TWO WEEKS Unitil MGS4!

Today's Random Metal Gear Fact:

It's been said that nicotine is a harder addiction to break than heroin. Solid Snake and Big Boss might agree, as almost every game in the series has included some variation of everyone's favorite cause of lung cancer. Take a deep, long drag on these facts:

• In the original Metal Gear (both the MSX and NES versions), equipping the cigarettes during the final escape sequence will slow the countdown timer considerably.
• Metal Gear 2 was the first game that let Snake use cigarette smoke as a way of seeing infrared laser beams, something featured in all of the later games in the series. MG2 was also the first game where having the cigarettes equipped causes Snake to slowly take damage.
• Snake won't fly the hang-glider off the roof of the Zanzibar building in MG2 until he's smoked a cigarette to calm his nerves.
• Snake is such an addict that he resorts to swallowing a pack of cigarettes to bring them along with him in MGS1. That's pretty damn hardcore.
• Snake may have been trying to kick the habit during MGS2--he passes his cigarettes to Raiden when they first meet (apparently Raiden used to smoke, but managed to quit).
• Big Boss (AKA Naked Snake) is too manly for cigarettes. He smokes cigars.
• The cigar in MGS3 has a few uses of its own. Since it burns bigger and slower than a cigarette, it can be used as a weak light source in dark places. It's also an effective critter repellent--Big Boss can use it to burn off any leeches that get too friendly, and its smoke will keep The Pain's hornets from swarming around Big Boss's head while he's puffing away on it.
• The only cigarettes available in MGS3 are the distinctly Bond-ian sleeping-gas cigarettes found in the basement of Graniny Gorki lab. These emit a cloud of knockout gas that sends any nearby enemy into instant dreamland. I know a guy who even managed to beat The Boss using these...
• In the American version of Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, Nintendo apparently required Konami to replace Snake's cigarettes with something called a "fogger." Blasphemy!
• The only Metal Gear games that don't contain some kind of tobacco are Snake's Revenge, Portable Ops, and the American version of Ghost Babel.