On the 23rd anniversary of Metal Gear Solid 2's Japanese release, Hideo Kojima pays lengthy tribute to his "favorite song" in the Metal Gear Solid series

Nov. 29, 2024

He can’t get enough of it

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The Metal Gear Solid series is completely drowning in bouncy, electronic rockstar music to get your guns firing, but for series leadHideo Kojima, one song stands out among the rest.

“‘Can’t Say Goodbye to Yesterday,’ the ending theme of MGS2, is my favorite song out of all the music in the Metal Gear Solid series,” Kojima writes in a lengthynew post on Twitter.

“This piece was created well ahead of the game’s completion, with a lot of time and effort put into it,” he adds.

‘Can’t Say Goodbye to Yesterday’ is an orchestral ballad, swinging sweet and drowsy like an autumn leaf. Over a gush of violins, singer Carla White lets the haunting chorus pour forth: “I can’t say goodbye to yesterday, my friend / ‘cause I know how good it has been.”

“The lyrics are amazing,” Kojima continues to say in his Twitter post. And Kojima is far from the only person who finds ‘Can’t Say Goodbye to Yesterday’ emotional.

“I listen to this [song] often,” one Metal Gear Solid 2 playerstates in reply to Kojima’s post. “I remember staying up all night, playing the game when my best friend and I were in middle school. This song played at around 4 AM, and we were both floored.”

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That seems like an appropriate reaction. The best video game music stays with you well into the night, way after the credits roll.

Metal Gear Solid Delta exists because Konami was starting to get worried that the “younger generation of gamers aren’t familiar with the Metal Gear series anymore.”

Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.

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