Fuck yeah, it's Hideo Kojima's birthday, born on this day in 1963!
Kojima is one of the biggest names in the videogame industry due to his boundary pushing approach to the medium, having been heavily focused on bringing film-quality plots, dialogue, and cutscenes to his games as far back as 1987, when he released the first Metal Gear game on the MSX 2.
Before this, Kojima had only worked on one other game, Penguin Adventure - a very non-Kojima sounding name that he was assistant director of. Up until this point Kojima had faced much criticism from Konami, who were the first company to finally give him his break into the industry, as his lack of familiarity with programming led to a number of fuck ups.
Nevertheless however, Kojima's determination and radical gameplay ideas pushed him to pour more and more of his heart and soul into his projects until people begun to take notice. Following another Metal Gear MSX sequel and a couple of well received visual novel games, Kojima dropped Metal Gear Solid onto the world's lap in 1998, which was met with worldwide acclaim for its incredible story telling, innovative gameplay, and hard-hitting plot themes of nuclear weaponry and genetic engineering. Kojima would continue to build upon the series, with almost every instalment being regarded as the best games of all time.
In later years Kojima's relationship with Konami turned frosty, all of which came to a head when the two parted ways, with a few notable dick moves on Konami's part including the barring of Kojima collecting his 2015 Games Award, scrapping his Silent Hill reboot project, and the continuation of the Metal Gear franchise without his input, which has seen a drastic dip in quality.
Kojima is still kickin' it, though - under a new studio of his own creation, Kojima Productions, he is now free to create the awe-inspiring games he has always dreamed of making with minimal studio meddling. The first game of his new production company, Death Stranding, was met with mixed results accredited to such aspects as Norman Reedus chugging Monster Energy and carrying about a baby in a jar, but still received acclaim for his signature style of game design.
Hideo Kojima, stay rad.
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