If you are considering picking up the physical edition of Konami’s Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, you might want to bear in mind just how little is packed onto the cart without completing some rather meaty updates.
We have known that the Master Collection Vol. 1 on Switch would require a good number of downloads for some time now (Konami’s website is quite open about this fact), but what we hadn’t realised was just how little is included in the cartridge’s 2 GB of front-loaded content.
Having got our hands on the physical version, it seems that the only accessible features on the cart without performing an update are the game menu, Metal Gear MSX, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, the two NES bonus games, the digital soundtrack and the Master Book — a virtual book that includes quotes from the series and a strategy guide. That means that the cart itself contains none of the original trilogy (nor the extra Special Missions, VR Missions and Integral add-ons for the first game) and many of the bonus features such as the video graphic novels and screenplays.
All in all, that means that there is an awful lot to download if you want to get much of the game’s main content up and running. Alongside Konami’s confirmation that it will be fixing “a number of issues” post-launch, you might want to hold fire on that physical purchase for the moment.
Our review of Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 on Switch is still ongoing, but you can find what the critics think of the collection on other consoles in our round-up below.