MG/MG2: Metal Gear 2 Ghost Run from 2020

[DeadSoldier]

A long story:

I've been trying to do this challenge since 2011, after being inspired by an MGS3 ghost run from MGSForums user Jack Reacher (and some other guy that was doing the same run) that has long since been deleted.

Initially, I tried using the tried-and-true BlueMSX, but its recording feature keeps screwing up sometimes (it would sometimes not register any key registers, making Snake walk around like a doofus, and in some cases, trying to encode a video capture with a x264 codec with custom settings is bound to be screwed up), and since the emulator hasn't seen a stable release since 2009 (not counting that Thanksgiving 2013 beta build), I felt that the guys behind it weren't going to fix their recording feature, so I just quit using it for the time being.

So then I bothered with OpenMSX as they actually update it on the occasion, and hoo boy, is it one complicated emulator. To record gameplay video and/or audio, you have to open up the command console and type the "record start" command. Since I didn't feel like figuring out how to open it, I then resort for other options. OpenMSX's own launcher, Catapult, couldn't let you record, so then I found that another launcher, NekoLauncher for OpenMSX, actually allows you to record from it. Only problem was that it's only for Macintosh computers only. But lucky me, I just so happened to be using a MacBook A1342 that I got from college back in 2010 (don't ask; it's dead now), so I went and did that. However, when I recorded those videos, they were 240p. Little did I realize, OpenMSX actually has an option to record footage with double the resolution (480p), and I can't remember if NekoLauncher v1.4 actually had that option (I knew version 1.5 did), but if it did, I feel like an idiot (like I always do). Looking back, I'm kinda glad I didn't upload them. Had I uploaded these videos in their current state, they would have looked awful. Not to mention that back then, whenever I upload a video on YouTube, they would mess my videos up badly. I still feel pretty sore about it. Don't know if it was my family's old internet service provider or what, but whatever.

(If you want, I could compile those videos into one, but the run stops at the Hind D. It's also not very good, I'm afraid.)

Another problem I had were the romhacks. Before you ask, yes, I'm aware that romhacks aren't always legitimate when it comes to challenges and walkthrough videos, but the romhacks in question, the Turbo Fix and PANCard Plus, are considered quality-of-life improvements, and they don't necessarily make the game easier. For those who aren't aware, MG2 was developed under an HP 64000 computer, which would explain why MG2 felt so clunky when playing it on a MSX2 machine (either on real hardware or emulation), as it required a faster processor, resulting frame skipping. That's where the Turbo Fix comes in. As for the PANCard Plus patch, from what I can recall, there was a cheat code where if you have a certain card, you can actually open the door without having to equip it, kinda like on MGS2 and The Twin Snakes, and MGS3 by extension. So that patch was made so you won't have to manually do that.

So I had the Turbo Fix and the PANCard Plus patches, but there was another romhack that went under my nose. That patch fixes a couple of glitches (examples includes a glitch in the first building when the elevator is on 4F and several pixel glitches throughout the game, such as one in back of the truck (lorry for you non-Americans out there), where the light shines in the window and the too light pixels in the shade in the desert). So I wanted to patch the three, but I had some confusion on what .ips file should I patch first, so I had to ask on the old blueMSX forums (I think it's gone now) and got everything sorted out.

So 2014 came around, and after seeing Revolver_FOX's MGSV Ground Zeroes Ghost Run, it motivated me to try my Ghost Run for Metal Gear 2 again. Of course, I went back to BlueMSX, now fully aware about it's Thanksgiving 2013 beta version, and just like last time, it's record function is barely usable. The reason why I went back to BlueMSX was that I liked its video effects, since OpenMSX's looks like a LCD screen trying to make scanlines. I feel that my playthroughs should look like they came from a TV since pixelated 2D games usually look good from a CRT screen. I also found out that BlueMSX was ported on OS X, under the name CocoaMSX, and from the looks of it, it seemed like the team behind it were the same ones behind BlueMSX, and I assume that they've abandoned that emulator as they seem to have updated CocoaMSX until 2017. Of course, I barely even touched it, and I don't think I ever got around its record feature, since I didn't feel like screwing with it.

So anyway, getting back to the topic on hand. I recorded my Ghost Run up to the second boss battle. Now I've run into another problem. The video sizes were pretty damn big, so I tried to use HandBrake to downsize the file, but then I remembered that .avi files aren't compatible with the software, so I tried VirtualDub to try to convert it into an MP4 file, since I worry that any video converter would lower the framerate down to 30. As you would know, Google announced that YouTube was gonna support 60fps captures, but only for any resolution from 720p and higher. I tried upscaling the videos with VirtualDub, but apparently, importing the videos kinda screwed up the colors (certain colors wound up getting inverted). By then, I gave up on BlueMSX (and its OS X port) completely and came crawling back to OpenMSX in early-2015.

Still feeling disgruntled about the whole affair with the other emulator, I later learned how to use the command console, realizing that may be I should really start reading more carefully (I'm not good at reading, apparently). So I played around with it for a bit, and tried to upscale the video at 720p without dropping the frame rate, but VirtualDub didn't recognize it because of its codec, and after trying to screw around figuring out a way, I just gave up on that, and didn't bother upscaling my videos. That was until I found out that later builds of OpenMSX actually support 720p recording with its "record start -triplesize -stereo" command, so then I started my game all over again, for like the 10th or so many times.

Finally, after so long, I could finally upload my playthrough properly and finish the challenge! That was, until 2016... See, on my old playthroughs, I would usually find a stopping point if I feel like something difficult is coming up shortly, so I would save at that point. Anyone familiar with the game should know that whenever you reload a save, Snake would appear next to a door that comes AFTER the Foxhound logo, so when I defeated Night Fright and nullified the acid pools with B1 rations, I had to back track to where I fought Jungle Evil and grab Card 9, but when I tried going back to the detention camp, I keep getting caught by one of the guards outside the gate (looking back, I sure as shit didn't know what I was doing.) So after a couple of retries, I then remembered that I can just save after getting card 9 and reload back to the elevator.

After that ordeal, I originally wanted to continue from there, but I had to go through a boss gauntlet, and each time I tried, I keep dying from one boss to another, and even if I do defeat Big Boss, there's still that chase sequence where you have to escape with Holly, and I would die while trying not to shoot the guards until I reach a dead-end, so I just gave up from there and concluded it from there. Of course, the conclusion was not satisfactory enough.

So then comes 2020, and YouTuber V339 had been egging me to finish this run for so long, even going as far as to say that he could finish his MG2 run before I can--and he was right. I had been meaning to do a Ghost Run in one sitting for quite a long time, but let's just say that a lack of motivation and an internet addiction, as well as life getting in the way, were the benefactors for my lack of videos. I also wanted to improve my straits, considering that earlier in my older run from 2015, I didn't quite understood the enemy AI quite well as I do now. Of course, despite some improvements, I still made some errors, namely stocking up on ammo when it wasn't necessary and getting the cold medicine when it wasn't needed no more (going through the sewage water three times then going after the medicine wasn't a good idea, let's just leave it at that).

But either way, I'm kind of happy that I've finally finished the run after nearly ten years trying to complete a full Metal Gear 2 ghost run, although I still regret not finishing it sooner. I did try to finish the run before Christmas of that year, but after a couple of screw-ups, it's finally over with. Still, I wanted to prove that a game as old as Metal Gear 2 can be done under a no trace challenge, and to prove that it was a well-crafted game, even if it isn't perfect.

Today, I received an email from here in regards to a MGS Master Collection Vol. 2 giveaway, referring to me as an "oldhead", thus learning that the old MGSForums from yesteryear had been resurrected. I was for certain that everyone from there had moved on to either Reddit or Discord after Tapatalk took over the old forum. Well, now I'm here, posting an old video as a promise I made to a forum that was previously no more.

[Dirty Duck]

You after 10 years of trying to record a run:


What a saga. I admire your dedication to the run for sure-I always enjoyed the idea of a Ghost Run. I think it was the user TheoryRaptor on MGSF who's Ghost Run of Ground Zeroes back in 2014 first exposed me to the challenge.

Have you done these runs on Metal Gear or Ghost Babel?

Not that I'm trying to send you down another ordeal like this one. Would be totally reasonable if you'd had your fill of emulation challenge runs for a while longer.

[Jassassino]

A long story:

I've been trying to do this challenge since 2011, after being inspired by an MGS3 ghost run from MGSForums user Jack Reacher (and some other guy that was doing the same run) that has long since been deleted.

Initially, I tried using the tried-and-true BlueMSX, but its recording feature keeps screwing up sometimes (it would sometimes not register any key registers, making Snake walk around like a doofus, and in some cases, trying to encode a video capture with a x264 codec with custom settings is bound to be screwed up), and since the emulator hasn't seen a stable release since 2009 (I'm not counting that Thanksgiving 2013 beta), I felt that the guys behind it weren't going to fix their recording feature, so I just quit using it for the time being.

So then I bothered with OpenMSX as they actually update it on the occasion, and hoo boy, is it one complicated emulator. To record gameplay video and/or audio, you have to open up the command console and type the "record start" command. Since I didn't feel like figuring out how to open it, I then resort for other options. OpenMSX's own launcher, Catapult, couldn't let you record, so then I found that another launcher, NekoLauncher for OpenMSX, actually allows you to record from it. Only problem was that it's only for Macintosh computers only. But lucky me, I just so happened to be using a MacBook A1342 that I got from college back in 2010 (don't ask; it's dead now), so I went and did that. However, when I recorded those videos, they were 240p. Little did I realize, OpenMSX actually has an option to record footage with double the resolution (480p), and I can't remember if NL 1.4 actually had that option (I know version 1.5 did), but if it did, I feel like an idiot (like I always do). Looking back, I'm kinda glad I didn't upload them. Had I uploaded these videos in their current state, they would have looked awful. Not to mention that back then, whenever I upload a video on YouTube, they would mess my videos up badly. I still feel pretty sore about it. Don't know if it was my family's old internet service provider or what, but whatever.

(If you want, I could compile those videos into one, but the run stops at the Hind D. It's also not very good, I'm afraid.)

Another problem I had were the romhacks. Before you ask, yes, I'm aware that romhacks aren't always legitimate when it comes to challenges and walkthrough videos, but the romhacks in question, the Turbo Fix and PANCard Plus, are considered quality-of-life improvements, and they don't necessarily make the game easier. For those who aren't aware, MG2 was developed under an HP 64000 computer, which would explain why MG2 felt so clunky when playing it on a MSX2 machine (either on real hardware or emulation), as it required a faster processor, resulting frame skipping. That's where the Turbo Fix comes in. As for the PANCard Plus patch, from what I can recall, there was a cheat code where if you have a certain card, you can actually open the door without having to equip it, kinda like on MGS2 and The Twin Snakes, and MGS3 by extension. So that patch was made so you won't have to manually do that.

So I had the Turbo Fix and the PANCard Plus patches, but there was another romhack that went under my nose. That patch fixes a couple of glitches (examples includes a glitch in the first building when the elevator is on 4F and several pixel glitches throughout the game, such as one in back of the truck (lorry for you non-Americans out there), where the light shines in the window and the too light pixels in the shade in the desert). So I wanted to patch the three, but I had some confusion on what .ips file should I patch first, so I had to ask on the old blueMSX forums (I think it's gone now) and got everything sorted out.

So 2014 came around, and after seeing Revolver_FOX's MGSV Ground Zeroes Ghost Run, it motivated me to try my Ghost Run for Metal Gear 2 again. Of course, I went back to BlueMSX, now fully aware about it's Thanksgiving 2013 beta version, and just like last time, it's record function is barely usable. The reason why I went back to BlueMSX was that I liked its video effects, since OpenMSX's looks like a LCD screen trying to make scanlines. I feel that my playthroughs should look like they came from a TV since pixelated 2D games usually look good from a CRT screen. I also found out that BlueMSX was ported on OS X, under the name CocoaMSX, and from the looks of it, it seemed like the team behind it were the same ones behind BlueMSX, and I assume that they've abandoned that emulator as they seem to have updated CocoaMSX until 2017. Of course, I barely even touched it, and I don't think I ever got around its record feature, since I didn't feel like screwing with it.

So anyway, getting back to the topic on hand. I recorded my Ghost Run up to the second boss battle. Now I've run into another problem. The video sizes were pretty damn big, so I tried to use HandBrake to downsize the file, but then I remembered that .avi files aren't compatible with the software, so I tried VirtualDub to try to convert it into an MP4 file, since I worry that any video converter would lower the framerate down to 30. As you would know, Google announced that YouTube was gonna support 60fps captures, but only for any resolution from 720p and higher. I tried upscaling the videos with VirtualDub, but apparently, importing the videos kinda screwed up the colors (certain colors wound up getting inverted). By then, I gave up on BlueMSX (and its OS X port) completely and came crawling back to OpenMSX in early-2015.

Still feeling disgruntled about the whole affair with the other emulator, I later learned how to use the command console, realizing that may be I should really start reading more carefully (I'm not good at reading, apparently). So I played around with it for a bit, and tried to upscale the video at 720p without dropping the frame rate, but VirtualDub didn't recognize it because of its codec, and after trying to screw around figuring out a way, I just gave up on that, and didn't bother upscaling my videos. That was until I found out that later builds of OpenMSX actually support 720p recording with its "record start -triplesize -stereo" command, so then I started my game all over again, for like the 10th or so many times.

Finally, after so long, I could finally upload my playthrough properly and finish the challenge! That was, until 2016... See, on my old playthroughs, I would usually find a stopping point if I feel like something difficult is coming up shortly, so I would save at that point. Anyone familiar with the game should know that whenever you reload a save, Snake would appear next to a door that comes AFTER the Foxhound logo, so when I defeated Night Fright and nullified the acid pools with B1 rations, I had to back track to where I fought Jungle Evil and grab Card 9, but when I tried going back to the detention camp, I keep getting caught by one of the guards outside the gate (looking back, I sure as shit didn't know what I was doing.) So after a couple of retries, I then remembered that I can just save after getting card 9 and reload back to the elevator.

After that ordeal, I originally wanted to continue from there, but I had to go through a boss gauntlet, and each time I tried, I keep dying from one boss to another, and even if I do defeat Big Boss, there's still that chase sequence where you have to escape with Holly, and I would die while trying not to shoot the guards until I reach a dead-end, so I just gave up from there and concluded it from there. Of course, the conclusion was not satisfactory enough.

So a while back, V339 had been egging me to finish this run for so long, even going as far as to say that he could finish his MG2 run before I can, and he was right (although I haven't even checked his video as I type this). I have been meaning to do a Ghost Run in one sitting for quite a long time, but let's just say that a lack of motivation and an internet addiction, as well as life getting in the way, were the benefactors for my lack of videos as of late.

Anyway, 2020 came and sucked the fun out of everything, and even though I was real late, I also wanted to improve my straits, considering that earlier in my older run from 2015, I didn't quite understood the enemy AI quite well as I do now. Of course, despite some improvements, I still made some errors, namely stocking up on ammo when it wasn't necessary and getting the cold medicine when it wasn't needed no more (going through the sewage water three times then going after the medicine wasn't a good idea, let's just leave it at that).

But either way, I'm kind of happy that I've finally finished the run after nearly ten years trying to complete a Metal Gear 2 ghost run, although I still regret not finishing it sooner. I did try to finish the run before Christmas, but after a couple of screw-ups, it's finally over with. Still, I wanted to prove that a game as old as Metal Gear 2 can be done under a no trace challenge, and to prove that it was a well-crafted game, even if it isn't perfect.

Today, I received an email from here in regards to a MGS Master Collection Vol. 2 giveaway, referring to me as an "oldhead", thus learning that the old MGSForums from yesteryear had been resurrected. I was for certain that everyone from there had moved on to either Reddit or Discord after Tapatalk took over the old forum. Well, now I'm here, posting an old video as a promise I made to a forum that was previously no more.

You absolute chad. Excited to watch this later.

[DeadSoldier]

What a saga. I admire your dedication to the run for sure-I always enjoyed the idea of a Ghost Run. I think it was the user TheoryRaptor on MGSF who's Ghost Run of Ground Zeroes back in 2014 first exposed me to the challenge.

Have you done these runs on Metal Gear or Ghost Babel?

Not that I'm trying to send you down another ordeal like this one. Would be totally reasonable if you'd had your fill of emulation challenge runs for a while longer.

Funny you mentioned Ghost Babel. When I was posting my previous runs a decade ago, someone suggested that I tackle Ghost Babel next. I have been meaning to do a Ghost Run for the first Metal Gear, but I feel like that one might be on the easier side, considering the fact that the guards can only see a single line. Since there's a fan-made Sega Genesis port that hasn't been given a speedrun treatment, I might consider it.

You absolute chad. Excited to watch this later.

Thanks for the compliment. You won't be disappointed.

[Dirty Duck]

Funny you mentioned Ghost Babel. When I was posting my previous runs a decade ago, someone suggested that I tackle Ghost Babel next.

I imagine Game Boy Color emulation is a mite better supported than MSX2 emulation, so it will hopefully involve a lot less logistics.

(Also since you mentioned him in your story thought I'd mention that Revolver_FOX is actually signed up on the new boards, though he hasn't logged on in about a year sadly.)