Snatcher is a cyberpunk graphic adventure game developed and published by Konami. It was written and designed by Hideo Kojima and first released in 1988 for the PC-8801 and MSX2 in Japan. Snatcher is set in a future Japanese metropolis where humanoid robots dubbed "Snatchers" have been discovered killing humans and replacing them in society. The game follows Gillian Seed, an American expat and amnesiac who joins an anti-Snatcher agency in search of his past. Gameplay takes place primarily through a menu-based interface through which the player can choose to examine items, search rooms, speak to characters, explore a semi-open world, and perform other actions.
Kojima wanted Snatcher to have a cinematic feel, so the setting and story are heavily influenced by science fiction films, like Blade Runner, Akira, The Terminator, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Development on the PC versions took more than twice as long as the average game of the time, even after Kojima was asked to trim more than half his initial story.
The game was released to positive reviews, but poor sales. It garnered a cult following and was remade as a role-playing game called SD Snatcher for the MSX2 in 1990. This was followed by a remake of the original adventure game using CD-ROM technology, released for the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² System in 1992. The game was originally only in Japanese. In 1994, Konami developed an English Sega CD version of Snatcher specifically for Europe and North America. Although it was a commercial failure in North America, the Sega CD version received mostly positive reviews. There is also a fan English translation for the MSX version.
Snatcher has been retrospectively acclaimed as both one of the best adventure and cyberpunk games of all time, and identified as a foundation for the themes Kojima explored later in the Metal Gear series. The game was a significant inspiration on Goichi Suda, who worked with Kojima to produce a radio drama prequel, Sdatcher. Snatcher was last rereleased in 1996 on the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The game was also included in the PC Engine Mini in 2020, though only playable in Japanese. Its lack of availability on modern platforms has surprised industry analysts, given the game's legacy.
Gameplay
Snatcher has been described as both a graphic adventure game and a visual novel. The player controls Gillian Seed as he investigates and hunts "Snatchers", dangerous humanoid robots disguised as humans roaming Neo Kobe City. The game's visuals are static images with some animations that display at the top of the screen. There is no point-and-click interface, with all actions made through a text menu with commands such as move, look, and investigate. The game's puzzles and dialogue trees are simple, lending to an emphasis on linear storytelling. Sometimes character panels are shown below the main graphics window during conversations to convey their facial expressions.
The game allows exploration of a semi-open world. There are a handful of action segments where the player shoots at enemies dispersed across a grid. The Sega CD version supports the Justifier light gun packaged with Lethal Enforcers for these segments.
Plot
Snatcher is set in 2047, over fifty years after a leaked biological weapon known as Lucifer-Alpha spread across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, wiping out half of the world's population, leaving the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom as the only remaining superpowers. On the artificial island metropolis of Neo Kobe City, Japan, humanoid robots dubbed "Snatchers" have been recently discovered killing humans and replacing them in society. They use an artificial skin that is nigh-impossible to tell apart from regular skin. The Neo Kobe City government quarantines the city from the outside world and establishes JUNKER, a task force to hunt Snatchers. The player takes on the role of Gillian Seed (Yusaku Yara/Jeff Lupetin), an American expat and amnesiac who can only remember that his past, along with that of his wife Jamie (Kikuko Inoue/Susan Mele), is somehow related to Snatchers. He starts working at JUNKER in hopes that hunting Snatchers will bring his past to light.
Act 1: Snatch After arriving at the JUNKER headquarters, Gillian Seed meets Mika Slayton (Miina Tominaga/Kimberly Harne) and Chief Benson Cunningham (Gorō Naya/Ray Van Steen), and receives a robot navigator named "Metal Gear Mk. II" (Mami Koyama/Lucy Childs) from JUNKER's engineer Harry Benson (Ryūji Saikachi/Ray Van Steen). Metal Gear receives a distress call from Jean-Jack Gibson (Isao Inoguchi/Jim Parks), the only other JUNKER agent, so Gillian travels there with Metal Gear, only to find a pair of Snatchers have beheaded him. They try to pursue the Snatchers, but are forced to make a quick escape as the factory explodes. Gillian begins searching for the identity of the Snatchers that murdered Jean-Jack, and after searching his house with the help of his daughter Katrina (Miina Tominaga/Lynn Foosaner) and speaking with his informant "Napoleon" (Gorō Naya/Jim Parks), Gillian identifies a pair of suspects. When hunting down the Snatchers, he is nearly killed but is saved by Random Hajile (Kaneto Shiozawa/Jim Parks), a Snatcher bounty hunter.
Act 2: Cure Random joins Gillian and Metal Gear as they travel to a hospital Jean-Jack identified as suspicious during his investigation. They learn it has been abandoned for several years and harbors a secret basement where they find skeletons of Snatcher victims. Among them, they find Chief Cunningham, meaning the JUNKER chief is a Snatcher. Some Snatchers attack the group, but Random distracts them to allow Gillian and Metal Gear to escape. Back at JUNKER headquarters, Gillian speaks to Harry briefly before he dies, having been mortally wounded by the fake Chief, and kills it after taking Mika hostage. Immediately after this, Gillian receives a call from Jamie, telling him she has regained her memories and is being held in the "Kremlin".
Act 3: Junk Gillian and Metal Gear travel to an abandoned church resembling the Kremlin, where they find a Snatcher factory where they are being prepared to act as humans. They also come across a plot to snatch and replace the President of the United States, and the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Japan. Gillian then finds Jamie being held captive by a scientist named Elijah Modnar (Kaneto Shiozawa/Ray Van Steen), who explains Gillian's past. He, his father and Jamie were involved in a secret experiment undertaken by the Soviet Union over 50 years prior during the Cold War to create Snatchers, which were designed to kill and replace world leaders, giving the Soviets more power. Gillian was a CIA agent spying on the project, who married Jamie (spurring Elijah's jealousy due to his own feelings for her) and had a child with her, Harry Benson. Gillian and Jamie were placed in a cryogenic sleep when Elijah released Lucifer-Alpha into the atmosphere. The pair were saved by the army, and lost their memories due to the extended period of time they had been frozen. Corrupted by his ambitions and obsessions, Elijah explains that he has been using the Snatchers to study the effects of suspicion within human society, and reveals his intention to use them as a means of achieving world domination. He also reveals that Random was an anti-Snatcher created by his late father based on Elijah's appearance and memories, and presents his deactivated body. At this point, Random reactivates and holds Elijah at bay, allowing Gillian and Jamie to escape. Metal Gear activates an orbital weapon, which destroys the Snatcher base, killing Elijah and Random. Having learned of a larger Snatcher factory in the ruins of Moscow, Gillian prepares to embark on a mission there, hoping to destroy the menace and rekindle his marriage with Jamie.
Development and release PC-8801 and MSX2
Snatcher was created by Hideo Kojima, working for Konami. Heavily influenced by Blade Runner (1982) and other works of cinema, he wanted to develop a game with a similar style. The game was pitched as a "cyberpunk adventure". Kojima found it difficult to explain the meaning of "cyberpunk" to Konami's trademark department over the phone. The game was originally titled Junker, but the name sounded too similar to an existing mahjong game. The title New Order was also considered. Kojima did not like the final name because his previous game, Metal Gear (1987), was also named after an enemy in the game.
Development began between Kojima and character designer Tomiharu Kinoshita, who both treated the project like making a film or anime rather than a game. They expanded to form a small team at Konami, about half the size needed for a typical Famicom game, which allowed them to work closely and quickly. The game is filled with science fiction culture references that skirt copyright laws. Kojima told Kinoshita to style the characters similar to Katsuhiro Otomo's characters in his manga Akira (1982–1990). The team never aimed for the game to have a mature atmosphere, but it naturally progressed in that direction. In addition to fourth wall breaking dialogue in the game, Kojima wanted to print a secret message and heat-activated scent on the floppy disks that could be noticed after warming them up in the disk drive, but Konami did not approve of this idea.
The development of the original versions of Snatcher lasted around 18 months. Originally Kojima planned the story in five acts, but was forced to trim them down to two due to memory constraints, ending the story in a cliffhanger. Plans for a sequel that would have contained the third through fifth act and an additional one were scrapped due to the prolonged development of the first installment. Development took about two to three times longer than the average game. Difficulties with memory constraints prompted the staff to take a break during development, at which time Kojima began to explore concepts for his later game Policenauts (1994). (Translation )
Originally Snatcher was going to be a PC-8801 exclusive, but it was also developed for the MSX2 at the request of Konami. The PC-8801 version supports FM and stereo sounds via the Sound Board II expansion card while the MSX2 version came with a special cartridge that provided an expanded soundscape beyond the platform's default capabilities and extra RAM, featuring different music track arrangements. The expansion cartridge raised the price of the MSX2 version beyond that of the PC-8801 version, a reverse from the platform's typically cheaper retail game pricing. The quantity of music and sound was greater than other games at the time, and required a larger than usual sound team. Because neither platform was capable of accurately synthesizing speech, sound effects were used to represent character dialogue.
Snatcher was released for the PC-8801 on November 26, 1988, and the MSX2 on December 13 that year.
PC Engine
Players began asking for a home console version soon after release. Because the game was large and required several floppy disks, only CD-ROM systems were considered as opposed to systems that ran ROM cartridges. The PC Engine had the Super CD-ROM² System available so it was chosen to host Snatcher's console port. Fully titled Snatcher CD-ROMantic, this port was the first time that Konami worked with CD technology.