A few days ago, or a few days from now in North America, Metal Gear Ghost Babel celebrated 25 years. The non-canon sequel to the highly acclaimed MGS1 was a fully built game for the Gameboy Color back in 2000, but hasn’t seen the light of day since.
It may be a bit confusing for some gamers because “Ghost Babel” was actually removed from the title outside of Japan, which means you have two versions of just “Metal Gear Solid,” one on PS1 and one on Gameboy Color (GBC). However both versions are highly different. The original game, released on PS1 in 1998, is a canon title and arguably one of the best games in the entire series.
The Gameboy Color (GBC) version, on the other hand, is a non-canon title that honestly still excels at what it did for its time. Unlike The Twin Snakes on Gamecube, which included subtle changes to the game, Ghost Babel is technically a sequel to the original title, but was retconned by Kojima due to the timeline of events. However (big however) it still has easter eggs that hint at future games. For example the very first tease of Raiden (MGS2) appears here, but much like his stand alone game he gets forgotten. There are also story elements that tie to MGS4 and the groups Snake is involved in.
One could argue that Kojima simply downplayed Ghost Babel purely to keep the secret safe for MGS2. MGS2 released a year later, and the shocking discovery was that you were not playing as the iconic Snake, and instead Raiden. With players discovering “Jack,” in Ghost Babel, it technically followed the same trend and retconned itself to fit in the timeline just fine by being a VR mission for Raiden.
As a GBC title, the game is very strong and one of the better titles ever released for the handheld. It has a full production, gameplay is clean and fun, and the story is, well, Metal Gear so I’m entirely biased with that. Even searching around to discuss the game with fans, it’s hard to come across someone that didn’t simply enjoy playing the game. It’s great.
However, a major problem with the franchise entirely is that there are several games in the series that are locked away on old hardware. MGS4 is still a prisoner of the PS3, AC!D titles locked on PSP, MGS1 The Twin Snakes is locked on Gamecube, and Ghost Babel is still a prisoner of the GBC. I haven’t been able to find it on the Nintendo E-Shop and it wasn’t included in the recent Volume 1 release. It also hasn’t made a return on any of the collections Konami has released.
If you want to play Ghost Babel, your only options seem to be either emulators or finding an extremely high priced copy on auction sites. Once the whole retro game boom happened, Ghost Babel seemed to sky rocket to the front of the pack in terms of value because of its rarity.
But Konami could potentially change this with Volume 2. I’m not necessarily asking for a remake of the game. That would be cool, even if it was to simply increase the bit rate, or add 3D elements like Zelda did, but the game itself is simply pure retro gold.
Imagine a set that includes Ghost Babel, MGS4, and the AC!D titles. Mind blown! Heck there are enough spin off titles to warrant a whole collection of “Kojima Rejects,” if we toss in Portable Ops.
Could this happen? It’s possible. For one, it’s more likely to happen than The Twin Snakes ever seeing the light of day again. Ghost Babel was made by Konami and they own rights to it, the only issue seems to be the idea that the game retconned some of Kojima’s work, which is a big no-no. The Twin Snakes, on the other hand, was made in collaboration with Nintendo and the studio they funded is no longer around, meaning Nintendo holds some really strong rights to that game and may never let it see another console again.
Ghost Babel also has a strong argument in being a historically important title. Spoiler, with the easter egg that the main character is Jack (Raiden) the whole time, it easily explains the slight differences and timeline issue the game provides. A quick revamp of making this story element more apparent can easily fix the retcon issues. Then you have the fact MGS4 references something that is only mentioned in Ghost Babel, so tying this game to a collection that includes MGS4 makes the most sense.
In fact it makes more sense than acknowledging the existence of Snakes Revenge, which somehow always gets a pass to be included in everything, even though it also is non-canon and not very good.
