By now, there is a good chance you’ve heard me wax poetic about my love for the Metal Gear franchise. When I was in my late teens and into my early 20s, it brought me back to gaming and was pivotal in keeping me there. Also, credit to SOCOM: Navy SEALs and Ghost Recon, and, of course, Splinter Cell.

But MGS was THE one.

It had a unique player perspective, the “over-the-top-of-the-player” style view, which allowed for a better view of sneaking around. It had a wide variety of awesome weapons AND equipment. It had the best characters, the best story, and absolutely flawless style and play from start to finish.

To this day, there ain’t anything like it.

Now, I could write a whole book on how amazing the entire series is. And while every game offers something unique that would work so well in the Classified line, I feel like the PlayStation 1 phenom, Metal Gear Solid, is the starting point for making the figures.

MGS has everything that lines up with G.I. Joe.

Heavily militaristic at its core. It’s an elite unit, FOXHOUND, that kicks it off against what amounts to a terrorist organization trying to acquire the technological means to take over the world.
Sound familiar?

The characters are heavily developed, with a deep backstory for each boss, whether you fight them or not. The lore of MGS spans decades, even when this first game takes place. Intricate details about everyone that make every single person, every single aspect, meaningful and totally awesome.
Sound familiar?

His weaponry, for the time, was cutting-edge.

MGS totes the latest weaponry, yet still maintains realism on both sides and with every character. Solid Snake himself has a bevy of equipment, from night vision to thermal, to cardboard boxes and cigars, and even his sneaking suit.

FAMAS automatic, PSG-1 rifles, laser-sighted and heavily suppressed .45 SOCOM pistols, to Nikita missiles and claymores.
Sound familiar?

One of the defining aspects of both G.I. Joe and MGS is that, while both are heavily rooted in military aesthetics, there is a very cool, perfect amount of sci-fi craziness to them.

MGS uses cloning and telekinesis with Psycho Mantis, and has a mammoth-sized shaman named Vulcan Raven who carries a Yugo-sized backpack full of bullets that feed his Vulcan Cannon Gatling gun. A smoking-hot sniper in Sniper Wolf, enhanced soldiers in Snake, and even the basic troops he encounters on Shadow Moses Island are a touch above the rest. And an unstoppable ninja.
Sound familiar?

I feel like I could go on about this in super detail, but the broad strokes are doing the trick here. MGS2 is sorta a breakaway from the other four games, but still offers a lot.

The callback to another era in MGS3: Snake Eater calls back to the 1:6-scale Joes, and then back again to the even further futuristic weaponry of MGS4: Guns of the Patriots, and then back again with MGS5: The Phantom Pain.

All of the figures, weapons, and villains of this legacy series of games would FUCKING CRUSH as a line, and if they went deep with all of these games, I would buy one to open and one to keep MOC of every figure. Troop-building Genome Soldiers and cool shit like those hoofed, lamb-legged mechs in MGS4.

Even the opening sequence and music hit my core like the opening of the Sunbow cartoon. Hideo Kojima made an absolute MASTERPIECE of media that rivals any game, any movie, any comic, and any show I’ve ever seen. It’s undeniably fantastic and, like Wu-Tang, it ain’t nothing to fuck with.

Sound familiar?