All Metal Gear fans around the world hold their breath waiting for upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the patriots (planned release date is 12/06/2008), a new installment in the highly popular Metal Gear series, which originally took off on the MSX in 1987.

While waiting for the release, GameTrailers decided to heat up the interest by publishing the Metal Gear Restrospective trailer, made out of 2 parts. Part One covers the 8-bit era, and 2nd one (to be published soon) will talk about MGS on PlayStation and later installments of the game.

To many, it may come as a surprise that Hideo Kojima has had a troubled period in his developing career, but that's exactly what happened. The original Metal Gear was a last attempt to save Kojima's career. The idea of a "sneaking mission" game, where the player isn't encouraged to kill everything on sight was a daring move ... and the rest of this concept became MSX-history!

The trailer contains:

• story about Kojima's involvment in Penguin Adventure creation
• side-by-side comparison of MSX2 and NES versions of Metal Gear
  
• Snake's Revenge coverage
• Metal Gear 2 - Solid Snake coverage

Relevant link: Metal Gear Retrospective - Part One

Konamito has prepared a few new t-shirts, all of them related to MSX-personages and -games. These new shirts are available in: S, M, L, XL and XXL and colors are available upon request. A shirt costs €20 including shipment.

Relevant link: Konamito T-Shirts

Source: Insertcredit

Gamesetwatch have published an article on Telenet Japan in their 'Might Have Been'-series of articles. As we reported earlier, the Japanese software house that brought us such games as Androgynus, Valis (Fantasm Soldier), Sa-Zi-Ri and XZR recently went out of business. The article gives quite an extensive overview of the history of Telenet, tries to find out why the Valis series were so popular and even mentions - albeit only once - the MSX computer system. The article also deals with 'what went wrong' and the remarkable release of the adult game Valis X.

Relevant link: Telenet retrospective on GameSetWatch

Source: 1up.com

Falcom and Icholon have announced that the classic RPG games YS1 (Ancient YS Vanished Omen) and YS2 (The Final Chapter) are to be re-made once again and this time specifically for the portable Nintendo DS. The remake will feature several improvements, such as new character animations, boss fights and a multiplayer mode. Both screens of the DS will be used, with the game action on the top screen and player stats on the bottom screen.

According to the Magic Box Falcom fans eagerly awaiting new releases as opposed to remakes of remakes should not worry either, as Falcom has announced to be working on YS Seven and Legend of Heroes 7.

Relevant link: YS1 & YS2 for Nintendo DS website

Gamasutra have published a small Q&A with Mr. Shimizu of D4E - the Japanese company that brought us the One Chip MSX and the Project EGG service, of which Bazix runs the Western equivalent called WOOMB. The Q&A deals mostly with the games D4E has started to distribute in the Virtual Console of the immensely popular Nintendo Wii and is a short but interesting read.

Relevant link: D4E Q&A

Source: Magic Box

Cyberfront have announced that they are to release a Playstation 2 version of Gainax's PC game Princess Maker 5. On MSX, the first edition of Princess Maker was released by Microcabin in 1992.

Relevant link: Princess Maker 5 website

Source: Joystiq

During the Tokyo Game Show, which was held last week, Konami has bombarded the audience with a huge load of Metal Gear Solid news, the game series that started on the MSX computer platform with the release of Metal Gear in 1987. As many MSX users follow the Metal Gear Solid series closely, it's high time for an update on the latest developments.

Several brand new, impressive, theatrical and occasionally funny trailers of the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the patriots are now available right here on Gametrailers.com. The trailers reveal several elements of the storyline and show how the actual gameplay of the game really looks. To Snatcher/SD-Snatcher fans there is good news as Hideo Kojima has decided to give Metal Gear mkII a role in this installment of the series as well. For more in-game MGS4 action, just have a look over here.

Of course, there is also a brand new trailer for Metal Gear Online. In order to promote this online variant of the game series MGS4 will also include a Metal Gear Online starter pack. There's some bad news about Metal Gear as well, which we have not yet reported about, as Hideo Kojima has decided to leave the further development of the Metal Gear series to others. We can only hope it will not result in lower quality installments of the game, as we have seen in the past with Snake's Revenge. On the positive side, perhaps Kojima might take inspiration from that other game we MSX users all know. Solid Snatcher anyone?

Relevant link: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots trailers
Relevant link: Metal Gear online trailers

To celebrate the upcoming 25th anniversary of the MSX system, MSX user Konamito has created a special T-Shirt for the occasion. The available sizes are S, M, L and XL. The shirt itself is made from quality cotton, and the print is resistant to washing. There's currently a stock of 150, so get one while you can! The price is €20, including shipping.

Relevant link: 25th anniversary MSX T-shirts at Konamito.com

Source: Insertcredit

Tokei news reported that, after 24 years of releasing great games such as Androgynus, Valis (Fantasm Soldier), Sa-Zi-Ri and XZR the Japanese game publisher Telenet Japan have discontinued their activities. Last year the company already made some of their fans frown with the announcement of the adult game Valis X, an erotic game based on the successful Valis platform game series.

Relevant link: Telenet Japan out of business - Press release (Japanese)

Source: Joystiq

During the Leipzig Games Conference, Konami have announced a new Track & Field game for Nintendo DS. The game series celebrates its 25th anniversary with 20 different athletic events and special guest star appearances from popular Konami games, such as Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 and Sparkster from Rocket Knight Adventures. Multiplayer capabilities via WiFi and downloadable content will be available as well.

On MSX, Konami released several athletic games in these series: Hyper Olympic 1 (Track & Field 1), Hyper Olympic 2 (Track & Field 2), Hyper Sports 1, Hyper Sports 2 and Hyper Sports 3.

Relevant link: Track & Field for Nintendo DS post on Joystiq