is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Konami. It was written and directed by Hideo Kojima, and originally released for the PC-9821 in 1994. A hard science fiction story, Policenauts is set in the mid 21st century and follows Jonathan Ingram, an astronaut recently recovered floating in space in cryosleep after an accident at the space colony Beyond Coast sent him drifting into space for 24 years. Now a detective in Los Angeles, Ingram travels back to Beyond Coast to investigate the murder of his ex-wife and her husband's disappearance. As he begins his investigation, he starts to uncover an illegal organ trafficking ring.
Kojima conceived Policenauts while working on Snatcher (1988), and began development in 1990. He wanted the production quality to match that of major motion pictures, and created a scripting engine to give him more creative control. Drawing creative influences from American buddy television shows, contemporary social debates on anti-Japanese sentiment and organ transplantation, and Japan's heightened interest in space travel following the first Japanese man's trip to space in 1990, he sought to explore the concept of how living in space may affect human society and life, socially and physiologically. The original PC-9821 release used pixel art, while the 3DO, PlayStation, and Sega Saturn ports featured cel animation by Anime International Company.
An English localization was planned for the Saturn but was eventually cancelled, with Kojima citing technical problems with the translation. After interest in Kojima's work grew following the release of Metal Gear Solid (1998), fan translations of the PlayStation and Sega Saturn versions were released in 2009 and 2016 respectively. Critics have praised Policenauts for its animation, voice acting, and overall presentation; several commentators have analysed its cinematic influences from films in the science fiction, action, comedy, and buddy-cop genres, while others noted its reflection of Kojima's fascination with science and technology, and have praised its storyline, technical writing and worldbuilding.
Gameplay
Policenauts is a graphic adventure game with a point-and-click interface. It has also been called a visual novel and an interactive movie. The player moves a cursor freely across the screen to click on objects to examine them. During conversations, the player is given dialogue options to choose from. Once the right object in the scene has been examined or the dialogue options have been exhausted, the game progresses to the next scene in the story. In versions with cel animation, these scenes the player must examine are stills from the animated cinematics, so the game moves seamlessly between them and cutscenes. There are occasional action scenes where the player must fire a gun at enemies in a first-person perspective. The Sega Saturn version supports a light gun for these segments.
Plot In 2013, Los Angeles Police Department officer Jonathan Ingram (Hideyuki Tanaka) was one of five "Policenauts", police officers who received astronaut training to protect Beyond Coast, humanity's first functional self-supporting space colony. During the test of a new space suit, an accident causes Jonathan to drift into space, presumed dead by his colleagues. In reality, the cryogenic survival system in the suit preserved him, and he is found and revived 25 years later. During that time, Beyond Coast has become the principal development location for potential interstellar travel, and is protected by a dedicated police force dubbed the Beyond Coast Police Department (BCPD).
In 2040, Jonathan has become a private investigator on Earth in Old Los Angeles. He is visited by his former wife Lorraine (Chiyoko Kawashima), who remarried while he was presumed dead. Lorraine asks for Jonathan's help in solving the disappearance of her husband, Kenzo Hojo; the only clues are a torn leaf, a set of capsules, and the word "Plato". Jonathan is reluctant to take her case at first, but after Lorraine leaves his office, she is murdered by a man in a black motorcycle suit. After failing to catch the culprit, Jonathan decides to fulfill Lorraine's final request and travels to Beyond, where he is reunited with his former LAPD partner, BCPD Vice Department chief Ed Brown (Shōzō Iizuka), who agrees to help Jonathan investigate the circumstances surrounding Hojo's disappearance and Lorraine's murder along with Vice Unit members Meryl Silverburgh (Kyoko Terase) and Dave Forrest (Bin Shimada).
During their investigation, Jonathan receives information from Karen (Kikuko Inoue), Lorraine's daughter with Hojo, that Hojo was growing increasingly stressed working at Tokugawa Pharmaceuticals, which is helping research medical solutions to health problems caused by living in space. Jonathan and Ed also run into former Policenauts Gates Becker (Osamu Saka) and Joseph Tokugawa (Iemasa Kayumi), the latter of whom Jonathan suspects of being involved. They receive further leads from a former co-worker of Hojo's; the informant is later killed and used to lure Jonathan and Ed into an unsuccessful booby trap. Hojo's body is eventually found, and Jonathan is framed for the killings. Tokugawa and Becker are revealed to have both been responsible for Jonathan's accident, and the prime movers behind an illegal drug and organ trafficking ring designed to counteract the negative side-effects of being in space for long periods of time.
Hojo became involved in the conspiracy to save Karen from her terminal bone cancer, but eventually tried to break away and was murdered. With help from Ed and Meryl, Jonathan storms the Tokugawa headquarters, killing Lorraine's assassin and then confronts Becker. When apparently cornered, Jonathan tricks Becker into revealing the whole scheme through a live video feed, exposing the scandal to Beyond Coast. Ed saves Jonathan by killing Becker, while Meryl and the remaining police arrest Tokugawa. Jonathan donates his bone marrow to Karen upon learning that he is her biological father, and returns to Earth.
Development
Policenauts was developed by Konami and directed by Hideo Kojima. (Translation ) Kojima began to explore concepts for Policenauts during the development of Snatcher (1988) when memory limitation issues prompted them to take a break. He wanted the game to remain in the adventure genre, feeling it was the best method to express what he wanted with video games. He was also growing frustrated with game development and wanted more creative control. After the release of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990), he developed a scripting engine so he could maintain control over when animations and music played instead of the programmers. Kojima wrote and implemented the text-based based portion of Policenauts himself in 1990, which is when development began in earnest, but was not given resources to proceed, keeping it alive as a technical project for its game engine. This changed from 1992 onwards when a boom of adult-oriented PC adventure games such as Dōkyūsei demonstrated there was a market for Policenauts. The game's development lasted for four years in total.
Kojima wanted to explore a near future scenario that could realistically occur rather than outlandish science fiction. The game's story was influenced by news that captured his interest at the time. One such influence was the public debate over organ transplantation and brain death injuries. Another influence was the rise in anti-Japanese sentiment caused by the American crime film Rising Sun (1993). Some Asian-Americans held protests, fearing the negative characterization of Japanese in the film would lead to hate crimes. Space travel was also an influence after Toyohiro Akiyama became the first Japanese person to travel to space in 1990. Concurrently, many NASA documents about space travel and its effects on the human body were being published in Japan for the first time and were hot topics among Kojima's friends and family. Kojima was curious as to what effect living in space would have on the human body, relationships, and wondered what facets of humans would be exposed in space. He chose to explore these concepts in Policenauts. Kojima mixed his space interests with the aforementioned social issues to build the thematic basis of Policenauts and hoped the players would ponder these topics.
Earth was called "Home" in the game while the space colony was named "Beyond", names chosen to reflect a parent-child relationship. "Beyond" also references the colony's distance from Home and the 25 years protagonist Jonathan Ingram passed through during his cryosleep. Kojima hoped that these names would reflect the persistence of human society and relationships, even after extreme technological advances. The colony's cylindrical shape was inspired by Gundam. Policenauts was originally titled Beyond, but Konami changed the name after they were unable to trademark it.
Kojima's familiarity with film and television influenced the cinematography in Policenauts. Though not attempting to use video games as a vehicle for presenting movies, he wanted to fill what he perceived to be a lack of production quality in games. Kojima worked to take the excellence of acting, lighting, direction, and storytelling in filmmaking and match that quality in his games. He took inspiration from American buddy television shows he enjoyed growing up like Starsky & Hutch. The game was originally going to be marketed as a "Cinematic Virtual Reality". Konami did a trademark search early in development that turned up empty, but by 1994, the "Virtual Reality" term had been trademarked so it was dropped.
Release
Policenauts was first released for the PC-9821 on July 29, 1994. Kojima received a letter from a hearing-impaired player after release, upset that modern games like Policenauts with its CD-ROM technology were replacing game text with actual speech. Kojima originally omitted subtitles to evoke a cinematic feel, but he added them for following versions to satisfy the players. The first port was for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer and released on September 29, 1995. A short demo with a game glossary, artwork, and design documents was released on April 21, 1995, called the Pilot Disk. The 3DO version and subsequent console ports had a drop in display resolution, and used newly animated full motion video in contrast to the animated stills used in the PC version. The visuals were animated by Anime International Company using traditional cel animation techniques.
The next port was for the PlayStation, released on January 19, 1996. A bonus disc called Policenauts Private Collection was released concurrently which has most of the same content as the 3DO's Pilot Disk bonuses plus storyboards and the game script, as well as select shooting segments from the main game. The full motion videos in this version run slower at 15 frames per second (FPS) compared to 24 on the 3DO. Some story details that suggested subplots were also removed. The PlayStation launched while Konami was still developing Policenauts for the PC-9821. Seeing the system's potential, Kojima promised himself he would make a Metal Gear game for the system, though first he ported Policenauts. In contrast to computer games, Sony and other console manufacturers ran quality testing on games for their consoles to check for bugs and rate game content. When Policenauts was being evaluated, Shuhei Yoshida of Sony Computer Entertainment told Kojima they were discussing the extent of breast jiggling in the game. This version was re-issued on August 7, 2003, through Konami's online store, and it was re-released digitally on PlayStation Store on May 14, 2008.