Old dog, old tricks

So, let’s see. In the first two hours of Snatcher, I’ve encountered:

  • a very literal instance of toilet humor;
  • a self-referential in-joke;
  • several corporate reference in-jokes;
  • anachronistic references to the game’s host platform;
  • a dizzying juxtaposition of immersive design and fourth-wall-shattering jokiness.

Oh yeah. It’s a Hideo Kojima game, alright.

26 thoughts on “Old dog, old tricks”

  2. Oh yeah, I forgot that bullet point:

    • Movie references that tread the line between homage and rip-off.

  3. I still can’t believe this game came out here. Sega CD? Adventure game? MSX2-port? Fully voiced? Somebody at Konami was feeling allergic to money.

  4. Really looking forward to hearing what the ‘nauts will say about this. I actually played this before I read Blade Runner or saw the film, but for a rip-off, it sure was a small, quaint, immersive little story and world. Well, for five hours or so at least.

  6. Absolutely. If the Riggs/Murtaugh lookalikes weren’t enough, there’s even jazzy saxophone riffs right out of Lethal Weapon. There’s plenty of juvenvile humor too. You can “examine” the chests of at least a few of the females and make them bounce.

  7. “Movie references that tread the line between homage and rip-off.”

    Come on, man, this is Konami we’re talking about. Contra wouldn’t exist unless a blonde Schwarzenegger taken from Predator didn’t team up with Rambo to fight the Alien aliens.

  9. Tomm promised to let me borrow his copy someday, but I still haven’t taken him up on that. Maybe I should.

  11. I know Die Hard casts a long shadow over nearly everything Kojima does. It’s kind of sad that cheesy American 80s action flicks support the foundation of most of his stories.

  12. Somebody at Konami was feeling allergic to money.

    Well, it was during that brief 15 minutes when “interactive movies” weren’t a hiss and a byword.

    I liked Snatcher. It does indeed have every single one of Kojima’s little tics in it, but it doesn’t have the leaden, droning, drawn-out pretension of his later stuff. At this point, nobody had told him he was a genius.

  17. “Did you borrow Shane’s Mini Sega CD to play this?”

    Yup, and the CD-X is one of the most amazing consoles ever made. When I have a bit of spare cash (someday far in the future….) I will be getting one for myself.

  18. Cool… Always wanted to try this game out… was kinda hoping there was some way to play the game, like VC instead of buying a CD-X…

    JP: what makes it so amazing? even more amazing than Dreamcast? :)

  19. “It does indeed have every single one of Kojima’s little tics in it, but it doesn’t have the leaden, droning, drawn-out pretension of his later stuff. At this point, nobody had told him he was a genius.”

    This is the best summary of Snatcher ever. I will totally be stealing and paraphrasing this for my own use.

  20. Ujn: I’m not Jeremy, but the cool thing about the CD-X to me is the sheer dinkiness of the thing. It’s really not a hell of a lot bigger than a Discman. A mid-’90s Discman, maybe, but still, pretty small for a console from back then. Also, the cartridge slot is too shallow to accept a 32X, which to me suggests that the hardware has the user’s best interests at heart.

    Nemo: If you get paid for it I want half.

  21. I don’t think “dinky” is the word I’d use — it’s tiny, but “dinky” suggests a sort of cheapness or shoddiness. The CDX is fantastically compact and solid. It’s feels wonderfully engineered in a way you don’t see in most consoles, even today. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for dual-functions systems, because I have a similar fondness for the Twin Famicom and PC Engine Duo.

  22. Yeah, in no way would I impugn the build quality of the thing. The fact that it’s a disc-based system that still runs more than a decade later says it all.

    Actually, now that I think about it, there still isn’t much that touches it in terms of form factor. Especially with modern consoles turning into such tanklike bastards. The PS one, maybe the PC-Engine LT, but otherwise it remains uncommonly small.

  23. Have any of you finished the game without the gun? I tried replaying this recently, and found that playing with a controller isn’t as engaging, or suspenseful.

  24. I beat it without the gun, way back when. The last or second to last shootout scene was a pain in the neck with a controller.

  25. I never really had the chance to play with a gun at all, so I don’t really know what I was missing out on. That’s fine though, there’s not that many shooting segments for me to worry about it too much anyway.

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