SNATCHER

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

- MIKE DIVER

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.