If you’re as much of a Metal Gear Solid fan as I am, you probably enjoyed this year’s E3 quite a bit. Along with the surprising announcement that Metal Gear Solid: Rising is in development for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Kojima Productions confirmed that an all-new Metal Gear Solid named Peace Walker is coming to PSP. As a slight aside, there was even exciting news that Kojima Productions will have a hand in the new Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – plenty to look forward to.

How much Snake can you fit in 16GB?

As it turns out, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the fourth Metal Gear game for Sony’s portable, will play a significant role in the series’ cannon. Speaking in a recent interview with Famitsu (via the black magic of Google Translate), Kojima has implied that Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is his Metal Gear Solid 5. That’s a fairly big boon for Sony’s portable platform – no doubt Peace walker will help shift PSPgo units when it hits the PlayStation Store (and possibly retail shelves) in 2010.

From what we know so far, Peace Walker will be set in 1970s Costa Rica and will uncover the unexplained period in the series’ history that saw the rise of secret organisation Outer Heaven. It should be a real treat, and it’s great to know Koima and the Metal Gear Solid 4 team will be intimatley involved in the production.

Peace Walker will be set in 1970s - it should fill in a few blanks.

Kojima also spoke briefly about Rising in the Famitsu interview, saying that the big budget title will be “a completely different kind of action than what has appeared in the series so far”. A gameplay reboot with a redeveloped graphics engine staring Raiden is fine by me, so long as MGS4 cyborg Raiden doesn’t revrt to Mr. MGS2 whingypants.

So much for no more involvement in Metal Gear, ‘eh Kojima san?