Guilty Gear: The Missing Link, known simply as Guilty Gear outside of Japan, is the first installment in Arc System Works' Guilty Gear series. It was released for the PlayStation on May 14, 1998 in Japan, October 31, 1998 in North America (published by Atlus), and May 2000 in Europe.

The first Guilty Gear was produced by the series creator Daisuke Ishiwatari, who had drafted the plans of the game since his days in vocational school, in a desire to create a fighting game with truly "cool" characters. While joining and working in Arc System Works, a contract developer that worked for publishers with few original games, he came up to its president Minoru Kidooka one day and asked if he could make the game. Ishiwatari got his approval, so his development team spent a year and a half creating Guilty Gear in which he provided illustrations, soundtrack, and voice works for one of the playable characters, Sol Badguy. On release, the game won critical acclaim despite its rough edges, changing the fate of him and the company forever.

Guilty Gear begins in the (no longer) future of 2010, when mankind discovers an unlimited energy source they name "magic", providing solution to the world energy crisis. Despite this, the world continues to be engulfed in conflicts, and experiments harness this power and combine it with living creatures, developing a Living Weapon called "Gears". This turns out to be a bad move when the Gears turn against their masters, sparking a century-long war ("the Crusades") that ravages most of the surface on Earth. After much bloodshed, when the Gears' leader Justice is captured and locked away, all the other Gears are deactivated and the world is seemingly at peace at last. Fast forward to 2180, five years after the end of the Crusades, the dimensional prison that seals Justice starts to deteriorate. An international event known as the Second Holy Order Selection Tournament is quickly organized to pick out the strongest warrior, promising a handsome reward if one can stop Justice before she wipes out what's left of the human race.

The game would later be ported to multiple platforms over the years, starting with a port for NTT DoCoMo i-mode phones on January 10, 2006. A re-release for PlayStation Network would be released in Japan and Europe on May 31, 2007 and August 6, 2009, respectively. Finally, it was released on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch on May 16, 2019.

A sequel came out called Guilty Gear X.

This work shows examples of:

• Air-Dashing: One of several games that could be considered a Trope Codifier, at least for fighting games. Every character except Potemkin can airdash at least once, Millia can airdash twice, and Justice can airdash three times.
• Artificial Stupidity: AI never does either Tech or Quick Rise, making it susceptible to more infinites than a human player.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The game's combo system allows you to repeatedly juggle or knock the opponent down until they're dead. These "OTG infinites" are relatively easy to input, often consisting of one move repeated over and over. Unfortunately, they take ages to actually kill, and are almost completely invalidated by Teching. The only characters that are susceptible to OTG infinites at a high level are Kliff, who has an unusually short tech window, and Testament, who's a... special case.
• Charged Attack: Every character except Axl, Testament, and Justice have at least one special move that can be charged by inputting the move with the Respect button. The charge goes from Level 1 to Level 3, and the move's properties change as the Level increases.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Oh boy, where to start...
• Early Localization Weirdness: The game has a number of odd localization choices that aren't consistent with the rest of the Guilty Gear series. For instance, Overdrive attacks are called "Chaos Moves" and the Tension meter is called the "Chaos Gauge", which they would share their Japanese names in the rest of the series. This also extends to some characters' specific moves, such as Potemkin's iconic Slide Head ability being called "Graviton Stomp".
• Finishing Move: Each character has a unique Instant Kill attack, performed by inputting quarter-circle forward and an attack button while in the Sakkai state, which can be activated by hitting the opponent with an Instant Kill Starter Attack, or successfully performing an Instant Block. If successful, you automatically win the entire match.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: Running into the opponent while you have a full Chaos Gauge will result in them being sent flying if they don't block it.
• Hitbox Dissonance:
  • Ky's jumping Slash has an extra set of hurtboxes roughly two character lengths behind him. Taking advantage of this is somewhat difficult, but it's still odd.
  • There are a number of attacks that come out faster than they appear to at first glance, but hit when they do anyway because the hitboxes are somewhere in Narnia. By far the most egregious example of this is Justice's Michael Sword — it's active on frame 1, but the hitboxes are so deep inside Justice's body that they can't hit anything. A hitbox that's actually capable of hitting the opponent doesn't appear until frame 10, and even then, it doesn't actually hit in front of Justice until frame 20!
  • Some of Axl's normals have random intervals during their animations where both hitboxes and hurtboxes are missing.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Testament pulls this after you defeat them, opting to use themself as the last sacrifice to revive Justice.
• Jump Physics:
  • Every character can jump, super-jump, and Double Jump, and Chipp can triple jump.
  • Curiously, when a character jumps, they're considered airborne for the entire duration, including the pre-jump frames.
• Lag Cancel:
  • All normals can be canceled into jumps, although whether or not that leads into anything noteworthy varies wildly depending on the normal.
  • Charging a special move can be canceled into like any other special move. If you immediately drop the charge afterwards, it cancels out most of the endlag of the move that was canceled into it.
  • Justice's Taunt has some odd properties — it can be cancelled as if it were a Respect, and her standing Punch and Kick normals can be cancelled into it. Using one of those normals, Taunting, then immediately walking forwards results in an effect not unlike Charge Cancelling.
• Launcher Move: Every character has one, performed by pressing both the Slash and Heavy Slash buttons. If it hits, the opponent will be suspended in midair for a brief period, and you can home in on their position by inputting a jump.
  • Technically, any move can be a Launcher Move, as long as it deals enough damage, and the opponent is moving fast enough when they get hit.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • Kliff Undersn lacks the ability to dash, as well as a traditional backstep. Instead of the latter, he has a spot-dodge, as well as an attack that can be performed during it. He's also the only character who can use their Launcher Move in the air.
  • Potemkin, being a Mighty Glacier, lacks the ability to dash forwards or airdash. He's also the only character to have both a forward throw and a backward throw, although the former is bound to the Kick button instead of the Heavy Slash button.
  • Axl lacks the ability to charge — there's evidence that he was supposed to, but it was scrapped, making him the only non-boss character without this ability. In addition, his Dototsu and Yousou Renjin are essentially command Launcher Moves — they always inflict the same type of launch, regardless of what speed the opponent is travelling.
  • All three boss characters are missing otherwise universal mechanics, as a result of being, to put it bluntly, not fully implemented.
    • Testament lacks a chargeable special move. In addition, due to sloppy coding, they are completely unable to tech under normal circumstances.
    • Justice also lacks the ability to charge, and both Taunts function strangely; her Taunt can be cancelled as if it was a Respect, and her actual Respect is in an odd state of pseudo-existence — something clearly happens when you press the button, and it behaves like a Respect, but the animation itself consists of Justice's idle animation freezing for a few seconds.
    • Baiken doesn't have a dash attack — her sprite glows like normal when the conditions are fulfilled, but nothing happens. She's also the only character whose backdash lacks invincibility frames.
• Minus World: Normally, none of the bosses are playable in Normal Mode. If you manage to play as one of them via cheats, it still works, but their win quotes are placeholders, and they simply fight Potemkin over and over again until the game locks up.
• Not Just a Tournament: The midboss of Normal Mode, Testament, reveals themselves to be the host of the tournament all along, and that it's part of their machinations to resurrect Justice, planning to use the winner as a last Human Sacrifice.
• Optional Boss: By completing Normal Mode as Sol or Ky without continues, you fight Baiken, who can be unlocked as a playable character if you defeat her.
• Press X to Not Die: Instant Kills can be avoided by inputting quarter-circle backward and any attack button before the opponent inputs quarter-circle forward and any attack button.
• Retronym: Officially, this game is simply called Guilty Gear (with only a subtitle "The Missing Link" in the opening), and this persists in re-releases. Fans like to call it Guilty Gear 1, Guilty Gear PS1, or The Missing Link when referring to this game specifically.
• Tournament Arc: The Second Holy Order Selection Tournament is this. Its champion is sent to fight Justice.
• Updated Re-release: The 2019 re-release for Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Windows adds more options in the setting menu, like controller/keyboard re-mapping and command list. The game itself is the same, just with added borders on the side due to resolution difference on modern platforms.