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snatcher (dict)
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SnatcherSnatcher is a cyberpunk-themed video game created by Hideo Kojima and developed and published by Konami. Various versions of the game were produced between 1988 and 1996. The game tells the story of "Snatchers", artificial life-forms or bio-roids capable of killing humans and subsequently taking their place in society by donning artificial skins to disguise their appearance. The player controls Gillian Seed, a member of an Anti-Snatcher task force known as JUNKER. The game has been praised for its superior voice acting, music and story (although it takes elements from Blade Runner and The Terminator). Snatcher debuted in 1988 for the PC88 and MSX2 computer platforms in Japan. These two versions of the game were very primitive compared to the subsequent console ports, as they lacked any of the later version's voice acting and the MSX version in particular suffered from long loading times. The game's interface was mostly menu-oriented for simplicity (most adventure games at time required the player to type out phrases). The story is split into Acts (titled "Snatch" and "Cure"). A third act was planned for the game, but left out due to time constraints, giving the game a much darker ending than originally intended. After the initial versions were released, Konami made a spinoff of the game titled SD Snatcher or Super Deform Snatcher due to the game's more child-like character designs. SD Snatcher was an RPG instead of an Adventure and featured a unique first-person battle system where the player could aim at specific body parts of their enemy, disabling specific characteristics. The storyline was essentially identical to the original, but with several alterations, including the addition of new supporting characters (not in any other version of the game) In 1992, Kojima developed a remake of the original game, titled Snatcher CD-ROMantic. The title was given due to the CD-ROM media in which the game was stored (as the videogame industry was not used to disc-based media at the time). This was Konami's first CD-ROM product as well. This version of Snatcher was the first to feature fully spoken dialogue (in which the characters were voiced by seasoned seiyuu in Japan) and Act 3 (titled Junk) was finally added, although some changes had to be made due to the fact that the voice acting was recorded before the game was finished. This version of Snatcher (which was also the last version Kojima worked on directly) became the basis for all subsequent versions. Prior to the release of the main PC Engine version, a trial version of the game, dubbed the "Pilot Disk", which contained behind-the-scenes info, voice samples, a trailer and other bonus features in addition to a demo of the game. In 1994, Konami finally released a version of Snatcher outside of Japan. A localized version of the game was made specifically for the Sega CD in the US and the Mega CD in Europe. It featured fully dubbed English dialogue and a few mild censorships (although nothing particularly serious, only one scene in which Gillian and Metal Gear find a pornographic videotape was removed). Since the Sega CD version made use of a new voicetrack, the developers added new scenes to the opening and ending of the game which serves to fill some of the looose ends left by the PC Engine version's ending. The Sega CD version was localized by translator Jeremy Blaustein with the screenplay originally translated by a man named Scott T. Hards. The date of the Catastrophe at the beginning of the game was changed from 1991 to 1996 in order to keep the story fresh for western audience and thus, all subsequent dates were affected as well. While the Sega CD version was not a huge success due to the unpopularity of the platform, the game has since developed a cult following on its own and is now one of the most sought-after games for the platform. In 1996, Snatcher was rereleased in Japan for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn platforms. This was done in order to capitalize on the recent release of Policenauts. Unfortunately, these two versions were heavily censored, with some of the game's more violent scenes were completely altered, and thus they were not very well-received. External links
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