Policenauts - On this day

Before "A HIDEO KOJIMA GAME" became synonymous with the Metal Gear series, two games of the then young Kojima could be played on the PlayStation in 1996. These were the adventures of Snatcher and Policenauts, the latter of which came out first, on this day exactly 26 years ago. Policenauts was originally released back in 1994 for NEC PC-9821, and then a year later for 3DO. However, he found his greatest fame on the PlayStation.

It was a point & click adventure from a first-person perspective. She played the role of Jonathan Ingram, an astronaut with police training who searches for the missing husband of his ex-wife in "Old Los Angeles". That's how it is when you're soft-hearted. His partner Ed Brown helps him in that search. The duo is irresistibly reminiscent of Riggs and Murtaugh from the film series Lethal Weapon (Deadly Weapon), which is no coincidence because Kojima was already showing his fascination with the film's media.

In addition to references to numerous films, Policenauts also had several interesting links to the Metal Gear series. Meryl Silverburgh, whose character was later taken over for Metal Gear Solid, appeared in the game. There was also a special unit in the Policenauts universe called Foxhound, just like in Metal Gear. The connection was two-way, and Kojima also referred to Policenauts in Metal Gear Solid, and the introductory melody for the game should also sound familiar.

When Policenauts came out back in 1994, it was one of the first games in which almost all the text (dialogue) was sounded. At the time, this was not yet standard practice, so Policenauts was considered a new technological achievement. It had its price - the game came on two CDs in the PlayStation version.

Unfortunately for us, the PlayStation version has never been translated from Japanese. It wasn’t until 2016 that we got an unofficial translation of this game, but in a version for the Sega Saturn console.