are the mecha in the Metal Gear series. In the series, a Metal Gear is a bipedal nuclear weapons-equipped tank. The Metal Gears are typically autonomous nuclear launch platforms which the player must destroy to save the world and complete the game. Often, confronting the latest Metal Gear model is one of the final challenges of each game. Concept and creation Hideo Kojima said that the idea of the "Metal Gear" weapon, a nuclear-capable walking tank, was conceived in response to the nuclear war hysteria during the 1980s that resulted from the Cold War as the U.S. military had no mobile land-based nuclear weapons delivery system at the time. In video games The Metal Gear weapon has been consistently described as an all-terrain, nuclear-equipped, walking battle tank capable of launching a nuclear warhead from anywhere on the planet. In the original Metal Gear, the Outer Heaven fortified military state attempts to achieve military dominance over the West and East through the use of the TX-55 Metal Gear model built by Eastern scientist Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar after being forced against his will. In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, another hostile nation Zanzibar Land uses improved model Metal Gear D (also built by Dr. Madnar albeit willingly this time) to raid nuclear disposal sites. Metal Gear Solid shows new model Metal Gear REX designed by Dr. Hal Emmerich after being misled into believing that Metal Gear would be used as an anti-nuclear device that would be capable of safely shooting down nuclear missiles via a railgun system that shoots nuclear warheads. The weapon was produced by the U.S. Army on Shadow Moses Island, Alaska. The proliferation of Metal Gear-like weapons led to the creation of the Marines' Metal Gear RAY before the events of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater reveals that Metal Gear's design originates with Soviet weapons designer Dr. Aleksandr Leonovitch Granin comparing the concept to the theory of the missing link between apes and men, evidenced by two design drawings (Metal Gear REX and Metal Gear D) on his desk, with him calling it the missing link between infantry and artillery. Infantry can go anywhere but are easily destroyed and carry limited firepower. Artillery can inflict and sustain far more damage, but are at the mercy of terrain. In short, for a tank to be perfect, it needs legs. Early Metal