The original Metal Gear Solid was ground-breaking in its day, as it toyed with the video game medium in new and inventive ways. One puzzle, in particular, was particularly fiendish, as it required the player to think outside of the box and go check a real box.
Metal Gear Solid played with the player's expectations in a number of different ways, such as the Psycho Mantis boss battle that was tied to the physical controller port of the PlayStation. There is one puzzle in the game that has become infamous, as it keeps becoming an issue again whenever the game is ported to a new platform. The CD codec number puzzle stumped gamers back in '98, and it continues to confound them to this day, which is why we've created this helpful guide, to get you Meryl's digits.
The Infamous CD Box Puzzle in Metal Gear Solid
Depending on who you ask, Metal Gear Solid either has one of the most inventive or most frustrating puzzles in video game history. The people who pirated the game or rented it tend to fall into the latter category.
In order to open the cargo bay doors near the start of the game, Campbell will message Solid Snake and tell him to contact the number on the back of the CD case. What the game never tells you is that Campbell is referring to the actual CD case that Metal Gear Solid came in, and not an in-game item. The player is expected to look at the back of the CD case, where they will find a screenshot of Snake talking to Meryl, with the codec number clearly shown.
This puzzle is definitely inventive, but it has some problems. For one thing, the player is given an item earlier in the game called the MO Disk, and some players thought Campbell was referring to this item, so they spent ages trying to interact with it to get the number. As mentioned previously, people who pirated the game or rented it from a video store wouldn't receive an official box, so they had no way of answering the puzzle outside of brute-forcing every entry on the codec list.
The Puzzle Solution in Metal Gear Solid
In order to reach Meryl and ask her to open the cargo bay doors, call 140.15 on the codec. If the player is already near the cargo, then they will need to wait for her to gain access and open the doors manually, so it's best to either hide from the guards or use this extra time to scrounge for items in the base.
Metal Gear Solid will be released for GOG on September 25, 2020.