I had a press conference to attend and lines to wait in, so I couldn't stick around to view the two Tokyo Game Show Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker stages in their entirety. But the usual Japanese sites did, and they passed along a few interesting bits on the upcoming PSP title.

During the first stage, series mastermind Hideo Kojima revealed that voice recording for everything but the wireless com areas of the game has been completed. In terms of volume, the game's script is the at same level as Metal Gear Solid 4, Kojima said.

Japanese Solid Snake voice actor Akio Ootsuka was one of multiple voice actors who delivered video messages during the first stage. He said, "I read the script and cried. The system is such that even if you're an unskilled player, you can receive help from skilled players, so everyone please play it."

The content of the second stage was similar to that of the first, but here Kojima revealed that the game's 1974 setting was chosen because it was 10 years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3. He also had in mind that the year is 10 years prior to the setting of Haruki Murakami's novel 1Q84 (I find this hard to believe as 1Q84 was released earlier this year).

During the second stage, Kojima also chose to answer a question he said he gets a lot: why is Peace Walker coming to PSP and not PS3 or Xbox 360. His response, as quoted in full at Famitsu.com, was:

"I certainly want to make new generation games, and I enjoy watching the MGS Rising team from the side. However, 20 years or so from now, I believe we'll be in an era where one can play a variety of games by simply connecting a computer to a network. From within the home and outside the home. If this happens you'll be able to to take games with you wherever you go. In anticipation of this, I wanted to release MGS on the PSP now and test out that state."

This appears to be a major point about Peace Walker. Kojima actually mentioned it during his acceptance speech at the Future Game Awards on the last day of the show.

Kojima also stressed that the PSP game is the real deal as far as Metal Gear Solid games go. "We're making the real MGS series. Consider it basically a sequel in the MGS series."

In the buildup to TGS, the Kojima Productions blog promised an announcement of some form from the Peace Walker sound team. As reported atImpress Watch, Peace Walker sound producer Kazuki Muraoka took the stage during a separate stage and announced that a boss (or possibly bosses) will make use of a Vocaloid system for synthesized speech and singing.

Muraoka demonstrated the technology using the Beyond the Bounds theme song from Anubis Zone of Enders. The lyrics for the song were produced using the Vocaloid technology, which was made with the help of Yamaha.

The Peace Walker implementation of the Vocaloid technology is compatible with NetVocaloid, which allows for voice data to be downloaded over the internet. Muraoka said that the team is considering allowing users to make new voice and song data for distribution to other players.

I only managed to grab a few pics from the beginning of the first stage event. Here are links to some Japanese sites for more pics:

• Famitsu.com on the first stage
• Famitsu.com on the second stage
• Impress Watch on the various stages