Snatcher Turns 35

Hideo Kojima is a name that you will always think of one game series and that series is the Metal Gear series. In 1988 he also created a game that many consider to be one of the greatest cyberpunk games of all time and set the bar of how video games can be told in a cinematic way and have a complex storyline to back it up and that game is Snatcher.

Snatcher is best described as a mix of a graphic adventure and a visual novel. It’s not like a point-and-click adventure game at all, the best way to explain the game is you pick what you want to do, and see the outcome of it. To understand what I’m saying you can look at some of the gameplay here.

The plot of Snatcher is you play as Gillian Seed, an amnesiac who can’t remember his past. He starts working for Junker, a task force that is located in Neo Kobe City, to hunt down humanoid robots who are killing humans and are dubbed “Snatchers.” From here we see the story play out in a cinematic way and by the time you finish the game, it will leave you speechless on how a game like this came out over 35 years ago.

Snatcher was first released on the PC-8801 and MSX2 in Japan in 1988. The game ran on floppy disks and at the time was a chore to play. The game was later ported to the PC Engine Super CD-ROM in 1992, Sega CD/Mega CD in 1994, PlayStation 1, and Sega Saturn in 1996. out of all of them, only the Sega CD was translated and released in USA and Europe but failed to sell.

Fun fact about the game, Snatcher was originally going to have 5 acts but due to how complex the scope of the overall game was, players only got to play the first 2 acts and left on a cliffhanger. Kojima was planning on making a part two to Snatcher that would have told Acts 3-5 but would go on to create Policenauts and release it in 1994 in Japan only.