Metal Gear Solid 2 Boss Skip Discovered After 25 Years

Can you believe it's been 25 years since Metal Gear Solid 2 came out? And in all that time, no one found a way to skip the first boss fight—until now. That's right: the game's first-ever boss skip has finally been discovered.

For those who need a refresher, MGS2 is split into two chapters: the Tanker and the Plant. The Tanker is a short prologue where you play as Solid Snake—the only time you get to control him in the entire game. Snake's sole proper boss fight is against Olga Gurlukovich. Beat her, and you get her USP pistol. Normally, you need that pistol to destroy the sensors for the bombs on the ship. But not anymore.

Speedrunner apel posted a video on YouTube (spotted by Time Extension) showing how it's done. The trick involves dragging an unconscious guard over to the lasers. When the guard wakes up, the lasers activate and trigger the bombs. Normally, this would set a flag in the game that determines whether the explosives can be triggered again. After a game over, pressing Continue resets that flag to its previous value, making the explosives work again. But by rolling towards a checkpoint right as the guard triggers the bombs, the game saves the flag's value after the explosions happen. This lets Snake simply stroll through, completely avoiding Olga.

Since the bombs are the only part of the Tanker where you need a lethal weapon, you're free to move on and reach Raiden without ever fighting Olga. This is a huge deal for the MGS2 speedrunning community, as it's the first skip that lets you bypass a boss fight entirely. Expect to see some new world records soon.

So, what do you think? Will you be trying this skip yourself, or are you just happy to watch the speedrunners do their thing?