26 years on, developers discuss the massive impact Metal Gear Solid had on the industry: "This was going much further than all previous action games. And that was totally inspiring"

The key art for Metal Gear Solid from the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection released, showing Solid Snake with his bandana on, as drawn by Yoji Shinkawa.

At the risk of giving the game an inflated Christly significance, it's impossible to think back on a time when Metal Gear Solid didn't exist. There is the now and the time Before Snake – and no in between. But that's the interesting thing, for most of the gaming world Metal Gear Solid was kind of a sudden divine bolt of lightning from out of nowhere.

The Western world hadn't really seen much of Hideo Kojima up until that point, what with a lot of his projects – however significant they are – sidelined onto doomed consoles or stuck without a localised version for years. Even the earlier Metal Gear games kind of just passed much of the world by without too much attention, and then, one day in 1997, everything changed. While footage of Metal Gear Solid had already been shown at Tokyo Game Show back in 1996 and earlier, it wasn't until E3 the following year that gamers really got a glimpse of what would go on to be one of the PlayStation's defining games. And from that point on, the hype was tangible.