A Guide to the Boba Metal Gear Solid Skip

A Metal Gear Solid skip was recently discovered by streamer, Boba Witch. This article will walk you through how to easily perform this glitch, which can save entire valuable minutes off speedruns! Metal Gear Solid released in 1998, which means it has taken 23 years to discover this glitch, adding to its reputation.

A Guide to the Boba Metal Gear Solid Skip

A new glitch was discovered by streamer Boba Witch, during her stream of the original Metal Gear Solid 1. It has taken storm within the MGS and speedrunning communities. The Boba MGS skip is a generally easy to perform skip that shaves entire valuable minutes off speedruns, making it extremely valuable to speedrunners. Something major discovered now is big news for the game due to its age, as well. MGS1 was released in 1998, making it 23 years old today. This article will show you how to easily perform this skip.

THE LOCATION 

The skip itself occurs soon after Snake escapes from his containment cell during the infamous interrogation segment of the game. After escaping, Snake makes his way to the communications tower as he journeys to the hangar that stores Metal Gear REX. Here, he is discovered, and has to fight his way up to the top of the tower in a scripted alert segment as waves of guards chase him. Part way up, he finds a door that is frozen shut. This is where the skip itself is performed.

What is supposed to happen is you get a call from Otacon, saying it can only be opened from the outside using C4. What you are supposed to do is fight up to the top of the tower and cross the other bridge there. When you reach the top, the bridge is destroyed by a gunship. The player is forced through a segment where they descend the tower with a rope, dodging the gunship’s attacks. Finishing this segment drops you on the bridge right outside the previously mentioned door, which can now be opened with C4.

You'll appear outside right here, as if you had just rappelled down the tower

You’ll appear outside right here, as if you had just rappelled down the tower

This entire segment can take minutes of your time, particularly if you die a few times either running up the tower, or while dropping from it. 

THE HOW TO

THE QUICK AND SIMPLE

If you just want a quick guide, see here. If you want more details, a more thorough walkthrough is available below the list.

  1. Make it to the communications tower after escaping the prison cell.
  2. After triggering the scripted alert, make your way up the tower until you reach the locked frozen door. Kill any guard after you so far.
  3. Press against the door, then shift left until you hit the wall.
  4. Let go of the wall, equip your socom pistol, then aim toward the stairs in front of you.
  5. Wait for soldiers to come up for your socom to lock onto, then let them hit you.
  6. The animation of getting hit will clip you through the door and load the next area. You have now performed the Boba skip.

THE DETAILS

The glitch itself is actually fairly simple. It took a bit of trial and error, but I figured out a very good way to get it easily. While being chased up the communications tower, you have to stand by the frozen door to the bridge in a very specific way. To do this, you have to have the socom pistol equipped and be shot by a soldier. The animation of being hit in that spot will cause Snake’s model to just clip through the door enough to load the next area.

I found the easiest way to do this is to press against the door and go as far left as you can before the wall stops you. Then from here, you just aim the socom at the stairs ahead of you and wait for it to snap onto a soldier that’s running up. While still locked on, let him shoot at you. You should only need to be hit once or twice here to get the glitch to work. Once outside, the game basically thinks you’ve done the last few minutes of gameplay you’re supposed to do, and you can continue from there.

This is the exact position you need to be in to trigger the skip

This is the exact position you need to be in to trigger the skip

With practice, the skip can be done very quickly and easily. It is likely to make an appearance in every major MGS speedrun in the future. When speedruns come down to shaving off milliseconds to achieve the quickest time possible, skipping an entire segment that saves whole minutes is a miracle to the speedrunning community!

All credit to Boba for discovering such an easy and useful skip.

(Video by boba.)

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