Metal Gear Solid 3 pachinko is a surprisingly complete remake, for better or worse

Konami has released a new promo video for its Metal Gear Solid 3 themed pachinko-slot machine, and man! I wish that was a game I could play more directly than by feeding steel balls into a cabinet! The seven-minute-long video shows off a bunch more of what appears to be Snake Eater scenes fully rebuilt in the Fox Engine (which powers MGS5), from Snake's first confrontation with Ocelot all the way to his final duel with The Boss.

Skip to the two-minute mark if you get tired of listening to the Japanese narrator intensely describe pachinko features.

There are a bunch of minigames themed after moments from the game, including the aforementioned Ocelot fight and a chibi Virtuous Mission. But the breadth and quality of these scenes has led some to speculate (with varying degrees of sincerity) that this pachinko cabinet may be a tease for a full-fledged, regular-video-game remake of Snake Eater.

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Konami has said that it plans to keep making Metal Gear games even with series creator Hideo Kojima gone. And, if Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary are any indication, these days it's fashionable to let a new team of developers cut their teeth on an existing series by remaking one of the series' most beloved entries.

Others theorize that these assets were intended for an unannounced MGS3 remake, until Konami canceled it and decided to use the leftovers for a pachinko machine. Which is a little bit distressing to think about, if I'm being honest. Oof, feeling a hearty round of existential dread coming on now.

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With the most optimistic and pessimistic interpretations addressed, it's also worth remembering that pachinko machines are a really big deal in Japan. After Kojima walked out of the office like the Pied Piper of game development, it's entirely possible that Konami just put together some cool MGS3 scenes with the staff and engine it had left, intending all along to use them solely in a super-complex ball bearing gambling machine.

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.