Snatcher
Hideo Kojima might the video game industry’s biggest rockstar right now, but long before Solid Snake was hitting on Mei Ling, and Raiden’s balls had finally dropped, the now legendary director created one of the most brilliant cyberpunk video games ever made.
Snatcher was Kojima’s humble beginnings, a first person visual novel for PC released in 1988, with a narrative heavily based on popular cinema at the time such as Blade Runner and Akira. And, indeed, Snatcher is about tracking down androids who steal people’s identities, set in a futuristic dystopia complete with colorful neon lights and funky wedge shaped cars.
Snatcher is very much a vertical slice of 1980’s pop culture. But don’t let these borrowed inspirations fool you into thinking there isn’t originality here, because Snatcher might still be some of the best written video game narrative of all-time. Additionally, the game’s city environment is mega cool, punctuated by all of the cyberpunk nuances that give it a desperate and grimy dystopian feel.
Snatcher was later ported to both PSOne and Sega Saturn, and despite its somewhat clunky gameplay, is still absolutely worth playing today. But if you can’t get your hands on a copy, check out indie developer MidBoss’s Read Only Memories; a cyberpunk tale heavily inspired by Kojima’s Snatcher.
