This page explains in detail the references to several series that are featured in the Outer Heaven bar scene from Snatcher, primarily in the form of bar customers wearing costumes.
About[]
In all versions of Snatcher, the main protagonist Gillian Seed needs to visit a bar called "Outer Heaven Show Pub" (one of many references to Metal Gear) in order to progress the story. The bar is in the middle of a masquerade, which demands all customers to enter wearing costumes or masks bought at the "Joy Division" store ("Plato's Cavern" in the official translation) in order to enter. Once the player obtains a mask, they enter the bar and observe a number of patrons watching an exotic dancer on stage, with all customers wearing full costumes of several fictional characters. The player can look around and talk to or about the customers, initiating a brief conversation related to the fiction behind each character with their partner, the Metal Gear Mk-II. All characters have their backs turned to the player as they are watching the show, but certain actions (like calling out the dancer's name, speaking to them or revealing Gillian's job as a cop) will make them turn their attention to the player, fully revealing their appearance.
Likely due to worries over copyright issues, the bar scene was altered in subsequent ports and versions of Snatcher. The initial versions featured characters based on popular science-fiction movies and series at the time, while latter ports replaced them with video game characters from Konami's catalogue.
Snatcher[]
November 26, 1988
Snatcher
listed series
Gradius
Snatcher
Snatcher
This Island Earth
The original release of Snatcher for both the MSX2 and NEC PC-8801 features five specific customers dressed like characters from sci-fi movies and series. When discussing these customers, however, Gillian and Metal Gear Mk-II reveal the characters have slightly-different names and their source material have wholly different plot summaries. This means they are not costumes of the characters being referenced per-se, but costumes of fictional characters within the Snatcher setting that are parodies of them, making these connections type 2.5 links.
The characters, from left to right:
- Far left of the screen: a man in a monkey costume, called "Korneliussan". When discussing him, the dialogue reveals the character comes from an old film titled "Stuffing of the Ape", about a monkey that was mounted as a taxidermy exhibit. The character is a nod to the monkey scientist Cornelius from Planet of the Apes, with "Stuffing of the Ape" in Japanese (Saru no Hakusei) being a pun on the Japanese title of the real movie (Saru no Wakusei).
- Sitting on the left-side table: a man wearing a bug-like helmet and costume, called "Omen Rider" (lit. "Mask Rider"). Based on the Tokusatsu series Kamen Rider, with its name having only one different kana, and the discussion about the costume giving a description listing its enemy as the "secret organization Hiccup" (Shakkuri, a play on Kamen Rider's Shocker (Shokkaa) organization) and a sequel titled "Omen Rider Black -Kunta Kinte no Gyakushu-", a spoof of the series' 8th season, Kamen Rider BLACK.
- Sitting on the right-side table, back next to Omen Rider: a robot-like customer called "H2O". When discussing him, the conversation describes the character as a translation robot from the "Allstar Wars" series who wanted to be a rockstar but failed the musical audition due to stiff joints, and later failed to become an interpreter for a TV show. The character and description are references to Star Wars's C-3PO, including the name of the series ("Allstar Wars"), the stiff joints referencing C-3PO's stilted movement and the title of "translation robot" being a nod to C-3PO's stated knowledge of six millon forms of communication.
- Sitting on the right-side table, facing H2O: a customer with a big alien costume that's clearly based on the Xenomorphs from Alien. The dialogue about this customer calls the character "Eiliyan" (a slightly different wording on the Japanese word for "Alien") and states he's from a "gossip horror" movie where he's a lascivious space marriage con man trying to stick his tongue into everyone he meets. This appears to be a nod to the Xenomorph's mouth-like tongue and the iconic scene where it hiss in the face of Ridley. The movie's tagline is listed as "In space no one can find your spouse", a spoof of the movie's tagline "In space no one can hear your screams".
- All the way on the right side of the screen: a cutomer wearing a strange-looking costume whose appearance resembles the Kaiju Kanegon from the Ultraman series Ultra Q. When discussing him he's given the name "Okanesan" (roughly "Mr. Money") and his movie's plot involves a boy counterfeinting coins to play video games, paralleling the money-spewing cocoon that transformed Kanegon into a monster.
- Besides the customers, there's one option available during this scene to talk to the bartender and bar's master, who will appear wearing a large four-eyed alien mask that resembles the Metaluna Mutants from the 1955 film This Island Earth. Unlike the references above, there's no discussion of what character or movie this mask represents in-game, leaving this one as a Type 3 link.
There are also a few similar nods in the "Joy Division" store the player needs to visit in order to procure a mask to be allowed entrance to the bar: when choosing a mask the clerk gives two options to buy: a Moai mask (based on the enemy from Gradius) and a Dadada Mask (based on the Dada Alien from Ultraman). The masks can be seen hanging on the wall behind the clerk.
Snatcher: CD-ROMantic[]
October 23, 1992
Guyver
Snatcher
Kinnikuman
Snatcher
The scene remains mostly unchanged in the PC Engine port, with the same customers dressed as the same characters. There is one new customer added to the scene, visible at the right-side corner sitting on the table, and who appears dressed as the main character from the manga and anime series Guyver. When talking to him, his name is given as Gulyver/"Gulliver" (Garibaa), slightly changing the katakana used to write Guyver (Gaibaa),
Besides that, the bartender's mask was redesigned in a way to make it resemble a four-eyed Metaluna Mutant even more. The art for the store was also updated, and far far away in the background two masks were added to a display wall that appear to be based on the masks of Ultraman and Kinnikuman.
Sega CD port[]
November 30, 1994
Snatcher
listed series
The Sega CD port of Snatcher changed the bar scene completely, replacing all the sci-fi costume references for costumes based on several of Konami's best known video game characters, and altering the dialogue accordingly so these are referred to as video game series within the world of Snatcher.
The new costumes include:
- All the way to the left of the screen, in the background: A man dressed as Mr. Ueda from Lethal Enforcer. The conversation about him revolves around the video game Senate hearings of 1993, in which Lethal Enforcers was one of the games singled out for its photorealistic violence.
- Right side table, right up front: two customers dressed as Simon Belmont and Dracula from the Castlevania series. Discussing about them has Gillian speak about Castlevania as a popular late 20th Century series and how frustrated he was at being unable to jump off stairs, a recurring limitation of the early Castlevania games.
- Right next to the Simon Belmont customer: A customer dressed as the ninja Goemon from the Ganbare Goemon series. When discussing this customer, the conversation centers around Goemon being a video game character and how good the game was. For a full list of references between these two series, go here.
- Sitting at the right-side table, in the background: two customers dressed as Bill Rizer and Lance Bean from the Contra series. Discussing them doesn't bring up anything about Contra, instead Gillian and Metal Gear discuss how all characters on the bar are fictional characters from Konami and how they don't fit there as they are real, a meta joke at the fact they are fictional Konami characters part of a video game but Gillian doesn't realize it. For a full list of references between these two series, go here.
- On the far-right corner of the screen: A customer dressed as Sparkster from Rocket Knight. When discussing him, the dialogue brings up the general plot of the series, name-dropping both the pig enemies and the Devotindos Empire, the primary antagonist force.
The bartender's mask was also changed for one based on Brainy from the Konami video game Monster Maulers, in itself a boss character based on the Golem enemy from the shoot-em up Salamander. On the other hand, the Dadada Mask is no longer found in the Joy Division store, replaced with a generic mummy mask.
PlayStation and Saturn ports[]
February 12, 1996
Snatcher
listed series
The Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn ports of Snatcher kept most of the Konami-themed cast of customers in the bar scene, with two exceptions: the customers dressed as Bill and Lance got replaced by people dressed as Pastel and Light from TwinBee, while the customer dressed as Sparkster was replaced by one dressed as Power Pro-kun from the Power Pros Baseball series. The customer dressed as Mr. Ueda was renamed "Design Man" and redrawn as well: his face was altered, he lost his glasses, the kanji on his clothes was changed to the hiragana "ma" and his blades are replaced by a pencil and a paper where he wrote the hiragana "ma" as well. It's possible he is meant to represent a Konami designer. The conversations about these costumes was also rewriten in some instances, most notably giving the option to discuss the Dracula and Simon customers separately.
The mummy mask at the Joy Division store was replaced for a Konami reference as well, and is now a Koitsu Mask based on the blue stickman character from Konami's Parodius. For a full list of references to both Parodius and TwinBee, go here and here.
TurboGrafx-16 Mini[]
March 19, 2020
Snatcher
Listed series
In the version of Snatcher included in the TurboGrafx-16 Mini/PC Engine Mini, some of the bar's customers were redrawn slightly so their resemblance to the sci-fi characters is not as obvious, likely as a way to prevent any possible copyright issues. This affected the Omen Rider, Okanesan, Eiliyan and Gulyver cosplayers, while Korneliussan and H2O remained unaltered.
The bartender's mask and the Dadada Mask were also slightly redrawn for the same reason, the first got two of its four eyes removed and upper teeth added to his "mouth", while the latter got three rows of eyes instead of one.
License[]
For the original version of the scene, Konami held no rights over the sci-fi characters being referenced, thus only included minor references with altered names and elements from the ones in the original sources, and later even altered appearances. The scene in the latter ports changed all references to characters from Konami-owned video games, allowing them to be directly named and referenced. Even still, the references were given under a setting in which they are costumes of fictional characters from video games.