Snake's Revenge

The sequel to Metal Gear on the NES, which is what the west got instead of the one Kojima actually made. Because of this it's often seen as a weaker substitute, despite being under development first and actually inspiring Kojima to do his own sequel. At least Kojima himself doesn't seem to mind its existence as much as he does with the first NES game. Unlike that one, Snake actually faces a Metal Gear at the end this time.

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Prerelease Info

Unused Text#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.

The text string "GAME" and "DEMO" can be found at offset 0x1D145, which seems to imply some sort of debug feature.

Unused Graphics#

	A set of unused sprites meant for item pickups. From left to right: a gas mask, a handgun and a rope. The most notable of these is the gas mask, since there are a few gas-covered rooms throughout the game, but no possible way to avoid taking damage in them. The omission of the gas mask is quite peculiar, considering the presence of similar items such as the boots and oxygen tanks. The handgun actually appears in the game, but it's part of Snake's initial equipment rather than something he picks up along the way, which made its sprite here unnecessary. It is unknown what the rope was for (perhaps they would've been left behind by hostages after being rescued).
	Another set of unused item icons, but these ones were meant for the inventory screen. In addition to the gas mask, there's what appears to be an ammunition cache, a cardboard box (a trademark of the series missing in Snake's Revenge) and a compass. It is unknown what purpose an ammo cache would've served in the inventory screen, since they're meant to replenish ammunition for every firearm and are not usable items by themselves. Perhaps this was a special ammo cache that would've increased the ammo capacity of firearms similar to what the backpack does for missiles and landmines.
	Large numbers and letters stored among the elevator graphics meant to identify different floors, as evident by the presence of a "B" and an "R" (for basement and rooftop respectively).

Extra Staff Credits#

The attract demo after the title screen consists of a blueprint of the Metal Gear tank from the first game, with accompanying text that are actually the names of the game's development team also seen on the ending staff roll (specifically the four programmers and two graphic designers). However, the name "Akama" (an abbreviation of lead programmer Hitoshi Akamatsu's surname, which is also used as a cheat code in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse alongside "Okuda" and "Fujimoto") appears twice, while the remaining two names are just gibberish made-up of recycled tiles from the other names.

Regional Differences#

US
Europe

The logo on the title screen was updated for the European version to more closely resemble the one that's actually used on the game's packaging, featuring a slightly different, taller font, green text and lines going across certain letters (though its dropshadow is colored light green instead of the box art logo's yellow). Curiously, the coloration the American logo (with blue text and orange shadows) is the same that was used on the Metal Gear logo for the Famicom version of the first game (the coloring for the NES version's logo was different, as it featured yellow fonts with blue shadows).

Since the European version was published under Konami's own label instead of Ultra's, all the copyrights information regarding the Ultra Games branding was removed, allowing the programmers to move the main menu into the title screen (thus, eliminating the need for a separate screen).

Keen eyes may have noticed the big hole in the European logo next to the R. The correct tile is in the rom, it was just deleted from the tilemap on accident. Here's what it looks like with the tile restored.

References#