AS HIDEO KOJIMA HAS BECOME A RARE CELEBRITY IN THE GAMING WORLD, SO HIS OLDER WORKS ARE INCREASINGLY REVISITED. BUT HIS 1988 CYBERPUNK ADVENTURE SNATCHER IS ALMOST UNPLAYABLE TODAY, LEGALLY, AND ONLY RECEIVED ONE ENGLISH PORT – WHICH HAS ONLY INCREASED ITS CULT APPEAL, AND COST

WORDS BY MIKE DIVER

» [PC Engine] Gillian’s Turbocycle allows him to visit many areas of Neo Kobe.

» [Mega-CD] Snatcher’s animated intro sequence sets the atmosphere fantastically.

Raised on movies, his parents encouraging him to watch them by himself from a young age, Hideo Kojima quickly turned to making his own short films. He yearned to become a professional filmmaker – but ultimately joined the games industry and took his first job at Konami in 1986.

After working on Penguin Adventure, an into-the-screen racer with platforming elements, Kojima got to implement his cinematic inspirations in 1987’s Metal Gear, the stealth action pioneer’s gameplay based on what he’d seen in 1963’s Steve McQueen-starring blockbuster The Great Escape. After directing that breakthrough, he eyed something with far greater connections to the silver screen: Snatcher.

Narratively a mixture of Blade Runner, The Terminator and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Snatcher sets its story in 2042 (later ports updating this to 2047), in the fictional Japanese city of Neo Kobe. Here, after the ‘Catastrophe’ of 1991 which killed 80% of the Eurasian population, not to mention actual World War III breaking out in 2005, mankind is facing its greatest and gravest crisis.

A strange bio-roid lifeform is killing people in Neo Kobe and taking their places. They strike in the winter months, their purpose and origin a mystery. To combat this threat to Neo Kobe and the world, a new police force is established:the Judgement Uninfected Naked Kind And Execute Rangers (aka the Japanese Undercover Neuro-Kinetic Elimination Rangers in the English-language release of the game). These Junkers are Snatcher’s Blade Runners; and the Snatchers themselves, its Terminator-like body snatchers.

» [Mega-CD] Sometimes the references are very on the nose.

“Snatcher’sworldwassimply theemptyvesselforthe activitiesandlivesofthevarious charactersthatyoumeet”

HideoKojima

» [Mega-CD] Gibson’s death in Sega’s release is arguably more gruesome than the PC Engine version.

The player is cast as new Junker Gillian Seed, whose partner is killed very early on in a horrifically violent manner (how violent depends on what version of the game). It’s Gillian’s job to work out where the Snatchers come from and what they want with the people of Neo Kobe. Supporting characters include his estranged wife Jamie (the reveal of why they both have memory loss is a major twist in the story), Gillian’s robotic support navigator Metal Gear Mk II (not the only reference to the game of the same name), and various Junker staffers and criminal ne’er-do-wells.

If the basic outline of the story sounds like a lot of cliches fighting for the spotlight – although late-game revelations do inject freshness – Kojima himself has never shied away from the fact that Snatcher’s big-screen precedents are worn so brazenly on its sleeve. Speaking in 1992, in promotional material for the game’s PC Engine release archived by shmuplations.com, he said, “Snatcher’s story and setting isn’t very good – we borrowed a lot from Blade Runner. However… the world was simply the empty vessel for the activities and lives of the various characters that you meet, and the inexorable fate that they are dragged into unawares.”