16 days 16 bit: Day 15 - Snatcher
16 days 16 bit
My name is Chris, I'm an editor at PC Games and I'm currently catching up on games from the 16-bit era. I will share my experiences with you. Here at 16 Tage 16 Bit.Recommended editorial content Here you can find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration.
Day 15: Snatcher
I'm definitely not a fan of Hideo Kojima. I respect the Japanese man's achievements, but his games never really suit my taste. I found the Metal Gear Solid series no more than okay and Death Stranding was really shitty in my opinion. So I went to Snatcher with little expectation, even though I knew that the cyberpunk adventure is still considered a masterpiece by many gamers. So my surprise was all the bigger: Damn it, Snatcher is really a really awesome game!16 days 16 bit: Day 15 - Snatcher (8) Source: PC Games I only wanted to begin with the story of Snatcher and the background to summarize, I would sit on this text for hours / would this video take hours. So in a simplified way: Snatcher is set in the fictional Japanese city of Neo Kobe City in the middle of the 21st century and you take on the role of Junkers Gillian Seed. Its job is to track down and eliminate the snatchers that give the title.
Snatchers are humanoid robots that kill people and, covered with artificial skin, take their place in society. In the course of the story, the amnesic Gillian Seed gets to the bottom of the Snatcher and learns more about his own past. At his side is the little robot Metal Gear MK 2, which is not only cheeky and cheeky, but also quite useful. After all, it can analyze traces, gives hints and can also be used as a video phone.
Even with this super short summary, you have probably already discovered an extremely large number of allusions to films and games. Kojima mixes a lot of Bladerunnner with Die Körperfresser in Snatcher with Terminator with Akira with Buddy-Cop films of the 80s with number 5 lives with B-movie trash with ... Oh, you have already understood. There are also all sorts of allusions to Konami games and in some places even the fourth wall is broken.
What consists of so many individual parts that have been thrown together shouldn't actually work, but it does! And actually, really, really well. The elements of various inspirations have been carefully selected and put together. Snatcher still manages the balancing act impressively between dark sci-fi noir thriller and sometimes wonderfully silly buddy-cop comedy.
16 days 16 bit: Day 15 - Snatcher (3) Source: PC Games Die Story is sometimes a little trashy, but always exciting and doesn’t save with shock moments, violence and surprising twists and turns. Even about 25 years after the international version was published on the Sega Mega CD, the presentation of the game is still fantastic and impresses with its gloomy atmosphere, still attractive graphics and film-ready staging. I sat almost without a break for more than ten hours before this game, until the credits rolled and I finally discovered the secret of the Snatcher. I would say that very few retro games manage to do that these days.
But not only the story attracted me to the screen, but also the humor. The dialogues between Gillian and Metal Gear are sometimes super funny and you are often rewarded with optional comedy cutscenes if you do nonsense within the scope of the possibilities, try out all the actions or try to tear up women. In any case, scenes that are really funny are embedded in the course of the dark story. Anyone who has played Snatcher has definitely seen the scene in which the brakes on Gillian's Turbocycle no longer work.
16 days 16 bit: Day 15 - Snatcher (4) Source: PC Games Playful Snatcher is a very classic adventure game in which most of the time you choose from actions such as looking, pointing, examining or asking questions and thus interacting with other characters or the environment. This seems a bit old-fashioned these days, of course, but it goes well with the atmosphere of the game. Snatcher wants to be very cinematic and the typical action gameplay of the 16-bit era would probably do more harm than good to the title.
Nevertheless, detective adventure gameplay also has its weaknesses. Even if you do not come up with the solution to the riddle, it is often enough to try all the actions wildly. In addition, you first have to realize that you have to repeat certain actions several times in some places in order to trigger progress in the story.
In some situations I stood like an ox in front of the mountain until I grumbled in a complete solution looked to find that while there are no other objects or clues in this section, I must look and examine eight times for something to happen. You should also have a good command of English if you want to catch up on Snatcher. These are urgently needed for some puzzles and the cut scenes are not subtitled.
16 days 16 bit: Day 15 - Snatcher (9) Source: PC Games In addition to the adventure parts, there are also a few action parts Passages in which evil spider robots or even snatchers appear and have to be dealt with. These parts are pretty simple in terms of play, as you only have to aim at individual parts of a grid, but they work really well as a loosening up. Especially because some of them are staged really well and the snatchers look wonderfully nasty.
As you can see, overall I am very enthusiastic about Snatcher. I forgive him the few places where the game annoyed me, because his strengths are all the greater. The atmosphere is still fantastic, the story is exciting and well staged, and the silly humor still works perfectly. I am really happy to have caught up with this classic. If you have the opportunity to get a Sega Mega CD, you should definitely play Snatcher.
