It Would Be Accurate to Describe Metal Gear 1 (MSX) as a Dungeon Crawler?

With the release of the Master Collection Vol. 2, I decided to finally play through the Metal Gear titles I was still missing (MGS4, MGSV, and the MSX originals) to complete the saga. I also had a blast with Ghost Babel; I really enjoyed its simplified, 2D style of stealth.

Anyway, I’m enjoying MG1 a lot. I finally reached Building 3 after getting stumped by the compass, and I was struck by how much of the Metal Gear DNA was already there. I thought the same thing about the original NES Zelda when I played it a couple of months ago, which led me to this realization:

Metal Gear is just a military-themed dungeon crawl, isn’t it?

The twist is that you need to avoid enemies, but beyond that (the lock-and-key progression, the puzzles, the traps, the need to find “treasures” (items) to advance certain sections, the minibosses, the backtracking...) I feel like I could translate Outer Heaven into an old-school D&D megadungeon with minimal changes. It’s probably even a good idea to map the game to make things easier in the long run.

I’d like to convince some friends to give it a shot, and I think describing it as a big dungeon crawl might do the trick, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.