Evidence #28 - Snatcher Sega CD Booklet (1994)

Download .pdf HERE! (Total Size: 29.5 mb)

This post is basically here to be as something to fill in some content before my next magazine scan comes out in due time. So for this time, I decided to post up my Snatcher booklet (and game) from the US Sega CD release.

Aside from collecting video game magazines and other anime merch, I also have amassed a collection of video games and console systems, most notably Sega systems and games. The one game in particular I decided to focus on for this post is my own copy of Snatcher on the Sega CD. Even when I first bought this game second hand at a local game store, it was already worth money at the time, which was roughly about $100 bucks. As of now, this game is fetching for over $500 bucks on ebay, and I am not sure if it's gonna go any higher than that or not in the next couple of years. The reason why I decided to do a blog post on this game, is the fact that I want to archive for myself and those that follow this site a very prized possession for me that i'm now ready to part with. 

I'll get to my reason for parting with this game in a minute, but I want to add in the brief history of how I got this game, which goes back to the end of February 2008 when I was getting out of one of my programming class at Wake Technical College near Raleigh N.C. I had a buddy of mine Mitch who worked at the local Play n' Trade game store, which was a franchise business that were coming about across the country for anyone wanting to "live the dream" in owning their very own gaming store. It was in a conversation while I was headed to my car that he told me the store got a huge trade in on Sega CD games, and he rambled some titles off to me. Within him talking about games I was already interested in, the world seemed to stop for a moment when he muttered from his lips "... Snatcher... ," which prompted me to lose my mind at that moment.

I had always wanted to own a copy of Snatcher since I got into collecting console gaming after I got out of high school in 2005, and especially starting to collect rare games on a Sega Saturn I bought back in 2006 from a local ma and pa game store near my house. Snatcher was starting to become a game that collectors were starting to go out and hunt around for, which for me I wouldn't know where to begin finding a good copy in the wild, other than flea market gamers that sold everything at ebay prices, before that seemed to be the common trend among independently owned games stores a few years later. 

At that moment, Mitch gave me the phone number to the store, and I hopped in my junker of a Mercury Sable to head over to the Garner N.C. Play n' Trade store. Upon calling the store, I asked what games they had left on Sega CD, and the store clerk (which I believed was one of the owner sons who worked there, the manager Joe, or some other employee) started to tell me the titles. As soon as the word "Snatcher" rang through the earpiece of my phone, I told the clerk to hold that game till I got there, which was about 10 minutes later. I was also told the price of the game, which probably made the luckiest guy in the world with a steal that no one to this day is gonna get, a price of $4.99. 

So, long story short, I got there, got my game in amazement, picked up a couple of others (which you will find on the last page of the .pdf file) and rubbed it in their faces on what a steal I got something like this for. Of course both the employee and the owner never bothered to check ebay and price the game off the site before I got there, which I realized that I probably shouldn't have done that in order to not get them any ideas down the road. But hey who cares, people picked up on that later. This was a store that I worked for for about a month a couple of months later, and got fired for some stupid BS reasons. All in all, that was years ago, and once in a blue moon I might stop by and say hi whenever im up in Raleigh.

So a little over 8 years since I first threw down the cash to get this piece of gaming history, I have decided that I would like to go ahead and cash in on my investment coming up at Animazement. What lead me to my decision is the fact that I don't feel the same way about holding onto the game as I used too. It took me a couple of years after buying Snatcher to sit down and play the game over a weekend through my first play through. As of a few hours ago, it was my second time beating the game, which took me about a week or so playing an hour or so at a time. The time gap between my first play through and my second might have been 5 or so years. I can say that by playing this game a second time, i'm good with my experiences with Snatcher, and I feel that it's time to let someone else have it.

The thing is, games are meant to be played, and to be played as long as possible till something happens where they cannot be played anymore. I feel that having a game like this on myself just sitting there collecting dust takes away the joy of the game from someone who would be dying to play it and to have it in their own collection. Snatcher isn't the first rare game I have sold from my collection, because I have been gradually selling games from my shelf that don't mean that much to me anymore, and I wan't someone else to to try it out. Snatcher is a great collectors item for any gamer to have, and I feel that i'm not worthy to hold onto it anymore, when someone out there will probably get more joy putting it in their collection. What lead me to this mindset of letting go was an ANNCast episode back last year, that had guest talking about giving away the things they collect that don't mean much to them the more, as they have aged and grown up as people over the years. 

There are certain things in my collection that I want to hold onto, and others I will eventually get around to letting go. The thing with collecting is that you hold onto an item that has a personal meaning for you at one point, then once you feel that you can let go of it (and make back more money than what you paid for it), that's where someone else can come in and own it for their collection. Collecting games for me was a passion at one point in my life, and it might still be there, but for now i'm ready to part with some of the things in my room. I also feel that if something happened to them, there is a loss that is too much to keep up with in case something happened to them. The more you collect to collect, the more the uniqueness and passion of collecting starts to leave you, and you are stuck with items filling to the brim and no space to put them. 

This post might come off as personal, because it does. Other than using this blog as a way to share my collection of printed anime medium, I can also use it as a means to express how I feel about the things I scan and my history behind them. In this .pdf, there are scans of the booklet with nice character illustrations, a manga that tells the beginning of the game story, and some other unique information about the game. I think by scanning it, its a documented memory of an item i'm letting go, while still keeping the details to what I owned as a record for public access for those who want to see it for themselves. To me, that means more than physically owning it, and I can be content with that. I don't write on this site much, so I figured I can do some good writing now and then to put something up on here. 

Also to add, I will put in links for the Youtube videos for people reading this site can watch my game play of the game, and my stupid commentary in it as well. Which hey, if you don't like that, go watch one of the 1000 other Snatcher Let's Play videos out there that may suit your fancy. But with that being said, I think I have written what I wanted to say about the game and what I meant to me before passing it down, in exchange for cash. I will get a anime mag post up in due time, so catcha round!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Final