Before the sneaking went 3D, it went pixelated. The MSX versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake are where this whole series began, and the Master Collection Vol. 1 includes them on PC, which is wonderful for preservation and slightly awkward in practice. These games were made for 1980s Japanese home computers and CRT televisions, and on a modern monitor the vanilla ports show it: borders where they should not be, an aspect ratio that is subtly wrong, and a softness that is not how the games actually looked. MGSHDFix covers both MSX games as fully as it covers the big 3D titles, and this article explains the presentation problems and the specific fixes that put them right.
The overscan problem
Old televisions did not show the entire picture a computer or console produced. The edges of the image fell outside the visible area of the screen, an area called overscan, and developers knew those edges were effectively invisible. The MSX versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 were built with that reality in mind. Show the full raw output on a modern display, which reveals every pixel edge to edge, and you can end up seeing borders at the top and bottom of the screen that no player in 1987 or 1990 ever saw. It does not break the games, but it looks untidy and slightly wrong, like a photograph shown with its sprocket holes.
MGSHDFix includes an option to crop the overscan borders on the top and bottom of the screen for MG1 and MG2. Turn it on and the games present the way they were seen on period hardware: the playfield fills the frame the way the artists expected, with the never-meant-to-be-seen edges trimmed away. It is a small option with an outsized effect on how authentic the games feel.
The 64:53 problem, and the 4:3 fix
The second issue is sneakier because nothing looks broken, just slightly off. The MSX2’s raw output aspect ratio is 64:53, which is not the 4:3 ratio of the televisions these games were played on. When the Master Collection presents the MSX games using that raw output ratio, characters and objects are stretched a little away from their intended proportions. Circles are not quite circles. Snake is not quite the shape his sprite artist drew. Most players cannot name what is wrong; the picture just feels subtly wider than it should.
MGSHDFix offers an option to correct the game to a proper 4:3 aspect ratio, compensating for the 64:53 raw output. Combined with the overscan crop, this is the difference between seeing the games as raw data and seeing them as they appeared on a real television in front of a real player. Preservation purists sometimes argue about corrections like these, and the nice thing here is that it is an option. If you want the raw output exactly as the hardware produced it, leave it off. If you want the period correct presentation, turn it on. The fix respects both instincts.
Making pixels look like pixels
How a retro game is filtered matters enormously. The default smoothing applied to old games on modern displays, bilinear filtering, blends neighbouring pixels together, which softens sprites into a watercolour blur. For 3D games that softness can be flattering. For MSX pixel art, it hides the crisp, deliberate work of the sprites.
MGSHDFix lets you disable bilinear texture filtering, which gives the games a sharp pixel art, retro appearance. Every pixel stays exactly where the artist put it. On a modern high resolution screen those chunky pixels scale up boldly and honestly, and the games look the way retro fans want them to look. Pair that with the fix’s increased texture size limits, which apply to MG1 and MG2, and the presentation has room to breathe at modern resolutions instead of being squeezed by limits set for different hardware. Gamma correction applies to these games too, restoring more vibrant colour and deeper blacks in the CRT style.
The modern conveniences still apply
It would be easy for a fix to lavish attention on the 3D games and treat the MSX titles as an afterthought, but the shared features of MGSHDFix reach them as well. Custom resolution support means the games can be presented properly on your display rather than in a small default window. Borderless and windowed modes make them easy to keep alongside a guide or a stream. The mouse cursor toggle keeps your pointer out of the picture. Launcher skips get you from Steam to the title screen faster, and the restored PS2 era polish of the package as a whole makes dipping into a forty year old stealth game feel like a first class experience rather than a museum visit.
These games also benefit from the project’s performance work. The CPU usage fix that arrived in the 3.0.x updates covers MG1 and MG2 alongside the 3D titles, fixing the regression from Konami’s 1.4.0 patch that pinned a CPU core at high usage. Two MSX games from the eighties should sip power, and with a current version of MGSHDFix, they finally do, which Steam Deck players in particular will appreciate.
Setting them up in the right order
When you open the Config Tool for the MSX games, work through the presentation settings in this order and the result comes together quickly. Start with the aspect ratio correction, because it defines the shape of everything else on screen. Then enable the overscan crop, so the frame you are shaping is the frame players actually saw. After that, decide on filtering: bilinear off for crisp pixels is the popular choice, but leave it on for one session if you want to feel the difference for yourself. Finish with gamma correction and your preferred resolution and display mode. Five minutes of methodical setup, and two games from the dawn of the series look settled, sharp, and intentional on hardware their creators could not have imagined.
Why these two games deserve the care
It is tempting to treat Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 as bonus curiosities and spend all your time in MGS2 and MGS3. That undersells them. Metal Gear 2 especially is a remarkably ambitious game, with guard vision cones, sound propagation, and multi floor buildings that directly blueprint what Metal Gear Solid would become. Playing them in the Master Collection is the easiest legal way to experience that history, and playing them with the aspect ratio corrected, the overscan trimmed, and the pixels sharp turns a curiosity into a genuinely good time. MGSHDFix does for these games what it does for the whole collection: it removes the thin layer of wrongness between you and the work itself.
A quick note for completeness: Metal Gear Solid 1 is not part of MGSHDFix. The first 3D game and the collection’s bonus content are covered by the sibling project MGSM2Fix, so if you want the full early series fixed, that is the companion download to look for.
Conclusion
For Metal Gear 1 and 2, MGSHDFix is a presentation rescue. The overscan crop removes borders that were never meant to be seen, the aspect ratio correction turns the MSX2’s 64:53 raw output into the honest 4:3 picture players originally saw, disabling bilinear filtering restores crisp pixel art, and shared features like custom resolutions, gamma correction, and the CPU usage fix bring the oldest games in the series up to modern standards. If you have only played the 3D entries, give the MSX originals an evening with these settings on. The foundations of stealth gaming look better than you expect.
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