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Be sure to check out part 1 and part 2 of my Metal Gear retrospective to find out about the first Metal Gear game on the MSX2, and its array of horrific ports.
Last time, I wrote about Ultra Games and Metal Gear’s porting woes. There were two really dreadful Metal Gear ports, and whilst the NES version was serviceable, it was pretty poor compared to the MSX2 original.
Unfortunately, North Americans who knew no better never saw the original, and pretty much everyone who played Metal Gear owned it on the NES. Seeing relatively strong sales and a franchise opportunity, Konami commissioned a sequel. Taking in mind that at this time Hideo Kojima was just another game designer working in Konami's MSX division, it’s kind of understandable that he didn’t have a say on any aspect of it.
That’s how Snake’s Revenge was born.
In the universe of Metal Gear on the NES, there was a dissonance between the contents of the game and the instruction manual, and this has carried over to its sequel. This time a man called Higharolla Kockamamie has taken the role of being imaginary terrorist leader. He wants a Metal Gear of his own for some nefarious ends which aren’t explicitly revealed, and it’s on the record that he received the plans for the walking death tank from the original’s imaginary villain, Vermon CaTaffy.
The game itself is even more vague, referring to the enemy as “the enemy”, and not even telling you who their leader is. Of course you do find out through the course of the game and it’s, well, I’ll save that for later.
Solid Snake, I mean, uh, Lt. Solid Snake, is a “martial arts expert” who leads an unnamed unit carrying out “Operation 747”. On his team is John Turner, infiltration expert; and Nick Myer, a weapons and explosives expert. The trio’s mission: destroy the Metal Gear at the enemy base, the same Metal Gear which Snake destroyed in Outer Heaven. Only in the NES version he didn’t.
What?
Now you also might be asking what, exactly, Snake is getting revenge for? I’m sorry to disappoint you, but like the hundreds of other questions Snake’s Revenge makes you ask, this one remains largely unanswered. Whilst the booklet mentions something about a friend dying, the game does has no mention of Snake wanting revenge at all. In the game's version of the narrative — since “destroying” Metal Gear and escaping alive without any scratches or lasting damage — he really has no reason for revenge. Any reason for Snake wanting revenge seems to have been dreamt up by the person designing the box.
After flicking through the booklet, sighing at the awful intro, and actually beginning the game, I quickly realised one thing: Snake’s Revenge is a piece of crap!
I managed to complete it. Barely. But the game is so prohibitively hard that it makes Metal Gear NES’s difficult jungle segment feel like World 1-1. What’s even worse is that there’s multiple ways that the game is hard.
Firstly, the whole jungle is pitch black, save for the odd occasion when the chopper pilot feels like sending a ‘flare of infinite light’ your way, and the only way to navigate is by hugging the intricate environment and hoping you don’t cross paths with the spotlight. Secondly, there are men on flying copter chairs who you sometimes can’t see and who kill you within seconds of being spotted. And thirdly, you just don’t know where to go. The game gives you no sense of direction, and the jungle is a maze of pitch black paths which, nine times out of ten, seem to lead you to the locked rear entrance of the base.
Why are there men on flying chairs? Why does this game give you no directions in a pitch black jungle? I’d never played a game which has tried so hard to piss me off within the first five minutes, and succeeded, until Snake’s Revenge.
Congratulations! You’re special.
It only gets worse. John Turner’s novel infiltration idea was to get caught, leaving the path open for Snake. From there you enter a base whose décor is closer to a child’s bedroom than a terrorist hideout; half blue, half green and wholly hideous.
Bugs from Metal Gear have even made their way into the game. Exiting and re-entering a room causes all the consumable items to respawn, whilst accessing them involves navigating a more complicated and annoying menu system than the original; a major pain for this game’s card key switching. And by the way, doors still don’t tell you which key you need, so the trial and error of unlocking doors becomes even more tedious.
When a door isn’t locked by keycard, sometimes a near-indestructible metal block is placed in front of it, which requires four or five pieces of C4 to destroy. These doors are more frequent than you’d like, meaning lots of backtracking to restock your supply each time you encounter one.
Bosses in Snake’s Revenge are just as awful as the rest of the game. At least in Metal Gear they were exploitable; bosses in Snake’s Revenge require persistence and lots of ration packs. Whether it’s the giant metal robot football players to the Dugtrio-esque grenade tossing bastards later on, Snake’s Revenge’s bosses are some of the most unfair foes in gaming’s history.
The awfulness continues, as the game has side scrolling segments. In these parts you’re supposed to remain stealthy by crouching in front of “the enemy” soldiers, since they can only see things that are at eye level with them. There's no way of sneaking past them, and you simply have to take them out. These areas are designed to drain your health, since they make you swim through long corridors filled with water, and the game doesn’t give you enough oxygen to get through them before they start eating at your health.
Unlike in Metal Gear, where the game had you exploring the intricacies of a base, making you backtrack to open up previously locked doors to progress, Snake’s Revenge takes you on a relatively linear path from “the enemy’s” base, to their boat, onto a train, and into another facility that’s housing a new Metal Gear.
This place has statues which fire rockets at you, and is filled to capacity with suicide bombers ready to smash your health down to zero before you face off with Big Boss, who is back for revenge and is now a cyborg. Yeah. So much for Higharolla Kockamamie, and so much for Snake wanting revenge.
The battle with Big Boss is in two phases, the first is probably the game’s easiest fight, and resembles the final battle from Metal Gear. You move around the room, avoiding Big Boss’s attacks whilst fighting back. In his second phase, he transforms into a massive robot with a flamethrower. You have to run from him and plant mines to destroy him, and once you do, the Metal Gear you were sent to destroy activates. Its targets: Tokyo, New York and Moscow.
Again, you don’t actually have to fight Metal Gear, but at least in Snake’s Revenge you can see it. You have to fire remote controlled missiles through a vent in a nearby room and take it out that way. After you’ve destroyed it, the game comes to a close and the UN declares “World Peace Day”. Apparently, John Turner becomes listed as MIA, and Nick Myer gets a posthumous promotion of three ranks. Wait, what? He died? I guess I wasn’t paying that much attention.
Snake’s Revenge is ultimately a cynical attempt at a sequel: it largely forgets Metal Gear’s stealth gameplay, loses the intricacy and careful craftsmanship of the first game’s levels, instead opting to take you on a largely linear set path, and tries to hide the fact that it’s hideously lacking in content by being difficult. It was a horrible sequel to a less-than-stellar port. North American and European gamers deserved better.
There was one saving grace from this dreadful game. In an interview with Hideo Kojima on Gamers Today, he tells the story of how Metal Gear 2 came to be. He’d bumped into the designer of Snake’s Revenge on the train, who humbly acknowledged that it wasn’t a real Solid Snake game, and begged Kojima to make a true sequel to Metal Gear. And whilst Kojima claimed Snake’s Revenge was “faithful to the Metal Gear concept” in the same interview, he later referred to it as “crap”.
However, that meeting on the train spawned the idea for the Japan-only Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which helped the franchise gain a unique gameplay identity. One which stayed with the series until the 2001 release of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
Coming next time…
Part 4: Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Further Reading
Snake's Revenge Sucked at The Snake Soup — Probably the best MGS fansite out there, and where I first discovered this game.
Snake's Revenge: FAQ/Walkthrough by MNielsen at GameFAQs — I used this to help me through.
Review by Kid Einstein at archive.org — He's pulled the article from GameFAQs, but the internet never forgets. This horrible review, and its author's militant defense of Snake's Revenge caused one of his GameFAQs forum followers to send me a death threat after I'd slated the game on my site.
Chris likes chess, long walks on the beach and playing parlour games with the elderly. He won't be writing on Bitmob for a week or so, as he's preparing something extra special. Hopefully it works out! You can find him on Been There, Played That! and Twitter.