Overview

While promoting the release of Snatcher for PC-Engine, Konami gave away a special CD to consumers who filled out a survey in Japan. Entitled the Snatcher Sound Clip, it featured 20 minutes of music and drama tracks. While a decent promo at the time, it's not worthwhile today.

Body

The disc opens strongly with a rendition of fan favourite opening theme, "One Night in Neo Kobe City". This track does an excellent job of portraying a bustling urban city, filled with jazzy stylings and a mixture of futuristic and retro features. It's also entertaining on a stand-alone basis, boasting charismatic soprano sax leads, exciting solos, and an all-too-funky bass line. The exact same arrangement is also featured in the Snatcher Zoom Tracks, an excellent arranged album for the game.

Taken from the opening of Snatcher, "Bio Hazard" is a perfect scene-setter. It combines a suspenseful chord sequence, subdued rock backing, and ominous Japanese narration into an intoxifying mix. Used during the trailer for the game, "Trailer ~Coming Soon~" is less striking on a stand-alone basis. The music is extremely low-key, while the voice acting sounds clichéd.

The bulk of the album is the "Mini Drama". This ten minute tracks combines drama performances from cast members with carefully placed music and sound effects. The abundance of girly screams aside, it may provide some compensation for Japanese speakers who weren't able to understand the earlier-released Snatcher radio drama. Flanking this piece are two shorter drama tracks focusing on the protagonist's nightmares.

Summary

The Snatcher Sound Clip is a fine promotional album, capturing the tone of the game with several iconic tracks and fleshing out the story with drama performances. That said, its appeal to Westeners will be limited given all but one track features Japanese dialogue and the music tracks can be found elsewhere in fully-fledged arranged albums.