Snatcher (Sega CD, 1994)

The trouble with being a lifelong adventure gamer is that eventually you run out of classic adventure games. Snatcher had been at the top of my to-play list for a while, waiting for the moment when I'd finally buy a Sega CD. After a few years, I scrapped that idea and decided to go the emulator route.

Snatcher has a bit of an odd history. It's the first of two Japanese adventure games produced by Hideo Kojima, and was originally released in 1988 for the MSX2 and PC88, two Japanese computers. Those versions ended on a pretty bad cliffhanger, and in 1992 the game was rereleased on the PC Engine with a third and final act. It was this version that was translated and released in America and Europe in 1994, exclusively for the Sega CD, of all systems. For a number of reasons, including the mature rating and the fact that it played nothing like the FMV titles that most of us associate with the console, the game was a complete flop in the US and dropped off the radar. Snatcher is the epitome of a cult classic, and today it has a fair number of devoted fans.

The Japanese adventure game evolved entirely separately from the western equivalent; it's more closely related (though not nearly as un-interactive as) the visual novel. Instead of a text parser or point-and-click interface, the genre conventially lets you choose from a menu of verbs, with submenus for the objects you can apply them to. These mechanics are first seen in The Portopia Serial Murder Case, a 1983 computer game that actually predates King's Quest I. (Snatcher contains at least a couple references to this landmark title, which has been fan-translated and might be worth checking out.)

These mechanics make for a much more linear and controlled experience. Snatcher has few puzzles, and much of the game consists of simply looking at and investigating everything there is to see in each room. The game for this reason avoids all of the major pitfalls (pixel hunting, uninspired puzzles) of early western adventure games, although it's very easy and took me about six or seven hours to finish. To add excitement, a few shooting gallery segments are thrown in. These play just fine on a controller (you move the crosshairs on a 3x3 grid), but the dedicated gamer can choose to use the Sega CD's light gun. Like all action sequences in adventure games, they're just fine unless they're at all difficult - one such segment at the very end of Snatcher very nearly caused me to quit the game.

Snatcher would be forgettable, but for the plot and setting. It has all the hallmarks of a classic Hideo Kojima game - suspenseful, terrific attention to detail, a very advanced and unique piece of genre fiction. It even has one extremely long cutscene, at the very end of the game. The game is billed on the title menu as a "Cyberpunk Adventure", and the big influences this time are Blade Runner and the Terminator series. As with Metal Gear Solid, Kojima uses overtly political themes, centering around Cold War paranoia and the effects of the arms race. In his own peculiar fashion, he invites you to stop being cynical and care about these themes with a strikingly sentimental appeal.

The characters are well-defined and memorable, although you'll find plenty of sci-fi cliches, including an amnesiac main character. Any discussion of Snatcher must also take account of this fact: it is widely considered to be the first game with generally terrific English voice acting. Although contained to the cutscenes, there's plenty of it and it makes a huge difference. You can tell the localization team really cared about the project; I can only think of a few better examples with this standard of localization (the later Persona games, and the fan translation of Mother 3).

Like most of Kojima's games (with the exception of the original Metal Gear Solid), it makes few major innovations, but you can't help enjoying the ride.