is hilarious because it's just like Chris Jenner, uh, from Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

[00:23:09]
Um, but, um, essentially he meets the soldier.

[00:23:14]
Is that Jess Langer?

[00:23:15]
No, I know the name is spelled differently and she's a different character, but, um, essentially, uh, Snake goes in there and with the help of Chris, um, they free Jimmy the Wizard, uh, who is the like nerdy Metal Gear developer who's standing in for, uh, Otacon, um, who, I'm going to go and throw out there.

[00:23:35]
Whoever the fuck was writing the dialogue for this Game Boy game, uh, knew what was up, man, because like Jimmy the Wizard fucking calls out Snake for like some of the same shit that like fans will be like, why do you have so many questions and blah, blah, blah.

[00:23:50]
Um, and just some of the dialogue between the characters, like, I don't know, you can tell that the person who wrote it spent a lot of time with the Metal Gear series and like appreciated it, but was also calling it out for some of its kind of quirkier flaws.

[00:24:04]
Um, but yeah, so Snake destroys Metal Gear, um, and then everything goes, gets better.

[00:24:11]
Um, I will say the big twist to the game just because at this point sort of every Metal Gear game is known for having a massive twist.

[00:24:17]
Um, the Black Chamber who had kept saying like fuck you, Solid Snake, like we're going to use Metal Gear to detonate a nuclear warhead in the United States, um, because of all these terrible things that had happened to us.

[00:24:29]
So you come to find out that essentially, um, Black Chamber is kind of the shadow Foxhound and, uh, Foxhound after the events of Metal Gear 1 was sort of elevated to this celebrity status for taking down Big Boss and destroying Outer Heaven.

[00:24:44]
Um, and so you find out that Foxhound didn't really do anything after that and Black Chamber was kind of the group that got sent to do all the US government's dirty work.

[00:24:53]
Um, but apparently two years prior to the events of Ghostbabel, um, Black Chamber essentially gets sent on a similar mission to Snake where it's like, hey, these terrorists took Metal Gear, we need to get it back.

[00:25:05]
Um, and it turned out that the whole thing was a ruse, um, and that Colonel Campbell was involved and what it was is they had the Black Chamber come out to try and return Metal Gear and instead there was an ambush waiting and the US government killed everyone except for five people.

[00:25:22]
Um, and, um, sort of this, um, them taking Metal Gear and sort of doing this whole like, uh, sort of operation, Galuade or Galuade Incident as it's known, um, is sort of a retaliation to what the US government did, even though they are kind of utilizing these, uh, sort of African freedom fighters in the mix.

[00:25:45]
That's not really what it's about.

[00:25:47]
So I don't know, it's kind of a crazy little thing and I would definitely recommend to everybody that they check it out. The animation is fluid, the colors look great, the music's fantastic. Um, it plays surprisingly well for being on a Game Boy Color that literally has four direction buttons and A and B and a start, select, and that's it.

[00:26:03]
Um, so, but yeah, I mean, that's sort of, uh, Metal Gear Ghostbabel in a nutshell. Um, I did want to say there's a weird tie in the Metal Gear Solid 2.

[00:26:13]
This kind of comes up a lot as like, quote unquote, myths from Ghostbabel, but, um, apparently when you beat the game, on top of the main game, they somehow packed like over 50 VR missions into this fucking cartridge.

[00:26:26]
Um, so there's a lot and they're VR missions from the PlayStation game, except for Redone on the Game Boy.

[00:26:33]
Yeah, I, I read that there was 180.

[00:26:36]
Oh my God.

[00:26:37]
That seems insane.

[00:26:38]
Yeah, that is insane. How the, how did they fit all of this on a Game Boy cartridge?

[00:26:43]
No idea.

[00:26:44]
Um, I'm surprised, like the only other thing that could have blown my mind at this point is if every character was voiced somehow.

[00:26:50]
Like, but, um, but yeah, after you beat the game, you unlock these like special stages. Um, and if you finish all of the special stages at the very end, there's like one of the, like the weird kind of sort of trademark cut to Metal Gear logo, have somebody talking over a phone situation.

[00:27:07]
Um, and essentially at the very end, after you finish this mysterious character named number four says like, let me pull it up really quickly.

[00:27:17]
All right, four Jack conversation.

[00:27:25]
Two seconds.

[00:27:27]
So yeah, there's a myth that's a pretty, pretty big myth in the Metal Gear sort of fan community that Ghost Babble is a VR mission that, um, Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2 goes through.

[00:27:38]
Um, and there are a lot of people that are calling bullshit, but after you finish Ghost Babble, character named number four says your training is complete. Well done.

[00:27:47]
Your combat capability is now undoubtedly beyond that of Solid Snake at the time of Gallowade's fall. Your time is about to come and then he just says get some rest for now.

[00:27:56]
Jack. And then it's over.

[00:28:00]
Um, and so a lot of people are like, oh my God, who else could it be and there's not. I mean, there aren't a lot of characters named Jack in the Metal Gear canon.

[00:28:07]
Really? So I don't know. I mean, again, the game is not canon and has been essentially removed from any of the official timelines that Konami puts out, but I thought that was a fun little kind of thing to touch on.

[00:28:21]
Yeah.

[00:28:23]
But yeah, also in the Japanese and European versions of the game, once you beat the game, you can go to the codec and type in frequency 140.07 and you'll get a hidden radio drama called Idea Spy.

[00:28:36]
And every chapter of the game, there's a new chapter of this radio drama. And apparently one of the writers from the game wrote this like spy drama that you can listen to.

[00:28:47]
That's that's what I was talking to you about this before, before we start the podcast. That's a Kojima actually does some voice of that, I believe.

[00:28:56]
Oh, nice. That's awesome.

[00:28:59]
But but yeah, so in a nutshell, that is Ghost Babble.

[00:29:04]
Next time that you guys listen to this podcast, we will be covering Metal Gear Solid 2.

[00:29:11]
And yeah, Cameron, do you got anything you want to shout out to people or throw out there?

[00:29:17]
Funlings? Anything?

[00:29:18]
Yeah, I know in the past, I have been somewhat of a hater on these games and just pretty much every game I'm questioning why I'm doing it to begin with.

[00:29:29]
It's not kind of a battle to finish during that last stretch, but this game, I think is is different into where like I really want to play it.

[00:29:38]
I'll be playing it later. I don't know. Maybe maybe maybe later down the road after we both beat it, we can kind of get back into it or something.

[00:29:48]
Yeah, that'd be cool. Do you like a recap kind of what did you think?

[00:29:52]
Which would also be cool if some people listen to this and they're like, oh, that sounds like a cool game.

[00:29:58]
And they go off and they play it and we can get some responses and things like that from leaders or listeners.

[00:30:07]
Yeah, totally. That'd be awesome.

[00:30:09]
Well, cool guys. That's pretty much everything I've got to say.

[00:30:12]
One sort of like final admin note. And I know I said it at the top of the last episode, but Sam Wright and myself are going to be at the Ohio Game Developers Expo next weekend in Columbus, Ohio.

[00:30:25]
And if anybody listening is in Ohio or Illinois or St. Louis or Missouri, I don't know the state of St. Louis, you can go to Ohio Game Dev Expo.com, I believe, or just Google Ohio Game Dev Expo.

[00:30:40]
So it's at the COSI. You should totally get tickets.

[00:30:43]
The main reason why I'm going to be there is to see Cole Ross and Gary Butterfield from DuckFeed.tv talk about Dark Souls.

[00:30:50]
But I know that Sam and myself are putting together some flyers for the GeekTime Network.

[00:30:56]
And I'm also going to be sort of putting together some materials for the Dev Diary sort of video project that I'm doing.

[00:31:03]
And we're going to be kind of passing stuff out and meeting some cool people.

[00:31:07]
So if you are in the Midwest, you should check out the Ohio Game Dev Expo.

[00:31:11]
And other than that, be sure to rate and review us on iTunes.

[00:31:14]
Follow us with whatever, subscribe with whatever your podcast sort of feeder is.

[00:31:20]
And check out our new and improved revamp website at GeekTime, which is geekti.me.

[00:31:27]
Or you can tweet at GeekTimePod, GeekUnderscoreTime, or check us out on Facebook at facebook.com.

[00:31:34]
GeekTimePod or official GeekTime.

[00:31:38]
Anyway, that's my mouthful for the outro. Cameron.

[00:31:43]
Thanks a lot.

[00:31:45]
What do they need to remember?

[00:31:49]
Just a box!

[00:31:51]
Perfect. I loved it.

[00:31:54]
Just a box.

[00:31:57]
Thanks for watching.