Metal Gear (weapon)

Metal Gear (Japanese: メタルギア, Hepburn: Metaru Gia^?) is the name for a series of mecha in the Metal Gear series. In the series, a Metal Gear is defined as a bipedal nuclear weapons-equipped tank. Usually each game has a new Metal Gear with a different role. The Metal Gears are typically autonomous nuclear launch platforms which the player must destroy in order to save the world and complete the game. Often confronting the latest Metal Gear model is one of the final challenges of each game.

Hideo Kojima said that the idea of the "Metal Gear" weapon, a nuclear-capable walking tank, was conceived in response to the nuclear war hysteria during the 1980s that resulted from the Cold War as the U.S. military had no mobile land-based nuclear weapons delivery system at the time.

The Metal Gear weapon has been consistently described in the Metal Gear series as an all-terrain, nuclear-equipped, walking battle tank capable of launching a nuclear warhead from anywhere on the planet. In the original Metal Gear, the Outer Heaven fortified military state attempts to achieve military dominance over the West and East through the use of the TX-55 Metal Gear model built by Eastern scientist Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar after being forced against his will. In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, another hostile nation Zanzibar Land uses improved model Metal Gear D (also built by Dr. Madnar albeit willingly this time) to raid nuclear disposal sites.

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