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AI upscaling the classic Metal Gear Solid 2 E3 2000 trailer

It's a total coincidence of course, but on the day that Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima muses on Twitter that AI will eventually take over the remastering of old games, Digital Foundry publishes a video that uses machine learning to freshen up the classic MGS2 reveal from E3 2000. For my money the original is one of the greatest game trailers of all-time – and for a number of reasons, opportunities to see this video the way it was meant to be seen are limited, so digging out the best archival version there is and AI-upscaling it was irresistible.

The trailer itself is simply incredible, even today – and for a number of reasons. First of all, it was a genuine real-time showcase. This was PlayStation 2 producing visuals of quality we'd never seen before – genuine 'next-gen' stuff was on display before the machine was even released in Europe. Secondly, the technology on display wasn't just about graphics, it was about systems. Across the nine minutes of intense action, we got to see environmental destruction systems, AI, stealth, body part-specific damage and much more. And finally, there was direction, with cinematic cameras set-up to capture the action: the MGS trailer had shades of James Cameron and Michael Bay in its presentation and likely many more of Kojima's influences. Yes, there were hints of the story in there too but over and above that, Kojima wasn't afraid to insert humour too. The trailer blew us away with its content, then left us with a smile on our faces at the end.

Of course, the fact that the trailer was released in the summer of 2000 means that distribution of a decent quality version of it was problematic, certainly online. The internet didn't have any kind of decent video playback platform at the turn of the century – and YouTube is packed with horrific low resolution, low frame-rate renditions of the original asset to this very day. I worked on a PlayStation magazine at the time and Konami did share a Beta-SP version of the trailer with us for our cover-mounted DVDs, but the tape was returned and a PAL converted rendition is all we have left.

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