Policenauts

“That was when I came up with the idea for Policenauts, and I once again realized, as I had for a long time already, that things I want to do with games are best expressed in the adventure genre.”

“what will happen if humans go into space?, or what will be the influence of living in space on the human body and human relationships?”

“In other words, I'm trying to create a game that will have a small but positive affect on players' actual lives. I know it sounds a little dramatic, but that's what I've been thinking about for a long time now.”

“First was the release of the movie Rising Sun and the outburst of "japan bashing" that it caused, and second was the public debate over organ transplantation and problems associated with people who had suffered brain death injuries.”

“I do like movies, but I wasn't trying to use the format of games as a vehicle for movies or anything. Rather, I feel that what the game industry lacks right now is the quality of lighting, acting, and direction that you find in movies.”

“So yeah, I didn't include the subtitles so it would look more like a movie. As a director, there's lots of scenes where I'd rather not have subtitles, but in the end I will choose what makes players happy, of course.”

“Gun games like Lethal Enforcers are really fun, but they don't really evoke much empathy from the player. I mean, enemies just come out of nowhere, then they die in one shot, ok bye bye!”

“even in normal conversations, the protagonist should have his gun at the ready, finger on the trigger. He must be cautious about not mistakenly firing his gun and killing an innocent person—yet at the same time, if he's too slow in deliberating he risks being killed himself.”

“Up to now—in Policenauts, for example, I used to give the designers very specific instructions [...] but this game was different.”

“not being able to program, I had a very hard time making Metal Gear. As a planner you write what you want in the planning documents, and convey your image as best you can, but ultimately it comes down to the programmers' sensibilities.”

“after Policenauts I came to the conclusion that controlling everything myself wasn't necessarily a good thing. Because if everything has to ultimately pass through me, then my abilities—and limitations—become a bottleneck.”

“More than imitating movies directly, I would say it's that I try to recreate scenes in a cinematic way.”

The official biographical profile Konami published on its blog presented Kojima, besides as creator of Metal Gear, Snatcher, Policenauts and Metal Gear Solid, as one of the video game industry’s leading film buffs and noted that he also worked as a commentator and wrote film reviews.

“So, after the second Metal Gear launched, I developed my own scripting engine and decided to work on adventure games so that I could have complete control over when the animation played or when the music triggered.”

“Policenauts also had its own share of naming issues. The game was originally known as "Beyond," reflecting the theme of the story. Konami could not trademark this name, so they went with Policenauts instead.”

“He tried to explain the meaning over and over again via the phone, but was frustrated with his inability to get through.”

“Personally I love adventure games, and I'd love to see other chapters in the Snatcher or Policenaut series. But from a business perspective it's pretty hard to make that work. I think it's my job to push forward, so I don't think I could make it.”

“I came to Tokyo in 1996, not too long after going through the Kobe earthquake. At that time, I was making a game called Policenauts, and when we were working on the Sega Saturn version, Mr. Mamoru Oshii and I met and had our first conversation.”

“So, we could put audio on there, and now games could talk. No one had made anything with CD-ROMs yet.”

“Personally, I thought that Snatcher was not a success.”

“So this is why I started going to dinners with cast members. […] But this kind of work style of mine started from here.”

“With Policenauts, I made almost everything on my own. So it's really my blood, sweat and tears.”

“Yeah, well, Kayumi-san is like a god to me.”

“We made the CG based off of Otsuka-san and Ginga-san's voices.”

Kojima’s first games as a director were for MSX and computers: Metal Gear (1987), his directorial debut, with which he established the stealth game genre; Snatcher (1988), a graphic adventure with a cinematic presentation inspired by films like Blade Runner; Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990); and Policenauts (1994), another graphic adventure that he designed, wrote and directed.

Kojima created and directed the video games Metal Gear (1987), Snatcher (1988), Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990), Policenauts (1994), Metal Gear Solid (1998), Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001), Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004), Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008), Peace Walker (2010), Metal Gear Solid V (2014–2015), P.T. (2014), Death Stranding (2019) and Death Stranding 2 (2025); he has OD and Physint in development. He has also produced or supervised other video games such as Zone of the Enders, the Boktai series, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Metal Gear Rising.

In a text written for Konami's website, Kojima described Policenauts as his most difficult birth: it took four years from planning to the first commercialization and six years in total including later conversions. During that time his department changed three times, and the organization, his position and his work environment changed repeatedly, while the world moved — the Berlin Wall disappeared and the Cold War structure collapsed — and they were also struck by a large, unexpected earthquake.

Kojima wrote that during those six turbulent years he kept creating Policenauts as if possessed, and that although the project many times came close to running aground, curiously he never gave up even once; he added that even today he does not really understand how he could concentrate for so long on a single imaginary world.

Kojima wrote that at that time he devoted himself solely to finishing the work, living each day dreaming only of completing Policenauts, and that it was a luxurious period spent purely as a creator; he added that later, once in his role as an executive and producer, his possibilities to create expanded, but he would never again be able to immerse himself for years in a single work as he did then, and that Policenauts can be considered the last work in which he was able to continue producing while looking only at the act of creating.

Kojima wrote that on Policenauts he did almost everything himself — game design, a massive amount of dialogue, the adventure scripts written in simplified language, the storyboards, hit detection, flag management and even the image and sound calls — and that if Metal Gear Solid, made by a team of 100 people, is a Hollywood commercial film, Policenauts is closer to an independent film: in every sense his own colour shows.

Kojima wrote that Policenauts was also a meeting place: thanks to that magnetic field he met Shinkawa and the rest of the core staff of what would later become his studio, and many people inside and outside the company who still support him; he concluded it is a road that connects to the present and a past he can no longer return to, but that work still shines with a strong light.