SD Snatcher

Snatcher has been described as both a graphic adventure game and a visual novel. The player controls Gillian Seed as he investigates and hunts "Snatchers", dangerous humanoid robots disguised as humans roaming Neo Kobe City. The game's visuals are static images with some animations that display at the top of the screen. There is no point-and-click interface, with all actions made through a text menu with commands such as move, look, and investigate.

The game's puzzles and dialogue trees are simple, lending to an emphasis on linear storytelling. Sometimes character panels are shown below the main graphics window during conversations to convey their facial expressions.

Snatcher is set in 2047, over fifty years after a leaked biological weapon known as Lucifer-Alpha spread across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, wiping out half of the world's population, leaving the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom as the only remaining superpowers. On the artificial island metropolis of Neo Kobe City, Japan, humanoid robots dubbed "Snatchers" have been recently discovered killing humans and replacing them in society. They use an artificial skin that is nigh-impossible to tell apart from regular skin. The Neo Kobe City government quarantines the city from the outside world and establishes JUNKER, a task force to hunt Snatchers.

The player takes on the role of Gillian Seed (Yusaku Yara/Jeff Lupetin), an American expat and amnesiac who can only remember that his past, along with that of his wife Jamie (Kikuko Inoue/Susan Mele), is somehow related to Snatchers. He starts working at JUNKER in hopes that hunting Snatchers will bring his past to light.

Snatcher was created by Hideo Kojima, working for Konami. Heavily influenced by Blade Runner (1982) and other works of cinema, he wanted to develop a game with a similar style. The game was pitched as a "cyberpunk adventure". Kojima found it difficult to explain the meaning of "cyberpunk" to Konami's trademark department over the phone.

The game was originally titled Junker, but the name sounded too similar to an existing mahjong game. The title New Order was also considered. Kojima did not like the final name because his previous game, Metal Gear (1987), was also named after an enemy in the game.

The PC-8801 and MSX2 versions received positive reviews in Japan and attained a cult following, but were not commercially successful. The PC Engine version also attained a following in Japan in part because of its gore. Famicom Tsushin reviewers commended its cinematic quality. The game was still listed on its "Reader's Best 20" list two years after release. Sega Saturn Magazine found the Sega Saturn version a faithful port of the PC Engine version.

When Snatcher arrived to the West on the Sega CD, it received praise for its story, cinematic presentation, and mature themes. It was more cinematic and told a more mature story than gamers were familiar with at the time. Mean Machines Sega felt Snatcher was more substantial than other adventure games, calling it "one of the most involved storyboards and backgrounds of any video game". The game's writing was generally lauded, but VideoGames and Game Players felt its juvenile and lighthearted humor sometimes conflicted from its otherwise serious tone, with VideoGames writing that it suffers from Japanese "cuteness".

Critics have discussed Snatcher as setting the stage for Kojima's later works. 1UP.com felt the game demonstrated his love for film and was "more of a cerebral affair than some of [his] other efforts, but his ingenuity and attention to detail helped make this game especially noteworthy". Game Informer wrote that Snatcher foreshadowed Kojima's use of science fiction to explore philosophy, sex, and the human condition in Metal Gear Solid. Snatcher remains one of Kojima's most renowned games, but is often overshadowed by the Metal Gear Solid series.

The game has obtained a cult following. It has been an influence on other science fiction works, including Project Itoh's novel Genocidal Organ, and the 2015 adventure game 2064: Read Only Memories. Kojima has expressed interest in reviving Snatcher in some capacity, and has explained he does not have the time to work on the project himself but would welcome another director to lead it. According to him, such a project has never been feasible from a business perspective, and in 2011, said that a sequel would need to sell over half a million copies to make sense financially. Kojima left Konami in 2015, and the game remains a property of the company, which has not expressed interest in reviving it, either through a rerelease or sequel.