Y'all listen up. I'm about to set the record straight. There's a lot of negativity for this game out there and a lot of blatant lies being spread about it. I’m not going to name any names, but I’ve seen people calling this a “Contra rip-off” or saying stuff like “the stealth is gone” (tell me you haven’t played Snake’s Revenge, without telling me you haven’t played Snake’s Revenge). Statements that are just factually untrue. Why though? Why is it hated to the degree that there are individuals willing to stoop as low as fabricated slander in an effort to discredit it? Well, to put it more crudely than I typically would, the only explanation I can come up with is that there’s some serious Kojima nutridding going on because this is easily, without a doubt, and by no small margin the BEST Metal Gear of its era.

You see, ol’ Hideo didn’t actually have anything to do with this. If you’ll recall, there was a port of the 1987 original MSX2 title made for the NES later that same year by a smaller studio. It was an edited, cutback version, but apparently performed strongly enough on the Western market for Konami to commission a sequel from those same people. Turns out this didn’t sit well with everyone involved, as it’s since been reported that one member of the team told the franchise’s true creator about its existence after it entered development, which inspired him to create Solid Snake and the rest of the mainline entries that followed. Yet, while this may not be the “official,” canonically recognized follow-up, it’s clear that the crew at Ultra Games learned a lot about what could and needed to be improved in its predecessor as they worked on its home console release; leading to them crafting the superior option here.

But before I get into that, I want to address these absolutely ASININE Contra comparisons (tell me you haven’t played Contra, without telling me you haven’t played Contra). Fools are spouting this nonsense because there’s the occasional 2D section. At no point though are you running and gunning through them and their level design is more akin to that of Zelda II’s than the shooter-platformer’s. To be clear, you technically can try to play these segments like a traditional action game, the same way you can technically try to play any MG like a traditional action game. You’re just setting yourself up for more frustration and pain than necessary if you do thanks to the amount of enemies that spawn in and the precious supplies you’ll use up disposing of them. So the goal in these parts continues to be: DON’T. GET. SEEN.

The rest of the adventure is the isometric stealth you’d expect and my gosh is it fantastic. You know what the worst aspect of that first installment is? Having to regularly backtrack across long stretches of previously visited locations with basically no direction. Snake’s Revenge does away with all that in favor of a more linear sense of progression that always has you going forward and never back, not entirely unlike how the later Ghost Babel would break itself up into stages (a case of real recognizing real in the development community?). So no longer after finding key card #7 will you have to leave the roof of building no. 3 to see if it maybe opens one of the six locked doors on the second floor of building no. 1 that you couldn’t enter 2 hours prior, for example. It makes a world of difference. Now you can just enjoy the core gameplay without feeling lost or confused by an overly cryptic structure. Even better is that none of the depth has been sacrificed in the process. You’re still required to make smart use of the tools at your disposal to figure out how to overcome a constant stream of clever, challenging new obstacles and that are steadily introduced.

I like this better than the actual Metal Gear 2. Right down to the presentation. The bright, colorful graphics have more pop to them and the music slaps. Not everything is perfect. It can be seriously difficult at points with imaginative bosses that deliver relentless assaults of heavy firepower, a final stretch filled with bottomless pit traps that will kill you as soon as you enter a room (thank goodness for the better checkpoint system), and a brutal timed concluding battle against the iconic bipedal tank where you have to direct remote controlled rockets through tight vent corners that close randomly to hit a small weak point on the machine’s face. All for an extremely underwhelming ending. That being said, Ultra Games saw the flaws in the OGs formula and legitimately refined it. Even the man Hideo Kojima himself has come out and paid this unfairly maligned gem compliments on two occasions years later. When that’s the case you know its detractors (who I’d wager truly haven’t ever touched this) are merely a bunch of fanboys and girls too blindly devoted to see or concede that their gaming messiah was bested at, literally, his own game.

9/10