You might remember that last year, Konami said it would help fund a new prosthetic limb for James Young, a double amputee gamer from the UK.
Young lost an arm and a leg back in 2012 after an accident on the London tube, but continued to play games with one arm after the incident.
BBC Three has now released a 30-minute documentary titled Bodyhack: Metal Gear Man. The BBC began making a documentary about the process of building Young his new arm when they heard the news.
It’s absolutely worth a watch, and Young himself is clearly an awesome chap. He talks about how one of the things that really pissed him off about losing a limb, is that he didn’t know how we was gonna game – something that would definitely go through my mind too.
Then of course there are the moments where Young’s family discuss the accident, and they’re as heartfelt and emotional as you’d expect.
Unfortunately, Konami’s involvement is where it all takes a bit of a downward turn. While it’s awesome that they wanted to help fund a prosthetic limb and try to turn a young man’s life around, there are a few problems with said limb.
For starters, it’s meant to be inspired by Metal Gear Solid V, which means the limb is designed to look futuristic – something that concerns Young’s family and has a clear effect on the final product, which simply hasn’t been built to the correct specifications for James, perhaps at the expense of an MGS inspired look.
I also kind of get the impression that the team were rushed into finishing the arm in time for Konami’s planned press launch.
It gets worse when a Konami PR officer gets a clearly unhappy Young to appear on stage at the US-based BodyHacking convention, with his new prosthesis still not working properly.
For the most part though, it’s still life affirming stuff, and really has nothing to do with Konami. You can check out both parts of the documentary below.
When all’s said and done, this is simply a story about a bloke who refuses to let a life changing accident get him down or dictate how he lives – nobody can put a downer on that.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.