While packing up for a move I found an old binder in my office closet labeled "video game hints & guides". I vaguely remembered that I clipped codes and walkthroughs from video game magazines between 1993 and 1996. At least it had to be during that time period because that's when I was working at an Electronics Boutique and therefore getting free magazines. It was also before sites like GameFAQs were around to render them totally useless.

In this binder I found a walkthrough to the Sega CD version of Snatcher from 1995. At the time of this writing that's an even 10 years ago. I remember being totally blown away the first time I played Snatcher.. even though it's really just a glorified Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. The graphics, sound, and storyline were among the best of that gaming generation. The soundtrack and storyline are still better than 99% of the games being made today. Anyway, these scans are a complete walkthrough of the game with a couple secret codes at the end.

Spoiler warning: Since these are scans from a walkthrough they obviously contain spoilers.

Act 1: Snatch.. I'll skip the obvious juvenile joke here. This first part of the game is tad on the dull side. It's a lot of dialog and going from room to room. I wonder how many people got bored with this right away and stopped playing?

Alright, here's where things start to pick up. Getting a firearm is usually a good sign in a video game. This page has the most well-known screenshot of the game, Gibson with his severed head lying between his legs. There's another obvious joke from Clerks that I'll also skip.

Now we get to explore Gillian's dysfunctional relationship with his wife. They're married but not really on speaking terms. To mix things up let's bring in Katrina, the orphaned daughter of Gibson. Sure hope no one accidentally walks in on her in the shower...

I like redheads as much as the next guy (maybe more), but I've never been one to go crazy for video game hotties. I've also never been one to use the word "hotties". This was the most T&A you could find in a video game in 1995. "Back in my day we didn't have Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball with it's ultra-realistic rendered boobies; we had to spank it to Snatcher and we liked it!"

Ho, ho, ho. It turns out Snatcher is set against the Christmas season, although it is by no means a Christmas game. Shenmue had the same thing going on. I wish there were a few more games subtly set against the holidays like those two.

..and here's the accidental-shower-walk-in-scene. This page of the walkthrough also takes you to a bar called "Outer Heaven" which is filled with characters from other Konami games. I thought that was a nice tongue-in-cheek way to give props to the titles that put Konami on the map.

And now for the exciting conclusion of Snatcher. Compared to the first two acts, the third is quite short. You learn all of Gillian and Jamie's secrets and get a couple fast paced shooting sequences. This would be a good time to rant about something.. Snatcher was one of the few light gun games for the Genesis. However, it was much easier to play without it. During the shooting sequences enemies always appeared in one of 9 quadrants on the screen. Using the D-Pad to change between the quadrants was simply more accurate than the light gun. This just contributes to my opinion that light guns are generally junk, especially home versions.

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