Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection is a collection of games in the Metal Gear series for the PlayStation 2 released on March 18, 2008 in North America. The collection features the original Metal Gear Solid as well as Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.
Each game has a new box art cover by Yoji Shinkawa with Metal Gear Solid in a PS2 casing. The original Metal Gear Solid was included on two PlayStation format disks.
Substance includes everything from the original version, but in itself, is not a new game. Subsistence includes the 3rd person camera, but like Substance, is not a new game either. However, none of the special features of the second disk of Subsistence, Persistence, are included.
