The PlayStation 2 has seen quite a fair share of trilogies that have found their way onto the PlayStation 3 and other platforms in the form of high-definition remastered collections. One of the more prominent was the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, released in November of last year. However, unlike some of the other collections, the three games included in the MGS HD do not make up all of the “primary” installments in the game’s lore. The collection includes Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, but not the first game in the main trilogy, Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was included in its place instead.

Metal Gear Solid was released on the original PlayStation, thus excluding it from the possibility of being upscaled for an HD collection. The possibility did exist however, to adapt Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes – a remake of the first game for the Nintendo Gamecube – for the HD collection.

During a recent podcast, Kojima Productions’ Sean Eyestone shed some light on the reason for excluding Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes from the recently released HD Collection:

That was a remake made by Silicone Knights. We supervised it but we didn’t create it directly and we wanted to make sure that everything in the HD Collection was canon. Everything that goes into there is something created directly by Kojima Productions and Kojima himself. So that is the reason why Twin Snakes was not included in HD Collection.

So while the game was a retelling of the original, it was not considered canon due to the fact that there was no direct involvement by the creators themselves. Think of it as the difference between Psycho (1960) and Psycho (1998); it is no secret that one is the definitive story while the other is…no.

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes was released for the Nintendo Gamecube in 2004 and featured upgraded visuals among other tweaks to the gameplay. The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with a release for the PlayStation Vita that followed not long after.