The cyberpunk game that took twice as long to build as its peers
In short: In 1988, Hideo Kojima set out to create a cinematic masterpiece that felt more like a film than a game. But the ambition of his cyberpunk vision pushed the technology of the era to its breaking point, resulting in a development cycle that defied the industry standards of the time.
Developed by Konami, Snatcher was designed by Hideo Kojima as a 'cyberpunk adventure' heavily inspired by science fiction cinema like Blade Runner and Akira. To achieve a cinematic feel, Kojima and character designer Tomiharu Kinoshita treated the project like a film or anime. Due to such careful methods, creating the title required over double the typical duration for games during that period. Even after Kojima was forced to trim more than half of his initial story due to memory constraints, the project still took approximately 18 months to complete.
The game's narrative is set in 2047 in the metropolis of Neo Kobe City, where humanoid robots called 'Snatchers' replace humans with nigh-impossible-to-detect artificial skin. The player controls Gillian Seed, an amnesiac American expat who joins the JUNKER task force. The story reveals a complex history involving a leaked biological weapon called Lucifer-Alpha and a secret Soviet experiment from the Cold War designed to create Snatchers to replace world leaders. Because the original hardware could not synthesize speech, the team utilized a larger than usual sound team to create expressive sound effects for dialogue.
Despite its critical acclaim and status as a foundation for Kojima's later themes in the Metal Gear series, Snatcher was a commercial failure upon its initial release in 1988. It only gained a cult following, leading to various remakes and a 1994 English version for the Sega CD. The game's legacy is marked by its unique menu-based interface—where players use commands like 'move' and 'investigate' rather than point-and-click—and its status as a pioneer in using CD-ROM technology for Konami.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Snatcher (video game)
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