Daniel Melville was born with only one hand. However, he has a bionic prosthesis that opens up new possibilities for him. Moreover, the arm styled like Metal Gear Solid looks pretty cool as well.
This is the Hero Arm: The so-called Hero Arm from Open Bionics is a bionic prosthesis for children and adults who have had an amputation below the elbow or whose arm has been in this condition since birth. The individual parts are made with a 3D printer.
However, a bionic prosthesis is not just a visual change. The trick of the Hero Arm is that it recognizes muscle movements in the arm through sensors and transmits them to the hand. This makes the prosthesis feel almost as precise as if it were realistic.
In addition to this multifunctionality, the prosthesis is also supposed to be affordable. And it should be incredibly stylish, so that one wears it with pride instead of shame.
For this, the Hero Arm comes with different covers to change the appearance of the prosthesis (via openbionics.com). Open Bionics collaborates with Disney for Star Wars, Marvel, and Frozen.
And now also with Konami for an arm with a cover like Snake from Metal Gear Solid 5.
The wearer, Daniel Melville, loves the new design of his prosthesis:
Snake’s Arm Becomes Reality
The new cover of the Hero Arm is inspired by Venom Snake. He is the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. He lost his arm in an accident, which is initially replaced by a simple prosthesis.
After some time, however, he receives a bionic arm from a Soviet engineer. This is initially white and then gets the famous red color of Snake. The color can be changed depending on the function of the arm, for example, yellow for a stun effect. The real-life version may not be able to do that, but the prosthesis is still cool.
This is the wearer of the arm: Daniel Melville, the wearer of the Metal Gear Solid prosthesis, is part of the Bionic Squad of Open Bionics. This is how the company describes the wearers of the Hero Arms.
According to his own statement, Dan has always been a fan of science fiction, comics, and video games. Even though he was born with only his left hand, that never held him back. He found his own way to approach things.
However, he had to face some setbacks as a child. His parents did not have the money to purchase a bionic prosthesis. So he wore many prostheses that had absolutely no function. At times he felt isolated from society and not good enough due to his missing hand.
Since he started wearing the Hero Arm, everything has changed. He can now handle everyday tasks effortlessly. For example, opening a bottle of water or gaming with both hands, a dream for the gaming fan.
This is how the journey began: The arm styled like Metal Gear Solid is not Dan’s first Hero Arm. He came into the media spotlight in 2018. Back then, it was for a bionic arm inspired by Adam Jensen from the game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided:
With this arm, he even set a world record. He was awarded in the 2018 Gamer Edition for the first prosthesis modeled after a video game (via guinnessworldrecords.com).
This is the team at Open Bionics: The brains behind the Hero Arms are the team from Open Bionics. Even at 17 years old, founder Joel Gibbard was fascinated by bionic hands and eventually founded the company Open Bionics with Samantha Payne. In 2018, they were even crowned the hottest start-up at the Europa Awards.
Based in Bristol, UK, the team works with customers to develop arms and hands that suit them. These include sports, board game, and gaming fans. And the customers are also enthusiastic about science fiction. So it is not surprising that such a cool video game cover for the Hero Arm was created, like the one of Snake.
