“So, we could put audio on there, and now games could talk. No one had made anything with CD-ROMs yet.”
Kojima reconstructed the origin of his first voice recording work (Snatcher for PC Engine, 1992): Snatcher was originally made for the PC-88 and MSX2 during the floppy disk era, when games did not have voices. At that time NEC led the world with its computers and semiconductors rather than Microsoft or Apple. While Kojima was in Konami’s technology research department trying to get Policenauts moving, the CD-ROM arrived; with CDs of music and CD-ROM drives it became possible to include audio and make games talk, and no one had done anything with CD-ROMs yet. Konami asked him to work on it, and from the research department he had to figure everything out by trial and error — it was also his first time burning a CD-ROM. So instead of Policenauts they recorded and released the PC Engine version of Snatcher in 1992. Kojima said there was not a single game company that had done audio recording with a CD-ROM, not even Konami. He lived in Kobe while the recordings were made in Tokyo; because he was not the producer and could not manage the budget, an outside agency handled casting, which brought together Kikuko Inoue, Yūsaku Yara, Shiozawa, Mami Koyama, Mina Tominaga, Gorō Naya and Ryūji Saikachi.
“Snatcher was a game I made for the PC-88 and MX2. This was the floppy disk era, so there's no talking in this one. […] I was scratching my head about what to do when the new medium of CD-ROMs came into the picture. […] It was my first time burning a CD-ROM too. So instead of Policenauts, we made a PC Engine version of Snatcher, which already existed. We recorded that and released it in 1992. […] There wasn't a single game company out there that had done audio recording with a CD-ROM yet, not even Konami. […] I had an outside agency do the casting for me.”