As with all games, I recommend playing them in release date order. You can observe how the gameplay evolves, and, if there's a prequel in the mix, it will probably be more meaningful if you've already experienced events later in the timeline.

Another big reason, controls. If you jump from say 3 to 2, half the stuff is missing like crouching and crappy gun mode. It made me hate Raiden more. Since I played the games first time in Chronological order.

I think first play Metal Gear (NES) and then worry about any of the rest of it.

Perfect thread, i had a MGS question myself

Anyone think its a bad idea to play twin snakes and skip MGS1 altogether? is there much difference between the two games?

Please don't ever play those poor ports on NES. Play the MSX versions. The bad translations really got me miffed lol.

A good comparison would be with the Star Wars movies. If you watch the prequels first, you'll know that Luke and Leia are brother and sister and that their father is Darth Vader. You'll know who Ben Kenobi and Yoda are and so on and so forth so a lot of the big moments in the original trilogy will be spoiled.

The same applies with the MGS games, the story was constructed to be revealed in the order the games were released so it's better to experience it in that order.

play them in the order they released.

I would think release order would be the best way to go.

Well I'll be damned . After some thought, I came to a conclusion that playing it in order of release date really is the best way to experience the series. Although, I mentioned the chronological way was better to avoid timeline confusion, which is a bit of a problem of the series. But nothing that the MGS Database can't solve.

Play in the order they were launched. The prequels have more meaning when you actually know who Big Boss is and what he does in the history. Just think about Star Wars. The prequel trilogy is entirely based on the concept that you know who Darth Vader is and want to know how Anakin became it. If you don't know Vader, the prequels lose their meaning.