No i am still here.And i disagree with your posts erikd.
The technical limitations of an msx2 were used as advantage by Kojima.He is the one that said that in an interview.He also wanted to create another game in the past but he stopped it because of msx2 limitations.That was in 1986 i think but in 1987 he made metal gear.
The sprite limitations were the reason for the stealth element of metal gear.If you ask me that is a good limitation because kojima did not stop and say "I can't have more than 4 double sprites so i have to quit making that game".Instead he took advantage of those limitations,and found alternative ways around the problem.That is part of being creative.And Kojima and his development team were creative.
I love our age and our times, and of course i enjoy the past,but i can't feel a little bit skeptical regarding the games of present.Too much horsepower and sometime bad things coming out that is not worth spending our money on.
Maybe (!) the reason we are often skeptical towards games of this epoch is online gaming.Internet and the way to play online and never end the game (i think of World of Warcraft,or other games like this one).
On the other hand i have to say that Wii aproach towards gaming is something very good that i often praise.It has taken gaming experiance forward.So it's not all bad.
The sprite limitations were the reason for the stealth element of metal gear.
The interesting debate is of course whether it was possible to come up with this stealth element without facing these technical limits of the MSX2. Perhaps someone else could, and Kojima couldn't? While Kojima is generally considered divine, one may wonder whether Kojima made Metal Gear, or whether Metal Gear made Kojima!
The lack of controlled electricity in his time didn't stop Jules Verne from writing about it in 20.000 Leages Under the Sea.
http://palgn.com.au/article.php?id=7167
It is the article that i told you earlier let's see some Kojima's opinions.
"Kojima said he would show us this evolution using his games (primarily the Metal Gear series) as an example. In the 80s, non-abstract action games were primarily spaceship shooting games, such as Konami's Scramble. Metal Gear subverted this standard by not being about shooting - it was about "trying to form the tension of hide and seek". It came about because 21 years ago, Kojima was asked to make a game on the MSX home computer, a "non mainstream" platform with specs below the Famicom (NES). It was very difficult to make an action game on such a low-spec machine, and Kojima demonstrated the limited sprite capabilities of the MSX with a quick comparison - he compared the arcade version of Gradius to the pitiful MSX port. The MSX could only display four sprites horizontally at once, and to handle Gradius it has to 'fake' eight sprites by displaying enemy ships only once every other frame, which caused them to flash on and off - "can you see the flicker" he said.
So to make a combat game he had to "change the idea". He had to come up with a concept that limited the number of sprites and bullets on screen at one time. He "thought of 'The Great Escape' [movie]" and that the concept of an escape could be done. But this wasn't good enough: Kojima felt that "games need heroes" and that "no-one wants to play a character that just escapes." So he thought "why not make my main character sneak in - a stealth game, and this all added up to Metal Gear... the birth of my stealth game." The graphics couldn't scroll, so the design had to be based on single screens - Kojima showed us a scene from the original Metal Gear (stating with humility "I'm a little embarrassed to show you this now" ), and he demonstrated the design of each screen was that four objects would never line up horizontally. The main gameplay was about avoiding being seen by a limited number of guards or surveillance cameras (he showed a scene where snake must sneak into an elevator, joking "I'm not sure why the guards are taking a break" ). When Snake was discovered, the gameplay changed to become almost a puzzle game "like Pac Man", where Snake must avoid the guards like they were Pac Man's ghosts. A final innovation came with the addition of an in-game story, because "there weren't any stories at that time in action games", and he thought the hide and seek game needed a story to justify why you were sneaking.
[....near the end of article]
"Kojima concluded with a reminder that in 1986, the hardware limitation of the MSX led to the creation of Metal Gear. With technology "evolving with the hardware", you have to "upgrade your idea." As game tech evolves, game designers "must collaborate with other professionals", and this adds together to make art. Kojima believes that game design will continue to evolve, and will "never stop evolving". Kojima finshed with the statement that "Games will continue to be a collaborative art, and I believe in this concept."
While i dont accept the fact that msx2 is inferior to the nes system,some of his ideas seem interesting.
Good to see you're still around nikodr, I hope you didn't take offense in some things I said (after re-reading some things might sound a bit rude...)
You made some interesting points in the 1st part of your 1st post, but after that it seemed to spiral down to negative thinking.
I think we all agree that the sprite limitation helped forming the concept of Metal Gear. But do we do Kojima justice here? Would he really not have come up with the Metal Gear idea without the sprite limitation? I do seem to remember he also talked a lot in interviews about how his childhood hide-and-seek games inspired him to do Metal Gear. Maybe he would have made something equally or even more amazing? I guess we'll never know.
Still, that doesn't make the sprite limitation a good thing IMHO. And I also think that the genius of Metal Gear is not the sneaking alone (although it's an important part), it's the whole package. The whole Metal Gear/Metal Gear Solid saga soaked with creativity besides sneaking!
The Metal Gear story is a good example of how creativity always wins over (in this case technical) limitations, one way or another. But that doesn't necessarily mean that those limitations are good to begin with. Great games were not always sparked by limitations, MG is probably kind of an exception.
Well, anyway, let's just agree that we disagree because I'm starting to repeat myself 
I do understand your skepticism towards the modern gaming world, and in a way I share that skepticism sometimes.
However, I personally feel that some negative aspects of modern games don't come from the lack of limitations but rather the opposite. While the boundaries of technical limitations have shifted (not disappeared of course!), another perhaps much more severe limitation was introduced, and that is that the cost of creating games have exploded the last 10 years. That means that developers can't take too many risks anymore because there is too much money at stake. It kind of became Hollywood (of course I'm talking AAA games here).
Thank god there have still been so many innovations *because* of the new technologies. Sand box games, real time strategy, MMORPG, first person shooters, 3D visuals and 3D sound, motion sensitive controllers, etc.
