Hey everyone, I made a thing. In addition to being a multi-talented writer here at Warp Zoned, I’m also a connoisseur of the arts. Does that sound good, or is it too pretentious? Either way, I think I’ve outdone myself.
Introducing the first English adaptation of the Metal Gear Audio Drama, which I produced.
In 1998, longtime Metal Gear military adviser Motosada Mori wrote an audio drama for Japanese radio simply called Metal Gear Solid. Konami, together with Nippon Cultural Broadcasting, eventually released the 12 episodes of the show across two CDs. However, the series never left Japan, presumably because we Americans haven’t listened to a radio play after everyone thought War of the Worlds was a real alien invasion.
Actually, there’s some debate as to whether or not that happened, but you get the point.
Despite its name, the Metal Gear Solid audio drama wasn’t an adaptation of the original PSone game, but instead a series of totally original stories. You see, Mori was interested in becoming a writer, so he wrote the radio play to break into the business, and he used the Metal Gear franchise because that’s what he’d been working on and it was popular. He came up with his own plot, three loosely connected adventures actually, and all featuring new Metal Gear stories. As far as I can ascertain, Kojima himself had nothing to do with this series. In fact I can’t even find any evidence of him ever mentioning it.
A lot of care was put into translating the Metal Gear Audio Drama into English. Editing a translation provided by MetalGearSolid.net and mixing the episodes together took several weeks. And my voice actors, many of whom are Metal Gear fans, worked just as long to make sure they got every line right.
The series features the sterling voices of Kristyn Mass (Meryl Silverburgh), Stig Syntangen (Captain), Yui Hisiashi, Jimmy Cooper (Colonel Campbell), Terrance Nicholson, and Cliff Thompson (Solid Snake), as well as many more. Popular YouTuber and Metal Gear fanatic YongYea is also among the ranks of the performers. I even brought on composer Yui Hisaishi to create a brand new music track, which you can hear throughout the series, and briefly in the Animated Showcase Trailer.
You can listen to the series on YouTube for the subtitled version, or you can download individual episodes from Soundcloud. A new episode will be available every Friday for the next few months.
