Snake's Revenge (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Ultra's 1990 action game for the NES, Snake's Revenge.

Snake's Revenge is one of a few direct sequels that Konami created to the original Metal Gear game, and though it's not the "canonical" sequel - that honor goes to the MSX2 game Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake - it does fair justice to the original. It's a game that a lot of people like to sneer at, and I really don't understand why. Sure, it's got its rough patches - as does every other game in the series - but it does its combination of stealth and action well, and it adheres to the spirit of the original surprisingly well.

The development of Snake's Revenge reminds me quite a bit of that of StarTropics. Both of them were created by Japanese studios specifically for western audiences, and neither of them ever got a release on the Famicom itself. It's pretty interesting to see how Japanese studios perceive and cater to the American market, and Snake's Revenge makes it crystal clear from the outset. That first image of Snake - just how high a dose of steroids is he on? He's ridiculously jacked like so many 80s Hollywood action stars were. He also talks to a guy named John pretty often on his codec, and John looks suspiciously like Rambo 3.0 (you know, the one that rides around horseback in the deserts of Afghanistan taking out Russian helicopters with rocket launchers... twenty-five years before Snake did exactly the same thing in MGS5?), complete with mad glare.

Anyways, Snake's Revenge follows the same general format as Metal Gear did, but instead of taking place across one huge zone, the game is broken up into isolated areas. I personally liked the change - it felt a bit more focused to me, and learning it wasn't as frustrating as figuring out everything in Metal Gear. It didn't really reduce the challenge level, though - it just drops the pretense of non-linearity in favor of streamlining the experience, and I had no problem with that at all.

The game looks and sounds absolutely fantastic for an NES game. I never quite figured out why everybody looks like they're having kidney problems, but the sprites are all really nicely done. They are somewhat realistically proportioned (no giant heads on tiny bodies, yay!) and are easy to identify - Snake's muscles are nicely represented with his drumstick shaped, neon-yellow arms. The character portraits look great, the backgrounds are detailed, and there are a few impressive spectacles throughout - the tank boss and the gondola battles come to mind. The soundtrack is one of my favorites that Konami did on the NES. It reminds me a lot of Mission: Impossible and Rollergames, and it goes pretty hard and heavy in the action bits.

The game play is pretty good overall. The overhead parts control better than they did in Metal Gear, and there are a lot of items as your disposal that provide some options in how to deal with different threats. The English makes more sense this time around, so there aren't any randomly indecipherable "clues," and even if the straight-line vision isn't terribly realistic, it is mercifully consistent which really helps manage the challenge. The game isn't too hard until you get toward the end: the pit-floors, the rooms with suicide bombers, and the fight with Big Boss all tend to be trying, but it is the side-scrolling platformer segments that really let the rest of the package down. Early on, they're fine. The controls are super-stiff - like a hybrid of Castlevania and Rush'n Attack - and in the final area, you get swarmed so badly that they don't really feel challenging as much as they do cheap. Infuriatingly cheap. It's a shame, because they are a black mark on what's otherwise a thoroughly excellent game that does the Metal Gear name a true solid.

If you'd like to see the original NES Metal Gear, you can find my video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvA-0JfbHOQ
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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