
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes Whoa, there's a lot of history there! Just tell me about the newest games. The scope of the project also included a prequel, Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, which was released in March 2014. Kojima's final one is Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, which debuted this past September to critical acclaim. Since then, Kojima and Konami have released 10 other canonical entries in the Metal Gear franchise, which exploded in popularity in 1998 with the PlayStation game Metal Gear Solid. The hero of Metal Gear was an operative named Solid Snake, who was sent on a mission in the year 1995 to stop the titular nuclear weapon, a bipedal tank. There, he designed and directed the original Metal Gear, a stealth action game that debuted on MSX2 in 1987.

Kojima, 52, got his start at Konami's division for the MSX home computer. But their split has been an acrimonious one, marked by gag orders, vague statements from Konami and insults to Kojima's legacy. Kojima is Konami's all-time most famous employee, and ordinarily, someone with his resume would surely have been feted by the company upon the announcement of his departure. Kojima's departure concluded a three-decade career at Konami, putting a sad closing note on what has been a tumultuous final year in the relationship between the two. He began his career at the company in 1986, and worked on dozens of games there over the course of a tenure that ended yesterday.

Hideo Kojima is one of the world's foremost game designers, the renowned creator of the Metal Gear franchise under Japanese publisher Konami.
