Snatcher

Background

Set in 2047 on the artificial island metropolis of Neo Kobe City, the game follows Gillian Seed, an American expat and amnesiac who joins JUNKER, an anti-Snatcher agency, in search of his past; humanoid robots called "Snatchers" have been discovered killing humans and replacing them in society. There is no point-and-click interface: all actions go through a text menu with commands such as move, look and investigate, and a handful of action segments have the player shoot at enemies spread across a 3x3 grid. Heavily influenced by Blade Runner and other works of cinema, Kojima wanted to develop a game with a similar style and pitched it as a "cyberpunk adventure". Development took about two to three times longer than the average game, and the five acts Kojima originally planned were trimmed to two because of memory constraints, ending the story on a cliffhanger.

A 1990 MSX2 role-playing remake, SD Snatcher, was followed by a 1992 PC Engine Super CD-ROM² version that added a third act, for which artist Satoshi Yoshioka drew on Blade Runner, The Terminator and Alien to replicate Hollywood-style effects. Konami's English Sega CD version for Europe and North America in 1994 was a commercial failure but was well reviewed, and PlayStation and Sega Saturn versions followed in 1996. Snatcher has since been called one of the best adventure and cyberpunk games of all time and a foundation for the themes Kojima explored in Metal Gear; critics including Kotaku singled out its Blade Runner influence. The Sega CD release remains the only Western version, and the game's absence from modern platforms has surprised industry analysts.