Metal Gear Solid 3 is, to my thinking, one of the finest games ever created. I’m hardly alone in this opinion, so the announcement that the game would be converted to Nintendo 3DS seemed like an amazing coup for the system. How times have changed. Since then, Sony has announced its own new portable system; Konami has announced its intention to port the game to Vita; and Snake Eater 3D demoed at E3 2011 and broke our hearts with its poor quality.
As we near the final release of the game — pushed back from a tentative fall 2011 release to the middle of next month — Konami has published a playable demo on the Japanese eShop. This new demo covers much of the same territory as the E3 playable build, yet it goes a long way to soothe our concerns over the conversion’s quality. Why no U.S. counterpart yet? Probably because one of the biggest new additions, support for the Circle Pad Pro peripheral, isn’t especially practical; the add-on launched in Japan in December but won’t be out here until next month.
