Format: Sega CD
Genre: Adventure
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami

A visual novel art style is tough to pull off with the Mega Drive's somewhat limited color palette, but Snatcher nails it: the graphics are so colorful, their shading so seamless, that it's tough to believe the game is running on the Genesis platform. Beautiful interior areas like living rooms, factories, and offices evoke Phantasy Star II's shop interiors, while the outdoor vistas such as the Alton Plaza are some of the best pieces of cyberpunk imagery in any medium. Character designs are similarly remarkable with the trenchcoat-adorned Gillian and the game's whole cast of supports being instantly iconic.

If Snatcher's graphics cleverly utilize the Mega Drive hardware then the audio is even more impressive. Most of the music in the game combines the Yamaha YM2612 in the original Genesis with the Sega CD's Ricoh RF5C164, and it is fabulous: it sounds so rich and evocative that superficially it could be mistaken for Red Book tracks. The compositions are some of the most atmospheric and tension building songs this reviewer has ever heard. The voice acting fits the game perfectly, being neither too campy nor taking itself too seriously. But the best audio in the game is the song which plays when Gillian calls Jamie on the phone: the combination of yearning, love, regret, pain, and wistfulness could not be condensed into a single song composition any better, in any medium.

Like most visual novel-style games, Snatcher's gameplay is done through verb menu selections like "Look", "Investigate", and "Ask", followed by a noun selection such as "Desk" or "Window". The game's various screens are puzzle-like in nature: the player must often move between different areas and the headquarters computer, making deductions and drawing conclusions. Once in a while the game will break out into a lightgun-lite scenario, where the player moves the shooting cursor between nine screen-visible regions with the d-pad, attacking incoming baddies. The formula "just works", building and releasing tension with aplomb.

The very best games, movies, and novels all have that quality of "I wish I could erase my memory, and go back to experience it for the first time again." Snatcher is in that class of art: it's a special experience, and this reviewer feels blessed to have had the opportunity for a "first time" in the year 2022. The game's only flaw is that, in typical Hideo Kojima fashion, the explicit exposition gets a tad verbose at the game's very conclusion. But that's a small price to pay for something this memorable, and which leverages the hardware in such a remarkable way. Snatcher is an absolutely top-drawer video game.