During the last coding competition a new member going by the nickname Red Metal joined planetvb. He planned to submit a VB port of Snatcher, a game that I had never heard of. After 7 post he stopped writing updates. Almost exactly one year ago someone else posted that Red Metal had passed away.

That post choked me up quite a bit. I had never talked to him but from his post I could tell that he was a very nice person. I felt like I missed my chance to get to know him. I tried to express that in a post but somehow my words felt meaningless to me.

It sparked an idea though… I could create a Snatcher port in his memory. So I started learning about the game and all the different versions. After playing it for a bit I came to the conclusion that it’s too complex. But somehow I couldn’t let the idea go.

One year and something like 200-300 hours of work later I have a first demo done. You can play up to the point where you leave for Alton Plaza. The Jordan Computer, inventory and shooting games are fully working. I had to skip the save feature and the video phone for now. To my knowledge it is furthers a homebrew Snatcher port has ever gotten.

Here are some features:
– Dynamic dialog system with alternating answers
– Dynamic inventory (Select button) that reacts to people in the room
– Every image has been converted to 3D
– PCM music and sound effects
– In game Jordan computer fully working
– Shooting games fully ported

Special Thanks go to:
– Bigmak and Minestorm for testing.
– Horvat for sharing his PCM code. In the end I wrote my own but it sure helped allot.
– Benjamin Stevens for testing and helping out with the transcripts.

I’m well aware that there are some imperfections in the game. I will continue polishing what is there and extending it until the game is fully completed. Even if it takes till the 25th vb anniversary.

I hope this is something Red Metal would have enjoyed playing.

Happy 20th anniversary everyone.

http://youtu.be/HbE8Zg908u4

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1. snatcher.demo_.1.vb.zip

There’s also a mention on the Retronauts post at USGamer.net, without any links, though. The podcast itself is pretty good — Jeremy Parish describes the mirrors in VBs as spinning, whereas I would call them vibrating… but that’s nitpicky, and off-topic.

Thunderstruck, this is amazing, and I applaud you heartily for the effort. This is just wonderful; really tugs at the heartstrings, too.

I *love* the idea of this coming out episodically. Insofar as continuing from episode to episode, Kr155e mentions:

Since the FlashBoy Plus’ SRAM is not touched by the flasher, each part can simply pick up the savegame of the previous part and continue from there.

Which seems great. However, I’m one of those with an original FlashBoy, rather than Plus, so I assume that’s not something that would work for me. Could some sort of password system work? I don’t know how much play-data Snatcher has at any one time as I have never played it (inventory items? player choices?) but if the story is more of a visual novel, then maybe there’s very little data to actually transfer from episode to episode — maybe players can only progress to certain points if they have certain items or something like that — so a password-style system would only need to contain the data that isn’t “required” by the end of each episode. Does that make sense at all, or am I way, way overthinking it? Certainly I wouldn’t want to inconvenience everyone else by pushing for some sort of FB- compatibility when everyone else has FB+’s — I’d be happy to upgrade at some point.

Lastly (geeze, wall of text post!), just from crossing my eyes as on your test image showing how the conversions work, I’d *love* to see your 2D-to-3D tool become more generic. I think something like that could greatly speed up homebrew development for certain types of games.

This is all just phenomenal. Great work, and thank you. It’s a true tribute to Red Metal and the community as a whole. This post aside, I’m really at a loss for words.

jrronimo wrote:
There’s also a mention on the Retronauts post at USGamer.net, without any links, though.

Missed that one, thanks. Good podcast indeed.

jrronimo wrote:
I’m one of those with an original FlashBoy, rather than Plus, so I assume that’s not something that would work for me. Could some sort of password system work?

I’m planning to put some auto save feature in. Not sure about the multiple roms transition yet. We will see…

jrronimo wrote:
Lastly (geeze, wall of text post!), just from crossing my eyes as on your test image showing how the conversions work, I’d *love* to see your 2D-to-3D tool become more generic. I think something like that could greatly speed up homebrew development for certain types of games.

I will create a post about all the tools somewhen next week. If people actually plan to use it I will polish things and make a release.

jrronimo wrote:
This is all just phenomenal.

Thanks. Also thanks to everyone else who posted.

This is freakin’ sweet. Never would have expected to see this on VB (no, I don’t lurk enough to have known about the last attempt. :P).

Really, great job on this. 🙂

I’d heard much about the title but never played Snatcher before now. WOW – what an amazing game and an even more amazing port! Can’t wait to play through it on VB

Amazing work done here. The 3d looks awsome on the virtual boy.

How does this demo end? I got to the factory and couldn’t advance. I probably was missing something but I looked at and checked everything I could.

I had the same problem when I first tried it. I don’t want to give anything away…BUT

be sure you investigate and search things more then once. Just like the conversations….it yields different results.

-Eric

Thanks, I’ll give it another try tonight. Also, this demo is AMAZING! I think it’s the best game I’ve played on the virtual boy. I really hope that it gets finished.

adler_0 wrote:
How does this demo end? I got to the factory and couldn’t advance. I probably was missing something but I looked at and checked everything I could.

The behavior of the game is close to the one of the original.
Basically, you need to investigate specific things (sometimes multiple times). Sometimes you can only investigate things if you looked at other things first. After investigating items you have to look at them so that metal stores them. After that, most of them show up in the inventory (press SELECT). Later in the demo you have to use items from the inventory as well.

If you get stuck you can sent me a PM and I will tell you what you need to do.

The demo will shows credits when you reached the end.

This is very exciting news, and being done for the right reasons too. While I’ve been holding off playing Snatcher on my Sega CD until I finally get around to finishing Rise of the Dragon, I have seen enough to be glad you are going more like Sega CD than the Saturn version. I can’t wait to check this out and hunt down some replicants, err snatchers. 😉

3Dhardcore wrote:
While I’ve been holding off playing Snatcher on my Sega CD until I finally get around to finishing Rise of the Dragon, I have seen enough to be glad you are going more like Sega CD than the Saturn version.

I wish I had a sega cd and Snatcher so that I could play it myself. I do have a sega saturn but don’t speak Japanese.

thunderstruck wrote:

3Dhardcore wrote:
While I’ve been holding off playing Snatcher on my Sega CD until I finally get around to finishing Rise of the Dragon, I have seen enough to be glad you are going more like Sega CD than the Saturn version.

I wish I had a sega cd and Snatcher so that I could play it myself. I do have a sega saturn but don’t speak Japanese.

Try and find an CD image, and run it through emulation, as it really is one of the best games ever made. It’s one of my 10 games for sure.

Every time Konami announces a new Metal Gear game, I’m like where’s the Snatcher love? But like most big companies now a days, they are stuck in the trap of what they know will bring in the big bucks, and to hell with anything else.

An updated or rebooted Snatcher done right could sale very well, as it is a very unique and well done game, even by today’s standards. Sadly, I doubt this game will ever see any “new” versions, so the Sega CD game is the way to go.

jumpman wrote:

Try and find an CD image, and run it through emulation, as it really is one of the best games ever made.

That’s what I do to create the VirtualBoy port. I really would like to sit down with the game and play it but it is too expensive. The emulator is ok but it is screwing up the music and voice over sometimes.

Ok…

Anyone played the demo all the way to the end?
Anyone found any bugs or glitches?
What’s about missing features?

He’s opening up the floodgates….

Oki, it might just be me…

but using a button to back up out of a menu..sometimes i click on something and have to continue the path and I don’t have a chance to back up.

I think the conversation pictures (little blocks with the characters face), could use more color (hah yea..on a vboy i know), but I think the use of black in it would work well. But, I think talking to thunder that there is an image behind it and it wouldn’t work.

Could those pictures also have depth ? they are used quite a bit..but i’m not sure how many characters you’d have to interact with.

And I can’t wait until the save feature is done..helps with checking out different conversations 🙂

Some of the areas are a bit lacking detail (the factory), but I think that’s the conversion process and there isn’t much to do about it without making whole new art 😛

Overall..nothing to complain about and very little suggestion wise 😛 It’s a great story of course, the 3-d is amazing and the music is great. The computer works well and the shooting does also.

-Eric

bigmak wrote:
But, I think talking to thunder that there is an image behind it and it wouldn’t work.

Creating 4 solid colors is not really a problem, you just have to place a completely black image under the actual image. The black color in the “backdrop” image is achieved through a different palette, which sets one of the solid colors as black.

Great job Thunder! While this normally isn’t my style of game, it has grown on me. Ive never played snatcher before, is this how the whole game plays or is there more action of sorts to come? I can really appreciate all the hard work and the heart touching back story that has gone into this game.

The only issues that Ive encountered is low sound and audio track transitioning. Other then that, it plays great!

Thanks again and I’m looking forward to the next installment!

Same here, I have never played snatcher before this and I can’t wait for the next demo!

HoMenace wrote:
I’ve never played Snatcher before, is this how the whole game plays or is there more action of sorts to come?

I only “played” the Original up to the point where my demo ends. But from what I’ve seen online the only action parts are the shooting sections. They get harder later on though. The 3rd act is supposed to be less action oriented from what I’ve heard.

HoMenace wrote:
The only issues that Ive encountered is low sound and audio track transitioning.

Yeah, the music bothers me a bit as well. I polished it allot already but it’s far from perfect. One issue is that I have to convert the source files to 5555 Hz for most of the music loops. Otherwise my music code notably slows down the game. I should rewrite the music code in asm I guess, but the decompression code got kind of complex. The music takes up allot of space as well so not using higher frequencies helps a bit. The code also doesn’t do pitch shift.

adler_0 wrote:
Same here, I have never played snatcher before this and I can’t wait for the next demo!

I actually took a break from VB programming so the current demo is the latest state. I have another vb project in the making which I plan to make public before going back to Snatcher. That hopefully doesn’t take that much time.