At Konami, he also produced the Zone of the Enders series, as well as designing and writing Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994), graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation.

Describing that stage of his early life, Kojima said it was an abrupt change of environment, and he spent much of his time thereafter indoors, watching television or making figurines.

He would frequently lie about his occupation in the early days of a career, when a word for game designer did not exist in the Japanese language, and instead told people he worked for a financial firm.

[32] The player controls a special forces operative codenamed Solid Snake, who is sent to the fortified state of Outer Heaven to stop a nuclear-equipped walking tank known as "Metal Gear".

[41] Former Konami artist Satoshi Yoshoioka designed many of Snatcher's characters, said he was persistently guided by Kojima to make the game as cinematic as possible, which later critics have cited as a staple of his work.

[42] Adrian Chen of The New York Times wrote that one of his innovations was "the way he applied cinematic storytelling to console video games".

It abandoned random encounters and introduced a first-person turn-based battle system where the player can aim at specific parts of the enemy's body with guns.

Such a battle system has rarely been used since,[48] but similar ones can later be found in the role-playing games Square's Vagrant Story (2000), Bethesda Softworks's Fallout 3 (2008), and Nippon Ichi's Last Rebellion (2010).

[50] The original Metal Gear was a commercial success for its release on the NES, and Konami decided to create a sequel to the game, Snake's Revenge, without the involvement of Kojima.

IGN notes that Metal Gear 2 introduced stealth mechanics such as making noise to attract guards, crouching and crawling on the ground, disarming mines, and enemies having view cones.

[59][60] Retrospective reviews have regarded the game generally positively, and sought to contextualise Policenauts within Kojima's body of work, as heavily stylized and influenced by films.

[69][70] The game was highly successful and critically acclaimed at release, due to its graphics, gameplay, and storyline, which dealt with myriad philosophical themes as specific as memes, censorship, manipulation, patricide, the inherent flaws of democracy and as grandiose as the nature of reality itself.

[citation needed] Kojima wanted Solid Snake to appear in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but Nintendo refused, due to development cycle problems.

He described his excitement regarding the potential use of the Fox Engine on the eighth generation platforms via a tweet of an image of the DVD for the Silent Hill film:[90][91] Later, he added what he had in mind for this game in a series of tweets: "Silent Hill is in closed room setting and doesn't require full action so that we can focus on the graphic quality.

[102] Konami later stated that they were auditioning for new staff for future Metal Gear titles and removed Kojima's name from the series' marketing material.

[110] Starting in 2017, Kojima became a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, often discussing recent film releases, and occasionally drawing comparisons to his own works.

Kojima went on to explain that he sees that movies, TV shows, and games competing in the same space in the future, thanks to streaming technology, and that this will encourage new formats to emerge.

[124] On January 31, 2024, during the PlayStation State of Play event, Kojima announced that he is working a new action-espionage genre game after Death Stranding 2.

[139] In an article he wrote for Official PlayStation 2 Magazine, Kojima described the influence of the film Dawn of the Dead on the Metal Gear series.

[128] In 2019, Kojima published a collection of essays in Japan discussing the influence of pop culture on his work under the title The Gifted Gene and My Lovable Memes.

Hollywood actors Mads Mikkelsen and Léa Seydoux have voice roles in Death Stranding, while director Guillermo del Toro is amongst his biggest fans.

[160] Kojima's work has also been cited as an influence on creators outside of the video game industry, including novelist Project Itoh[161] and filmmaker Jordan Peele.

[162] Kojima has been noted for predicting and exploring themes in his works years before they gained mainstream notoriety on numerous occasions, ranging from the sociological to the scientific.

While the game received universal acclaim upon release for its gameplay and attention to detail, the plot was a divisive topic among critics, with some calling it "absurd" and "stupid".

[164] Reinterpretations of the game's plot began to surface in the 2010s, with some calling it "misunderstood" in its time, eerily prescient, and "necessary for the political climate to come" for predicting some of the cultural issues of the 2010s with striking accuracy and similar concepts.

[168] In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, released on September 1, 2015, the Wolbachia bacteria is used to halt the reproduction of the fictional "vocal cord parasites".

At the time, large-scale uses of Wolbachia to control insect-transmitted diseases like malaria and dengue only existed in simulated computational models and field-test releases in Australia.

The inhabitants of the world rely on "porters", people who risk their lives making deliveries, to receive and exchange the resources they need to survive.

Similarities with the COVID-19 pandemic were noted by numerous journalists in early 2020, including the game's focus on the themes of isolation, loneliness, and political divide.

[citation needed] On March 15, 2022, Kojima announced on Twitter that he had received the 72nd Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts from the Japanese Agency of Cultural Affairs.