Let's start here. "Ultra Games, who the hell are they?" Well, back in the day, Nintendo of Japan told game companies they could only make so many licensed games in a year as quality control. Konami I guess put on a fake mustache and went to Nintendo HQ and said "yes hello, we're Ultra Games a totally not Konami company with access to all the games and licenses and staff and money that Konami has... somehow" More stunningly, this worked and Konami got to push a lot of shit games out in order to get money. Look, Pachinko didn't occur to them til later, so...

Anyway, let's get our revenge on, by waiting at the title screen.

Here, we a nice eye-straining dark-blue-on-black schematic of Metal Gear. And I'm not a graphic designer but you only get so many colors in the NES palette and we went with mustard yellow for the font? Konami, plea- er, Ultra, please. Taking a look at the lower right, Metal Gear's right foot is identified as "Akama!" helpfully.

Onto the plot.

...Or no, that was all you got - a blueprint of Metal Gear and then back to the title screen. This loops endlessly which really makes me think someone at Kon- um, Ultra was like "well you can't just have a static title screen!" and some overworked designer-programmer-artist was like "I got 1000 crappy license games to shit out so whatever" and you get Akama! Metal Gear. Let's start this shindig.

Sparing... well, every expense, Ultra Games at least gives us a little star cursor. Let's start this shindig (again).

Snake, who is a Lietuenant now, gets a report that our intel has discovered an enemy weapon. Oddly, the report then goes on to ask Snake if it's Metal Gear that the intel guy discovered. "How would I know?" Snake probably said aloud, reading this printout. It also says "The pilot knows the route," which... yeah, I'd fuckin' hope so!

Our crack team consists of John Turner who is a human nightmare. One of his eyes is missing and the other is lazy. His army beret is floppy like a cartoon chef's and I think he misheard "military haircut" as "never get one." Frankly, his headshot photography makes Tommy Wiseau look beautiful.

Nick Myer, on the other hand, could not be happier to be here but is still doing Facebook duck lips in his military photo.

We finally get a look at Solid Snake who has been doing so many concentration curls that his right bicep is the largest thing on his body, and his left bicep exploded into two huge drops of molasses. I can't get over those arms. His right one just folds like paper at the elbow!

A klaxon goes off, Snake flashes red and then sheathes his knife to signal: it is time... for revenge!

John, Snake, and Nick (left to right) scatter like idiots out of their helicopter. I say this because even though they run left, up, and right, they do this thing which I guess is supposed to be looking around for enemies but just makes it seem like they didn't check a map before they left. "Where's the base?" Snake asks. "Fuck if I know!" yells John before running face-first into a tree. Then Nick uploads a picture of a ration to Instagram and we're off to a terrible start.

It is hard to know what happens in this first stage, but it happens a lot. Snake steps into a screen that is pitch black and a flare goes off. I can't tell if he is doing that and signalling his location to the enemy, like constantly - or even more bafflingly, the enemy is firing these flares everywhere, at all times, to light the way around their own territory. Anyway, the flare goes off...

And boom, we have visual... on revenge!