From The Pages Of Hideo Kojima’s Development Notebooks

Metal Gear Solid and Snatcher creator Hideo Kojima has been posting photos of video game planning manuals on Twitter.

Metal Gear

These notes are from 1987 where Hideo Kojima shared a rejected logo for the MSX version of Metal Gear. The hand drawn map is from the game’s first floor and the text are from the game’s radio scenes. Kojima notes there is no kanji in the Japanese version because the game couldn’t support it so everything is written in katakana.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

These documents appear to be from very early in development. The first photo is a pitch for the game. Next to it is a rough draft for the scenario, which Kojima created to organize the game’s objectives and motives.

Snatcher

Kojima notes Snatcher was originally called "Junker." After Metal Gear came out Kojima took a week long vacation. When he returned to Konami he recklessly wrote Snatcher’s draft. An exclusive script language was made just for Snatcher. Animation, commands, flags, and the program were all written by Kojima. The foundation of the language are "if" and "switch" commands.

The map is from MSX version of Snatcher. The original plan was to have a 3D gun shooting part with a Snatcher during the Queen’s Hospital underground area. Plans were ultimately scrapped, but you can see the rejected map.