Star Road

Hideo Kojima has worked on dozens of games, with credits like Director, Producer, Game Designer, and Writer. For the first thirty years of his career, when those all happened on the same game, it would be about one of two things: cyberpunk investigators or Metal Gear. But while the Metal Gear series stretches past twenty games, there are only two cyberpunk releases from Kojima: Snatcher and Policenauts.

Both Snatcher and Policenauts had prolonged release schedules of multiple versions on numerous consoles and PC’s. Snatcher was first released in 1988 on PC-88 then MSX2 in Japan, then saw a Japanese PC-Engine release in 1992. The Sega CD port, the only version translated to English, was released in the USA in January 1995, followed by the Playstation version which was released in Japan in February 1996 and finally, a Sega Saturn release in March 1996.

While Policenauts was first released on NEC PC-98 in 1994 and was followed by a 3DO release in 1995, the Playstation version actually came out in Japan just a few weeks before the Playstation version of Snatcher, in January 1996. And for the sake of completeness, I should mention the Saturn finally got a port in September 1996.

This article is about the Playstation version of Policenauts, which received an excellent fan translation in 2009. There’s a full walkthrough by the programmer of the ROM hack over on the Let’s Play Archive that also features some “Kojima’s Comments” and “Tales of ROMhacking” bonus content, so that’s worth checking out for a deep dive into this game, or if you just get stuck somewhere.

In Snatcher, released one year after the original Metal Gear, you have a small robotic companion named Metal Gear Mk.II.

And the club in the game is known as Outer Heaven, which was (long story short) Big Boss’ fortified state/private military company in the first Metal Gear and has featured in every Metal Gear game since.

FOXHOUND, the special forces group formed by Big Boss, was also featured in the first Metal Gear. But Metal Gear Solid, first released in Japan in September 1998, is actually Meryl’s second appearance: the first was right here in Policenauts! Nowadays it seems like a comical re-use of a Kojima character, but before 1998 this would have been the first time anyone had seen Meryl.

Playing anything by Kojima makes it clear that he spends a lot of time thinking about the future. The character Karen Hojo is a newscaster on BBC News, and they’re apparently using what we would now call an “AI” version of herself to deliver the news. This would have seen like far-fetched science fiction until recently; now it seems like the next logical evolution of newscasting to have an AI character with AI-generated voices deliver the news instead of having to pay a human to do it.

Of course, this wasn’t a very difficult one to predict.

One thing you have to keep in mind with Policenauts, like any other cultural artifact, is where and when it was made. The main character, Jonathan Ingram, is the classic vision of a horndog male. 30 years ago in Japan this was not surprising or offensive. In fact, it was celebrated; supposedly the Saturn version has more opportunities to use the “Touch” command on women, as well as extended breast-bouncing animation for when you do.

I actually just beat Snatcher for the first time the other day, so I didn’t get this reference on my first playthrough of Policenauts, which I finished a few months ago. Here, you talk to a guy in the hospital called Napoleon who calls our main character “Gillian”. In Snatcher, you play as Gillian Seed, and the character Napoleon is a Chinese man who acts as your informer. SNOW-9 is a pollen-like chemical weapon used by the Snatchers; one of the main themes of the game is how Napolen keeps sneezing because he is allergic to SNOW-9.

Sometimes I wish I could flip over and see what the Japanese phrase was in some of these cases. This is where it gets tricky for a translator, where you have to interpret some weird slang without losing the impact.

Thankfully though, this game presents two sides to the coin: usually with Jonathan laying it on thick, and the female target rebuffing him. On another Kojima note: Tokugawa Industries was also reused for Metal Gear Solid 2.

You know when you see an “accidental” up-skirt shot in an anime? Or when you see a close-up of feet in a Tarantino movie? Well there’s nothing accidental about that; they’re intentional manifestations of their creator.

Which has to mean that at some point Kojima definitely fantasized about a zero gravity party with scantily-clad hosts floating around.

One of the tricks you often see in video games is that the characters just say what’s on their mind, which can be sometimes obvious or just weird for a person to say. In this case, the house was supposed to evoke feelings of San Francisco, so they just had the main character say that.

As I mentioned already, I do believe the English translation is quite good–especially for fan work–but this is an aspect they just missed. These bags play an important role in the story, but their name is a pun that isn’t conveyed at all in the English translation.

I’m no bag expert by a long shot, but even I see the sort of style they are parodying with this. However, in addition to the visual cue, the name is also a pun.

The characters in the game refer to the bag as an “eru esu” (エルエス), which was translated as “Elles”, a surname that sounds like “Ellis”.

But in the Japanese pronunciation of the Latin alphabet, L is “eru” and S is “esu”. So the bag brand is actually “LS”, which is a parody of “LV”, referring to Louis Vuitton. Just a small detail, but this isn’t the last time we’ll see these bags.

(Side note: if the brand name was “Elles”, it would be pronounced as “eru” (エル) if they were using the French pronunciation of elles that sounds like the letter “L” in English, and it would be “erresu” (エッレス) or “eruzu” (エルズ) if Elles was pronounced like “Ellis” or “L’s”.)

More thirsty Kojima. I don’t really understand why a family would pick this pose to display their teenage daughter in the living room of their house, but I guess I’m not really mad about it either.

Wow, I didn’t know that Karen’s family was related to Princess Zelda.

Can’t disagree with that sentiment. Using the game’s instruction manual, you have to solve this incredibly obtuse puzzle using a collection of family crests. This is one of most painfully awkward parts of the game; it was probably a hassle 30 years ago, and it hasn’t gotten better with age. But it does show that Kojima had fourth-wall breaking ideas well before you had to find Meryl’s codec frequency by looking at the back of the game case.

There’s a shooting mini-game at the police station, and Meryl says that if you get over a certain score, you can touch her boobs. Which means you can click “Touch” and get like a three frame animation of her breasts going up and down, accompanied by a funny sound. In a very Japanese way, this game is as restrained as it is wild.

(also note that is the exact same background graphic we saw visiting the same place at the beginning of the game. As far as the game’s flaws go, I would place the repetition and lack of variety of the of backgrounds as one of the biggest).

Every once in a while, you do get some badass animated scenes, but unfortunately they don’t take up the full screen.

Unfortunately, while the 3DO and Saturn versions have 24 fps animated sequences. the Playstation version got lower-quality FMV’s that only run at 15 fps.

This is one of the areas where I think a remake could improve on the experience. This dramatic scene plays out and the most animation you get is Chris’ lips moving. It definitely takes a strong sense of imagination to get sucked into this game.

Argh! Honestly, the only reason this bothers me is because the pun was missed. But that happens all the time with game translations, and in this case it doesn’t affect anything in any meaningful way. So even though I’m harping on it a bit, I have to admit that it’s really not a big deal.

The previous puzzle, where you have to find which bag has the bomb, is a bit tedious. But despite Jonathan’s comment, I thought the bomb defusing scenario was pretty cool.

I love this kind of thing; one character is teaching a phrase to another character, which doubles as a learning moment for the player.

It’s the moon!

Why do they need to wear space suits indoors? And how can Jonathan and Ed hear each other if they are both wearing sealed suits?

This is a point and click game; you move the cursor and click on things. Quite literally, if you want: this game supports the Playstation mouse. In this scene, if you click on the window area, you get two options: Look and Break.

If you click on Break, you get admonished by Ed. It’s just a small thing, but little small stuff like this adds up to create a really interesting gaming experience.

Ah yes, the classic struggle for drugs and organs.

You even have the option to grope Karen in the hospital…sheesh.

After looking at Marc’s drawing, you have to pick the perpetrator in the spacesuit out of a lineup. Detailed artwork like this is another reason this game deserves a remaster.

You get some great dialog for picking the wrong answer. Meryl gives you some exasperated answers if you pick a dead person, or her.

Possibly the only time this phrase has ever been written.

Interesting idea. I guess it’s easier than strapping them down.

Does this scene remind you of anything? As soon as this popped up, I immediately thought of “The Blue Album” by The Beatles, which a greatest hits album from 1973 that covered their hits from 1967 to 1970, and was officially called, rather unimaginatively, 1967-1970.

okay okay, let’s get back on topic.

Thanks, Meryl.

And on a very 90’s style note, it ends with a bit of advice.

And a lesson.

Despite some rocky moments, I loved this game. Point-and-click adventures feel extremely dated, but for me that gameplay experience is part of the fun nostalgic journey into the past.

Overall, it was a lot of really interesting dialog from appealing characters that drove a pretty trippy story: just what you would expect from Hideo Kojima. If anything, it left me wanting more: more action, more violence, more sex, more visuals, more animation. Seeing the progression from Snatcher to Policenauts makes me really disappointed that we’ve never gotten another cyberpunk game from the great designer.

I would love to see modern remasters of Snatcher and Policenauts that simply update the visuals to high definition, but even better, I think both of those games could easily be remade in a modern style like Yakuza or Persona. Judging by Kojima’s projects in the past few decade since his split with Konami, I don’t really see that as a likely outcome, but a man can dream.