The number of people who know exactly what "NES military snare drum" refers to is nonzero
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in reply to @amydentata's post:
Are we talking the fast attack/really short decay snare drum note of a game like Bionic Commando, or the Konami version with a slightly longer decay used in games like Metal Gear or Contra?
For sure, though Konami (Jackal was another Konami game) definitely used a pretty unique sound for their snare drums, which I think sounded a lot better than that used by most of the other NES developers.
Other developers like Capcom tended to have a sound that at best sounded like a snare drum with the snare tension set extremely tight.
Taito, by contrast, uses a sound that sounds to me more like a maraca than a snare drum in the music for Operation Wolf.
It definitely works, I suspect a more accurate sound would have overpowered the melody, but it's one of those weird things I picked up on since I was in the school band around the same time I was regularly playing NES games, and I was stuck right in front of one of the snare drummers in the percussion section during practice & concerts.