The Metal Gear Solid Master Collection might not be able to save MGS4

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots — (Image credit: Konami)

Alongside the long-awaited announcement of the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake - goofball trailer and all - Konami also announced a series of collections bringing back the old games in their original forms, and now the question is whether or not the developers will have the resources to save Metal Gear Solid 4.

If you missed the announcement of Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, the package includes the original Metal Gear Solid and the HD collection versions of its first two numbered sequels, Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater. The 'Vol. 1' in the title certainly implies further releases down the line, and Konami describes this as "the first in a new collection of games from the legendary series."

There are plenty more Metal Gear games to collect, from mainline entries like Peace Walker and The Phantom Pain to spin-offs like Revengeance, Ghost Babel, and Acid. But nobody's quite certain whether to hope that the collection will include Metal Gear Solid 4, despite the game's importance in wrapping up pretty much every plot thread in the main series.

But Metal Gear Solid 4 was built exclusively for the PS3, a hardware platform notoriously difficult to develop for. The challenges of PS3 development have similarly made it difficult to port games developed exclusively for the console to modern platforms. Official ports, like Sony's Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, are few and far between, and even fanmade emulation efforts, like RPCS3, are notoriously demanding of even the highest-end of hardware.

With all that in mind, fans fear that even the Master Collection initiative might not be enough to save MGS4 from the bounds of the PS3. "I have a feeling MGS4 is held together by spaghetti code to run on the PS3 and they would basically have to remake the entire game or something ridiculous," as one Reddit user says, echoing the broad sentiment of the community. "I'm not sure we are ever going to see it on other platforms, as much as I'd love a remastered version on PS5."

MGS4 may not be an impossible port - one of the original devs has noted that the studio got it running on Xbox 360 before launch - but it's likely to be a far more substantial project than any other game in the series. The Windows Central report that leaked this collection ahead of the reveal yesterday mentioned hearing that "Metal Gear Solid 4 won't be included in any prospective Classic Collection re-releases," and it's likely going to take a very strong reception to these collections for that to change.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.