Collection essentials #296: Snatcher (Sega CD)

Konami delivers another excellent offering yet again. This one was the brainchild of Hideo Kojima specifically, a very famous creator of a certain stealth game series that I haven’t gotten to yet. Snatcher is what you’d call a “graphic adventure game” (and maybe fits the more modern term “visual novel”), a type of game that was more commonly seen on PCs at the time. And indeed, Snatcher was originally developed and released for a couple types of Japanese PCs before getting console ports. This Sega CD version is interesting because it was developed specifically for Western markets as the game’s only release outside Japan, and yet the developers put a lot of work into it and made improvements from the game’s previous iterations so it’s arguable that it’s the best version of the game.

The name “Snatcher” refers to the game’s antagonist, a mysterious group of evil robots who have recently been secretly murdering humans, taking their skin and covertly replacing them in society. At the start of the game little is known about them or their goals, but it is clear they must be stopped. You play as Gillian Seed, a man who has amnesia and works for an organization called “J.U.N.K.E.R.” that works to thwart the Snatchers and uncover the mysteries surrounding them, armed with his trusty robotic companion, “Metal Gear” (a reference to another Kojima-authored series which later achieved huge worldwide acclaim). The game takes place in a fictional city called Neo Kobe City, and it has a cyberpunk setting that was inspired by ‘80s sci-fi movies. The game really should have had an “M for mature” ESRB rating and displays graphic violence at times, so be warned if you don’t like that sort of thing.

The main selling point to most video games is the gameplay. But in a game like this, story and presentation is the draw. Not that gameplay doesn’t exist, though. The gameplay of Snatcher involves freely moving across a variety of locations, where the player is presented with a menu of various things in each area that Gillian can interact with, sometimes in various ways. The player may take their time to do and see everything possible, but there is always a main story thread that the player has to chase down to see what happens next in the plot. Story progression often involves some sort of puzzle solving, deducing the right place to go and what to do there. Snatcher has action sequences, too, in which a three-by-three grid of squares appears and the player has to shoot the squares in which enemies are present. The controller works for this just fine, but if you have the “Justifier” light gun accessory then you can use that to blast away your foes.

Snatcher’s presentation impressed me a lot. Many parts of the game are voice-acted, and the English voice work is impressive for a game localized in the mid ‘90s. There wasn’t nearly as big a crop of proven talented video game voice actors back then, so bad/cheesy voice acting was a lot more common. In a game like this, bad voice acting could have killed the effectiveness of certain scenes, but thankfully Konami made sure to avoid that pitfall. I’m sure modern voice actors could have done a better dub, but what we have here is still plenty adequate to make the game work.

I absolutely loved this game. I only played through it once, and it was many years ago at this point, over a decade. And yet, it still sticks out in my mind very much. There are so many memorable moments, as well as great twists and turns in the story (which I obviously won’t spoil here). The game’s not perfect, and the biggest flaw is that it can be easy to get stuck because what you need to do to progress is a little too hard to figure out, a very common problem in this genre.

I also wanted to shout out this game’s instruction manual, which contains a full-on comic to read. Video game manuals have almost entirely gone the way of the dodo, which is really sad, and cool stuff in manuals like Snatcher’s are part of why I miss them.

If this game sounds enticing from what you’ve read, I can’t urge you enough to try out Snatcher for yourself. It’s an incredible ride that you’ll never forget. It’s definitely my favorite Sega CD game and an epic essential. Now, find a way to give a modern release, Konami!!