Snake's Revenge

Snake's Revenge
Developer: Konami Publishers: Ultra Games (US), Konami (EU) Platform: NES Released in US: April 1990 Released in EU: March 26, 1992 This game has unused graphics. This game has regional differences.

Snake's Revenge is the sequel to Metal Gear that was released in the West a few months before the actual Kojima-directed sequel. In fact, it wasn't even released in Japan despite being made there. As a result, fans of the series tend to regard this as a misguided cash-in at worst or an unusual side-entry at best. Kojima himself did praise it a few times in interviews, or at the very least doesn't seem to mind its existence as much as he does with the first NES game. Unlike that game, they actually managed to put in a few Metal Gears this time (mass-produced versions of the original mech in the first half, and a new prototype at the end), even though the mech's name isn't on the title anymore.

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 intro shows a blueprint of the Metal Gear and the accompanying text has abbreviations to some of the developers names. However, some abbreviations don't match to any of the staff names shown during the credits.

Abbreviation	Name
Akama!	H. Akamatsu
Yamasl	K. Yamashita
Okuda	Y. Okuda
Fūkū	S. Fukuoka
Noza	A. Nozaki
Fūji	T. Fujimoto
?	T. Ogura
Zanoくū Fūl	?
Akya	?

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.