The story grabs you from the very beginning, begging the user to figure out who they are, what happened, and why. In the not so distant past in a research facility is located deep within the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. Lucifer Alpha, a deadly virus is being created. A mysterious accident releases this plague across Eurasia, killing most (80%) of the inhabitants. The world is on the mend. A mysterious menace of unknown origin haunts the city of Neo Kobe, a modern city created in the wake of "The Catastrophe". snatchers, machines that can take the shape of any person begin stealing victim's lives. A special agency, JUNKERS, is created to combat this silent threat.

Found 50 years after "The Catastrophe", our protagonist Gillian Seed and his wife are found in Moscow. With acute amnesia, they remember nothing of their previous lives. Only having what is told to them from records and their personal effects, they have nothing to go back to. Their marriage is a mere footnote and mostly for show. Separated, they both start their lives a new. Wishing to restart his life and having what appears to be an impressive background in the special services Gillian joins the JUNKERS. And this is where your story begins.

Seriously, how can you NOT be into that. Robots, amnesia... hot guys in trench coats. This game has more suspense than a daytime soap opera without the dramatic pauses and bad organ music. Pulling inspiration from works such as Blade Runner, Terminator, and Dune; the game is as close to an American 1980s geek wet dream as you can get without creating an animatronic Billy Idol.

Life for Snatcher has never been easy. It was originally created for the PC-8801 and MSX2 by everyone’s favorite conspiracy theory artist Hideo Kojima, father of the Metal Gear series. The game was rushed, extremely limited by the hardware, and only available in Japan. Pressure from the game studios to release the game as quickly as possible left the title unfinished (it was missing an entire act) and had poor performance. While both versions were nearly identical, the MSX2 release was released one month later, but presented with much higher quality audio thanks to a proprietary audio cartridge.

The game waited four years before it was ever truly completed. In the last version that Kojima himself worked on, the PC-Engine Super CD-ROM received the much needed finale to the series. Sporting 256 on screen colors, a full CD Audio track, Japanese voice over and the final act to the series offered depth to this title. This is widely considered the 'true' version of the game. Unfortunately it would be another two years before those of us in America and Europe would see it.

In December of 1994, Sega brought the game to the US and Europe in the form of a Sega CD release. Featuring a full translated voice track the game nearly reaches the quality of the PC-Engine release. The game suffered from technical limitations of the genesis, forcing the game to down grade its color set to 64 colors from 256, but received an improved FM audio track. This is also where times got rocky for the series.

Even at this time, legislation was up in arms over the violence in video games. Politicians were in full force protesting the abomination that was Mortal Kombat for corrupting our youth. Snatcher was a mature title. It had toned down some of its more erotic scenes such as a "wardrobe malfunction", and cleaned up a scene with a coworker's daughter taking a shower. Her age was also change from a rather innocent 14 to a less innocent, certainly more legal 18 to avoid any suggestion that Gillian might be a pedophile. Otherwise the game remained unchanged. You could still make a rather racy call to a phone sex operator (jokingly) and there were many scenes of carnage; A decapitated man holding his own, anguish filled head as well as a beloved dog hurdled through a window, left disemboweled and still breathing and suffering on the carpet. The game received a mature rating in a time when retailers did not wish to take the risk of harboring what would seem like a moral land mine.

In years to follow, both a Playstation and a Saturn release would grace the shores of Japan. While featuring 32bit color stills and a revised soundtrack it is widely considered substandard. Extreme censorship well beyond that of the US title and laughable CG sequences turned off the most of Snatchers avid fans. How could this one title be worth all the blood, sweat and tears.

Also in the series: SD Snatcher. A niche turn-based RPG for the MSX featuring all our favorite snatcher characters in new title. Everything has been "super-deformed" as the name implies, giving all the characters a cute big head. There are translations available online. Although this game is a side quest at best, it's worth a shot.

Thus concludes this weeks installment. If you see it, buy it. With value that seems to never depreciate, this title is an investment. Buy it if only to play it once, and send it to someone else. The game has a story so rich it has been matched few times even by todays high standards. Now if you don't mind I'm going to go dust off my copy and take her for a spin.