Metal Gear

Metal Gear (widely known to Chinese retro gamers as Burning Chariot) is a top-down stealth action game published by Konami and released for Famicom in 1988. It is a heavily modified port of the original MSX2 Metal Gear. Hideo Kojima was not involved in this Famicom adaptation; story and level design were substantially altered. It is the version most Chinese players know. Solid Snake, a rookie agent of FOXHOUND, is dispatched to infiltrate the fortified Outer Heaven stronghold in South Africa on mission Intrude N313. He must rescue missing agent Gray Fox and uncover the secret nuclear weapon project. Gameplay centers on stealth and evasion rather than open combat. Avoid guard sightlines, cameras and infrared sensors. When spotted, an exclamation mark pops above enemies and alarms summon reinforcements. Snake starts unarmed and scavenges gear throughout the base: pistols, machine guns, explosives, keycards and a transceiver radio to receive briefings from Big Boss. Rescuing prisoners raises your rank, while killing prisoners lowers it. Environments include jungle zones and multi-level underground bases, and trucks teleport Snake between areas. This Famicom port makes drastic changes: the iconic Metal Gear mech from MSX2 is removed, replaced with a supercomputer as the final boss. Maps, visuals and soundtrack are remade, and several exclusive bugs are present. The game is puzzle-heavy; missing key items can completely block progression, resulting in high difficulty. In China, pirated cartridges named it Burning Chariot. Bundled widely on Subor multicarts, it stands out as a unique spy stealth classic of the Famicom library.

These are the default keys. Click the gamepad icon 🎮 in the player’s bottom toolbar to rebind them. Gamepads are detected automatically. On phones you get on-screen buttons.

1P

2P

The NES was always two-player — 2P uses the numeric keypad, and NumLock does not matter. No numpad? Rebind 2P to other keys in the 🎮 panel.