Snatcher

Guys, can anybody remember these obscure and violent screenshots of people getting decapitated and evil Terminator-like robots grinning at you in the video game magazines of the early nineties? Well, i can. Little did I know that over ten years later I'd find out, that they belong to one of the finest adventures ever made: SNATCHER - A Cyberpunk Adventure. The guy responsible was nobody else than Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid fame, only that SNATCHER never really got the attention that it deserved. Now it's 2008 and SNATCHER actually celebrates its 20th birthday. Hard to believe that the game is such an old timer when you pop it in nowadays. Given, the graphics are a bit oldschool, but the music and voice action are top notch, and, man, the story is awesome!

You are playing Gillian Seed, a Police Officer who is responsible for hunting and eliminating the Snatchers in Neo Kobe, Japan. The Snatchers are these really nasty biodroids, which kill people and then steal their identity. Thanks to artificial skin, nobody knows, that under the facade of a human, there might hide a metallic killing machine. Diving deeper into the story would take too long, but it is a great mixture of film noir detective story, action, thriller and romance. Although the game was released on half a dozen different systems, including the Playstation and Sega Saturn, the only available english version is for the Mega-CD, which makes it kinda hard to obtain. You can find copies on ebay from time to time and thanks to emulators, such as Gens, you don't even need a Mega-CD console to play it. But if you give it a try, you might even find it for free on the world wide web. Websites like the-underdogs.info are a good place to start searching.

The game only needs a joypad or a keyboard, although back in the days you were able to use the lightgun when the game switched into action mode. I didn't find aiming or shooting harder using the keys though. It propably is even easier. So if you have some time on your hands and if you love movies like Blade Runner, Terminator or They Live, then you should definitely check out SNATCHER. Once you start playing you don't wanna stop until you found out everything about the menacing snatchers, Gillians mysterious past and the hot dancer in the bar! So stop reading now, and get SNATCHER. You know you want it!