CREDIT: ZONE OF THE ENDERS
Pure, hokey anime action at its finest, the Zone of the Enders games are awesomely fun junk-food action games.

It's hard not to love Hideo Kojima, and not just for Metal Gear Solid series. Between his infectious enthusiasm and showmanship in presenting the latest installment in his series to his rather hilarious translated Twitter, Kojima's probably one of the last true recognizable public faces for a large game company. His love of all American films, a rather hilarious spin on the stereotype of the western nerd Japanophile, is quite influential in his games.

I wouldn't call it pigeon-holing, but people seem to forget that Konami's own Shigeru Miyamoto has a lot more to him than the hugely enjoyable Metal Gear Solid games under his belt.Much like his idol, Kojima began as a low-on-the- totem pole code monkey, slowly rising through the ranks of Konami, scoring his first big hit with the 2DMSX stealth adventure title Metal Gear and its follow-up, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (both playable as a bonus if you own Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence).

They aren't anywhere close to being as fleshed-out as MGS, but Kojima's status as pop-culture junkie comes to life in these games.

Adventure
Kojima's love of referencing his favourite American films nearly reaches lawsuit territory in his adventure games. Largely released within the NEC-based Japanese home computer market, these titles, though mostly forgotten now, still get referenced in Kojima's newer games as hidden Easter eggs, a treat to dedicated fans.

Snatcher (1988)
Kojima's love letter to Blade Runner, Snatcher revolves around renegade robots killing off humans and replacing them as imposters, and follows a grizzled detective on the case. While a traditional pointand- click game, Snatcher nevertheless pushed boundaries as being one of the first fully-fleshed cyberpunk adventure games.

Luckily for Kojima fans, a western port of the game does exist in the form of a port on Sega's illfated Sega-CD add-on for the Genesis. If you somehow stumbled upon both a fully working Sega- CD and this game, it's worth a shot. Sadly, all the subsequent improved ports for the Saturn and PlayStation are Japan-only. Time to brush up on your Kanji script!

Policenauts (1994)
Boasting some incredibly beautiful Japanese animation, Policenauts, the story of astronautcops policing a human colony in space, is a visual treat. Also, the breathy vocal sting from the Konami splash screen from Metal Gear Solid was directly taken from the opening theme of this game. I told you about those Easter eggs!

Unfortunately the ease of experiencing this game is severely hampered by the fact that the North American Saturn and PS1 ports were both cancelled. However, in a move that shows the enduring spirit of a dedicated fandom, a complete fan-translation of the game actually materialized in 2009 in the form of an ISO patcher, or, in other words, taking the disc, ripping its contents on your computer, and patching it with the translation program. Of course, this makes playing the game difficult for any legitimate, unhacked consoles, so it's time to rev up those emulators!

Action
Of course, being Japanese means visiting your own roots in the end, and Kojima certainly didn't forget his own pop culture.

Zone of the Enders series (2001-2003)
It's pure Japanophilic mecha action; the Zone of the Enders series may very well be some of Kojima's more underrated work. Both Zone of the Enders and ZoE: Second Runners lack any of the plot depth that MGS has, but it more or less works in the favour of these giant-robots-having-grandiose- space-battles action games,

These neon-fueled visual feasts are probably the easiest of Kojima's non-MGS works to find. Given a wide release on the PlayStation 2 for both counts, the series is also available as a PS3 HD re-release available pretty much any place that sells video games in some form.