10 Days Until MGS4!

Today's Random Metal Gear fact:

On the subject of Snake's Revenge, take a look at this:

Yes, they actually made one of those godawful LCD handheld games for Snake's Revenge. No, I never played it. Yes, I'm fine with that.

For the morbidly curious, here's a link to the manual of this travesty:
http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/Snake

Sounds... uh, "fun."

13 Days Until MGS4!

Today's Random Metal Gear Fact:

The NES version of Metal Gear was extremely successful in America, and Snake's Revenge was Konami's follow-up, released in 1990 in the U.S. under the Ultra Games banner. However, it was not developed by series creator Hideo Kojima. While Snake's Revenge is considered the bastard child of the series by many fans, I have to admit I liked it when it came out. Hell, I thought Snake's Revenge was the real sequel to Metal Gear until I bought Metal Gear Solid and read the synopsis of past games in the manual--that was the first time I ever heard of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.

Snake's Revenge isn't necessarily a bad game, but it contains a lot of questionable design choices. From the very beginning, the game really gets off on the wrong foot. The starting area is a jungle patrolled by guards flying around in weird helicopter-buggy contraptions. These assholes are positioned so that they will immediately spot you the second you leave the first screen in the game, setting off an alert and flooding the area with troops. Brilliant way to start off a stealth game, dumbasses.

When that alert goes off, the next problem with Snake's Revenge rears its ugly head--it's fricking hard. Even the wussiest guards have one huge advantage over Snake: they can shoot diagonally, while Snake can only shoot up, down, left, or right. In other words, every enemy in the game can hit you far more easily than you can hit them. And this is before the designers throw grenade-tossing soldiers who can (and WILL) hit you with pinpoint accuracy from over walls into the mix. On top of that, the game contains countless hazards that simply kill Snake instantly--swaying bridges, magical shipping pallets floating over bottomless pits (seriously), and collapsing floors in every other goddamn room, to name just a few.

OK, so it's hard. But is that really enough to garner the level of derision this game receives? Surely not. That would take something really moronic, right? Something terribly executed and completely out of place in a stealth game...

Yeah, that should just about do it.

For some unfathomable reason, the designers of Snake's Revenge thought it would be a good idea to cram horribly shitty side-scrolling action sequences into their game. Not only are these parts completely out of place, they control terribly. Most of the time Snake moves like he's underwater--and when he actually is underwater, he moves like a wounded slug crawling up a steep grade against a strong headwind. On top of all that, the stealth mechanics completely break down in these scenes. If you happen to walk from one screen to the next while a guard on the new screen is looking in your direction, it's an instant alert--and there is NO WAY to tell where they'll be looking before moving forward. Since the guards move much faster than Snake and have shots that travel faster and farther than his across the screen, beating these sequences basically boils down to having enough rations to survive running away from the onslaught of trained killers that inevitably ends up on your tail. Fun!

Despite all this, Hideo Kojima himself has said that he likes Snake's Revenge, and that he considers it a game in the spirit of the series. In fact, in a way Snake's Revenge is responsible for the Metal Gear series becoming what it is today. While Snake's Revenge was in production at Konami, Kojima actually ended up sitting next to its lead designer on a train one morning. The designer told him what he was working on, and asked Kojima to please make a game about the "real" Snake. That was what inspired Kojima to make Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake... and eventually, Metal Gear Solid! (http://tinyurl.com/6xolpo)

As bad as some parts of Snake's Revenge are, I'd be lying if I said there weren't a few cool moments. There's a sequence where Snake has to infiltrate a ship and blow it up from the inside, which ends with a mad dash for an escape helicopter as the whole place begins exploding. There's a fairly cool part on a train, as well. And at least you actually get to see Metal Gear in the freaking game, which puts it ahead of the NES version of Metal Gear in at least one respect. It's really the combination of the game's jacked-up difficulty and those retarded side-scrolling parts that makes Snake's Revenge hard to go back to.

BONUS VIDEO: A very funny look at the various shortcomings of Snake's Revenge.

http://www.revver.com/video/906691/snakes-revenge-nes-review/

17 Days Until MGS4!

Today's random Metal Gear fact:

Almost every single Metal Gear game thus far has included the infamous cardboard box trick. The only exception is Snake's Revenge (which doesn't really count anyway, as Kojima had nothing to do with it). Here are some lesser-known facts about everyone's favorite shipping container / espionage equipment:

• In the NES version of Metal Gear, Snake could shoot from inside the cardboard box.


• In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, guards will often become suspicious if they notice the box and start peppering it with bullets. If Snake sits there and takes it, they'll be convinced the box is harmless and return to their patrols.


• While Snake is disguised as Major Raikov in MGS3, he can move around under the box in front of guards. When they pick the box up and find what looks like their commanding officer crouched down in there, they just kind of stand there awkwardly, not sure how to react to this strange new development in their lives.


• Several of the boxes in MGS2 feature product-placement. Box 4 has the logo for McFarlane toys (which made the official MGS1 & 2 action figure lines), and Box 5 has the logo from Kojima's Zone of the Enders series.


• If Snake hides under the cardboard box on the deck of the tanker in the opening chapter of MGS2 for a while, it will become wet and will then fall apart if shot by an enemy.


• Metal Gear: Ghost Babel (AKA Metal Gear Solid for Gameboy Color in the U.S.) features an insanely annoying puzzle involving various colors of cardboard boxes and an automated conveyor belt cargo sorting system. Seriously, fuck that puzzle.
  
• The following conversation happens in MGS2 if you call "Plisken" (Snake working incognito) immediately after seeing "someone" sneaking around in a cardboard box:

Raiden: "Pliskin, I saw someone wearing a cardboard box just now...?"
Plisken: "A box? I don't know anything about that. You sure you weren't imagining things?"
Raiden: "Of course I'm sure. Do you think it's one of the members of Dead Cell? I don't want to fight someone like that..."
Plisken: "Why not?"
Raiden: "Because it looked so dumb. Anyone who's willing to be seen like that must be completely insane. I mean, he's a psycho; there's no question about it!"
Plisken: "Um, yeah..."

Snake's tone is hilarious on that last line. He sounds like a kid who just had his sand castle kicked over.

18 Days Until MGS4!

Today's random Metal Gear fact:

The picture of Solid Snake on the cover of Metal Gear 1 (published in 1987 for the MSX computer and in 1988 for the NES) is totally freaking ripped-off of a shot of Michael Biehn from one of Kyle Reese's flashbacks in the original Terminator.

Oh, that wacky Kojima. On a side note, what the hell is that weird tuning fork thing strapped to Snake's left shoulder in that picture?