# How did Psycho Mantis know what other games I played? I never told him.

- Series: [How It Spawns](https://miu.fm/howitspawns.md)
- Published: 2026-10-30
- Page: https://miu.fm/howitspawns/how-did-psycho-mantis-know-what-other-games-i-played-i-never

## Story

How did Psycho Mantis know what other games I played? I never told him.

In Metal Gear Solid (Konami, PlayStation, 1998) the psychic boss stops the game to read your mind. He never does: the game reads what is plugged in. First its own counters: how often you were spotted, continued, trapped and saved. Then both memory cards. Every PlayStation save is named with its game's product code, and the US release looks each name up in a list of 24 Konami games: Suikoden, Azure Dreams and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night each get a line ("You like Castlevania, don't you?"), and two role-playing games or three games from the list get one more. With a vibration controller he has you put it on the floor, then runs its motor.

In the fight he dodges everything. The game's code shows why: every hit on him is first undone. From controller port 1 only every eighth one counts; once the controller in port 2 is moving Snake, your shots land. The radio's own tip: "Plug your controller into controller port two. If you do that, he won't be able to read your mind."

Hideo Kojima to Steven Kent, Gamers Today (about 2000, in English translation): old Japanese animations have masters who tell their students to clear their minds so enemies can't read their thoughts, and "The only way I could think of clearing your mind while playing a game was to unplug the controller and plug it in the other slot. That was my idea, and the young people on my team didn't really like it."

Our own simplified version, drawn in code: the hall, room, console, card, pad and figures are ours; the save list and hit counter run the game's rules on our own card and fight (the seven-in-eight rule read in the decompiled 1999 Integral edition, matching a player's count on the PlayStation). Unofficial. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Konami.

Which boss should we open up next?

Sources: the game's code in FoxdieTeam's mgs_reversing decompilation; its English lines in players' recordings; Steven Kent, "Hideo Kojima: Game Guru, Movie Maniac", Gamers Today (Internet Archive); YouTube videos by Carlito N.S.P. (2020) and Dan Rennie (2022).

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