- Gray Fox (Metal Gear)
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Gray Fox
Character study illustration by Yoji Shinkawa, depicting Gray Fox before and after becoming the Cyborg Ninja, with an alternate image featuring his face plate openSeries Metal Gear First game Metal Gear (1987) Created by Hideo Kojima Voiced by (English) Greg Eagles (Metal Gear Solid)
Rob Paulsen (Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes)
Larc Spies (Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops)Voiced by (Japanese) Kaneto Shiozawa (Metal Gear Solid)
Jun Fukuyama (Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops)Fictional profile Real name Frank Jaeger Aliases Frank Hunter, Cyborg Ninja, Deepthroat, Null, Perfect Soldier Nationality United States Affiliations FOXHOUND (Metal Gear)
Zanzibar Land (Metal Gear 2)
FOX (Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops)Gray Fox (グレイ・フォックス Gurei Fokkusu , spelled "Grey Fox" in the MSX2 games) is a fictional video game character in the Metal Gear series.
Contents
In video games
Gray Fox first appears in the original Metal Gear as a high-ranking agent of FOXHOUND (the "Fox" codename being the highest commemoration within the unit) who goes missing during a mission prior to the events of the game, his last transmission being a cryptic message simply saying "Metal Gear".[1] Solid Snake's initial objective in the game is to rescue Gray Fox, who reveals the true nature of Metal Gear to the player.
Fox returns in Metal Gear 2, having left FOXHOUND and defected to Zanzibar Land to join Big Boss' side. Fox pilots the new model Metal Gear D and confronts Snake a few times, while secretly assisting him as an anonymous informant. Snake destroys Metal Gear D and ends up being challenged by Fox to a fistfight in the middle of a minefield. Fox's past is fleshed out in this game and his civilian identity is revealed to be Frank Jaeger (フランク・イェーガー Furanku Yēgā , "Frank Yeager" in the MSX2 version), Naomi Hunter being his foster sister. His face portrait in the MSX2 version was modeled after actor Tom Berenger.
In Metal Gear Solid, Gray Fox appears under the identity of the Cyborg Ninja (サイボーグ忍者 Saibōgu Ninja ), an assassin in a powered armor exoskeleton and armed with a high-frequency blade, who challenges Solid Snake to a fist fight, even though his ultimate goal is to help him. He also provides Snake cryptic advice via CODEC as a faceless contact named Deepthroat. After he destroys Metal Gear REX's radome with the use of a prototype railgun attached to his arm (this scene was featured in GameSpy's retrospective article "Top MGS Moments"[2]), Gray Fox is killed by Liquid Snake, piloting Metal Gear REX.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, a prequel set two decades before the events of the first Metal Gear, features a teenage Gray Fox as a masked machete-wielding assassin named Null (ヌル Nuru ), one of the FOX members that Naked Snake faces in the game. Null is a teenage assassin subjected to a secret CIA project to be the "Perfect Soldier" and recruited into Gene's Fox unit. During their second fight, Naked Snake discovers that Null was a boy that he met four years prior in Mozambique, where the boy used his innocence as a cover to kill dozens of government soldiers with only one knife while speaking a little German so his enemies called him, Frank Jaeger (German for "Frank Hunter"). After defeating him twice, Snake sent Null to somewhere outside of FOX for help.
Despite Gray Fox's death in Metal Gear Solid, the Cyborg Ninja incarnation of the character would still appear in subsequent games in some form or another. The Ninja appears as a hidden character in the Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions expansion as a playable character for three special missions; and the character's exoskeleton is used as an alternate outfit for Raiden in the extra missions mode of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance. The role of the Cyborg Ninja is taken by other characters in the subsequent Metal Gear Solid sequels, and his identity was assumed by Olga Gurlukovich in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
Outside of the Metal Gear games, the Cyborg Ninja is featured as a player character driver in Konami Krazy Racers and as an assistant fighter in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
Merchandise
A Cyborg Ninja figure was released by McFarlane Toys in 1998.[3] Another one was released by Konami in 2004.[4] In 2007, a block-style figure was also released in the Kubrick line.[5] In 2011, another Cyborg Ninja figure, as designed by Hideo Kojima himself, was announced to come from Square Enix's Play Arts Kai line of Metal Gear figures.[6]
Reception
Gray Fox was by far best received and now remains best remembered from his Cyborg Ninja appearance in MGS.[7] As such, Gray Fox was ranked as the fourth best boss character in the series by IGN in 2008.[8] He was also frequently featured in the lists of top ten fictional ninja characters in video gaming and even overall in all fiction, including by Virgin Media,[9] 1UP.com in 2004 (ranked fifth),[10] CrunchGear in 2008 (ranked ninth),[11] Unreality in 2009 (ranked second),[12] and Nintendo Power,[13] GameSpot (ranked fourth),[14] and ScrewAttack (ranked second)[15] in 2010. In 2011, PLAY featured him among the top ten ninjas for PlayStation consoles, with a comment that although Raiden "may have completely redeemed his character", he "can never outdo" Gray Fox.[16]
See also
References
- ^ "Snakes and Gears: A Metal Gear Overview", Game Informer 182 (June 2008): 108.
- ^ GameSpy's Top MGS Moments: Metal Gear Solid (Day Two), GameSpy, May 9, 2008
- ^ Cyborg Ninja Figure :: Metal Gear Collection.com
- ^ Otaku.com Metal Gear Solid Konami Figure 13 Ninja Color
- ^ Cyborg Ninja Kubrick :: Metal Gear Collection.com
- ^ Badass: Cyborg Ninja from Metal Gear Solid in toy form, Destructoid, 05.12.2011
- ^ Metal Gear: 20 Years of Big, Bad Boss Battles, GameSpot, July 28, 2007
- ^ Top 10 Metal Gear Solid Boss Battles, IGN, June 11, 2008
- ^ Gray Fox (Metal Gear) - Top ten ninjas - Pictures - Games - Virgin Media
- ^ Top Ten Ninjas, 1UP.com, July 23, 2004
- ^ Top Ten Video Game Ninjas, CrunchGear, March 31, 2008
- ^ Unreality - Unreal Power Rankings: The Top 5 Video Game Ninjas
- ^ Nintendo Power 250th issue!. South San Francisco, California: Future US. 2010. pp. 47.
- ^ Top Ten video game ninjas, GamePro, 06 August, 2010
- ^ Top Ten Ninjas, GameTrailers, January 8, 2010
- ^ Top ten ninjas on PlayStation | PLAY Magazine
External links
- IGN: Gray Fox (Metal Gear)
- Grey Fox at the Metal Gear Wiki
- Ninjas in Games - Gray Fox of Metal Gear Solid | UGO.com
- Gray Fox at the Internet Movie Database
Metal Gear series Main games Spin-off games Creators Characters Related articles Metal Gear (weapon) · List of media · Kojima Productions · Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy (fan film)Book:Metal Gear series · Category:Metal Gear ·
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