How close can you toe the line of homage without falling completely into plagiarism? While hard to ignore the obvious influences that Kojima and his crew take inspiration from, the gorgeous and colorful 16-bit pixel art of Snatcher is able to create a path of its own into the cyberpunk genre by offering a tonal deviation from the gritty dystopic movies it aesthetically steals from into vibrant comic book territory filled with police procedural twists and turns and injected with just enough japanese melodrama.

Many indie games try their best to recreate the look of those old japanese PC-98 and MSX games, but playing Snatcher nowadays it becomes clear that achieving such an identity extended past just replicating its 16-bit sprite work and was instead a byproduct of the videogame technology and anime cultural zeitgeist that permeated so much of the 80s/90s Japan and filled Snatcher with its color, sound and style, a magnum opus of what can only be now considered a lost art. Despite how static Snatcher can be at points, the power of the Sega CD turns every screen a joy to look at and listen to, making the case for why VNs are a venue to take in the realm of videogames.

Thankfully, at this point in time a not so confident as he is now Kojima was at the helm of the project, managing to restrain his obssessive nerdisms into the background and instead utilizing the premise of his cinema aspirations to create a much more subdued and logically competent thriller that gamifies Blade Runner and takes advantage of the medium of interactivity to immerse the player in clever detective work and satisfying plot point progression in ways film never could. The simple choice of being able to call your wife on the phone and talk about your day and feelings does more for the universe of Snatcher than whatever post 90s Kojima lore dump ever could.

It isn't without it's problems. Much of its "deductive puzzle solving" solely consists of exhausting every combination of "look" and "investigate" commands until the characters decide it's time to advance, the rushed and campy ending would have actually greatly benefited from Kojima's tendency to tie in world socioeconomical politics with his characters personal struggles which would have more strongly cemented Snatcher's themes of human connection and distrust, and the constant forceful "flirt" with every single woman (and child) that shows up on the screen quickly goes from being mildly amusing to straight up creepy. Still, the self awareness and sense of humor keeps things light and fun, and Snatcher's addition to the canon of japanese art that has its finger on the pulse of modern technology makes this a must for Kojima fans. Snatcher 2 would be a joy to witness, though I doubt they could ever manage to recreate the 90s in such a fashion.