Snatcher – A cyberpunk classic

The early 1990s saw the awkward transition of video games onto CD media. The promises were big and the possibilities (we were told) limitless.

In the West, these misadventures began with Sega’s MegaCD. A moderately powered but less moderately priced Mega Drive add-on that became a dumping ground for Full Motion Video titles such as Night Trap, Ground Zero Texas and Sewer Shark. As shocking as these games were, they served as examples of how the early 90s gaming industry fetishized Hollywood and believed that one day, all games would play this way. 

They were partly right. Interactive film-like experiences would play a part in the future of video games, but not like this.

It’s summer 1987, and a young Hideo Kojima is inventing the action stealth genre with his 8-bit Metal Gear titles. They are a modest success; fun, but hardly the stuff of legend. Kojima is also very much into Hollywood cinema, devouring sci-fi classics such as Blade Runner, The Terminator and Alien. The tech noir future depicted in these movies causes Kojima to leap from his chair and proclaim, “Hey, I’m gonna make an interactive movie type game out of all this”.

Maybe.

18 months later, Snatcher – A Cyberpunk Adventure, an immersive, menu-based adventure, would emerge for the PC-88 and MSX2 home computers. With well-rounded characters, meaningful story arcs and a plot that borrows heavily from its source material, Snatcher keeps you suitably immersed and puts some empty space between itself and the hentai based competition of the time.

The gameplay is mostly trial and error. Talk to enough people, ask enough questions and your adventure progresses from scene to scene. Somehow, Kojima adds the required magic to elevate Snatcher into one of the all-time greats. The famous fourth wall breaking “take a look at the back of the CD case” moment from Metal Gear Solid makes a debut outing and the occasional jump scare shoot-out sections are even more special if you have Konami’s Justifier light gun. There’s love, loss and plot twists that might cause some cynical eye rolling if played today, but in the context of the times, it was exhilarating to play.

Then, against all the odds, Snatcher received an English translation for the Mega CD.

Looking back on this version, it is extraordinary that it exists at all. The rewritten script and added voice work (exclusive to this version) was light years ahead of what could be found on other platforms. The graphics, thanks to some clever programming, do not suffer too harshly in face of the system’s limited colour palette. We even get a final act, not present in previous versions, that brings together all the loose ends and provides a satisfying climax to the narrative.

This was the interactive movie experience the platform had promised, delivered too late and too early at the same time.

Western critics were less kind to Snatcher, calling it out for its linearity and reliance on simple text driven menus. It was almost as if its non-reliance on pre-rendered video (that Kojima has shown an aversion for throughout his work) was a disappointment. The fact that the game contained a fully searchable database that explained every facet of Snatcher’s world was kinda just shrugged off.

And so it bombed on release, selling a few thousand copies to an already limited user base causing Kojima to back out on translating its pseudo sequel Policenauts and the upgraded versions that were released on 32-bit platforms in Japan.

In gameplay terms, time has treated Snatcher well, with the passing years and growing status of its creator imbuing the game with a charm that is worth seeking out. To experience Snatcher in modern times is not straightforward or (aside from the lucky few) particularly legal. With Konami now less than a shadow of its former self and Kojima an independent gun for hire, Snatcher is sadly absent from modern platforms. So it is down to your emulation weapon of choice, or flash cartridge if you own a working MegaCD today.