film

“Act 1 and Act 2 are interactive scenarios, but Act 3 is different: a tragedy one cannot change–fate.”

“Everyone has had that experience with a book, movie, or music and the like, where we secretly say to ourselves afterward: "I'm glad to have been alive and experienced this." [...] With Snatcher, I wanted to prove to myself that the new medium of games could do this too.”

“my concept for Snatcher was not to make a game with a broad and shallow appeal that anyone, "from children to adults!" could enjoy. The concept was different: this game would appeal to, and remain etched in, the heart of a very specific kind of person.”

“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.”

“the essence of that fear may be closer to Clock Tower 2 than Resident Evil, I think. After vision, the second-most important kind of tension I wanted to create was audio.”

“You've got to have an entertaining side, like a Hollywood action movie. It's got to be fun as a game, and the intrigue of the world should gradually pull you in more and more, and by the ending credits you should be left with something to think about.”

“human beings, we all carry the burden of our humanity on our shoulders as we go through this life. Game characters haven't really had that much depth though, have they? They're always perfect angels, heroic types. Drama built around such characters rings a bit false to me.”

“In order to make the direction effective, I feel like I may have to add unskippable cutscenes. The story for Metal Gear is very complicated, so I think cutscenes will be necessary. The one thing I want to avoid, though, are those tedious scenes where characters are just blabbering at each other for 4 or 5 minutes.”

“When I talk about "games that are like movies", I don't mean just having a bunch of FMVs. What I mean is a game that draws on the various elements and techniques of film: direction, script, lighting, etc.”

“when the human pilot gets in, that life is being breathed into the mech for the first time. Like, even though it's a weapon, when it moves it feels like a living creature. But when the pilot exits and it's left alone, it looks just like a jeep or tank or some regular vehicle, and once the pilot gets in and is driving it, it looks like a dinosaur.”

“designs that are "dishonest", weird, or that are just meant to be visually stimulating—like female characters with huge busts (laughs)—I don't like those. I wanted characters who, just from looking at their clothing you'd be able to tell what kind of person they were, and what their motivations were.”

“He's the developer of this Metal Gear REX weapon, and I like Japanese animation so I wanted to include a character who goes to anime conventions like Otakon in America. The image in my head was of a heavier guy, someone who's always eating a chocolate bar, but somewhere along the way he turned out as you see here.”

“These games had their own worlds and stories. I felt a certain authorial quality in them.”

“Ever since middle school or thereabouts, for the longest time, I had wanted to make movies.”

“Our generation, raised on manga and western cinema, got used to the sight and idea of guns, but growing up here in Japan, in our actual lives there were no guns or gun violence. Our generation also witnessed the rise of environmental destruction and pollution, and an "end of the world" mentality was planted in our minds.”

“I've heard the American military is using video games as training tools now too, making their soldiers play DOOM. Apparently people are more willing to pull a trigger on the battlefield if they've played these games. Of course, this leads to the impression that "games are training for murderers!"”

“Cinema, on the other hand, has a live quality. There's not much you can do about the weather on a given day, or the interplay of light and shadow at a certain time. And that's what I love about it, the way a cohesive work is stitched together from moment to moment.”

“I'd love to make a game based on one of Kobo Abe's novels though. I've also been thinking about saving up some money and trying to buy the rights to Yojimbo from Toho Cinema.”

“I grew up in the countryside myself, so I used to love the commotion of the city… the rust, the crowded roadsides, the electric wires. I loved all that. But after I turned 30 or so, it started to get a little tiresome…”

“Metal Gear Solid sells more in Europe and America than Japan. I was unapologetic about making something Japanese in taste, but amazingly it was received with more passion and enthusiasm by people overseas.”

“With games today, the characters are like dolls or puppets, so you can't really get "performances" out of them. You can animate them, and there's the voice actors, but that's it. You can't really get anything subtle. I'd love to be able to convey emotions like that but it's just not possible yet.”

“With game consoles now being able to play DVDs, I actually feel like there will be a return to film. Kids that have only known games up to now will be able to buy DVDs and realize how interesting that world is—maybe more interesting to them.”

“My generation really took a lot from the cinema, and much of that remains an unconscious influence on what we make today. I like to call it our "cinema DNA."”

“I don't mean it in the cinematic sense per se: game direction is more about creating situations that draw players in emotionally, and about creating atmosphere.”

“We talked movies on that staircase for hours. You said you didn't mind waiting if it was a movie you really wanted to see. I guessed then, that here's a guy with the same DNA as me.”

“One thing I don't like about the game industry right now, is the clumsy addition of CG movies, without any sense of cinema. To the trained eye, it looks so amateurish.”

“So we game creators are not "artists". [...] the interactive experience of the user comes first. Games are also tools—something to be used. They don't gain acceptance until they are used; artistic self-indulgence won't do. [...] it's important to realize that a game isn't a painting. No one wants a knife that won't cut, right?”

“From the beginning, I've always been very influenced by foreign films, books, and music. Having consumed all that media, and believing I've grown as a person myself, to see Metal Gear Solid praised by people overseas, it felt like I'd repaid that debt.”

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

According to the Newsweek profile of him in 2001, Kojima wrote in middle school five 600-page science-fiction novels.

According to Newsweek, Kojima got into filmmaking when a friend brought a Super 8 camera to school, and he charged neighborhood kids 50 yen each to see his movies.

“I thought I would be like Sylvester Stallone with 'Rocky'. I would write something great and make it into a movie myself.”

“We use wind, rain, steam and other effects to make the players feel as though they're really there. It may look like a film, but it doesn't play like a film--it's more of an event.”

“In my generation, we didn't have good role models; no one taught us anything. [...] That's why we ended up learning a lot from movies and manga. For the current generation, I think games are fulfilling a similar role. [...] People tell me all the time that my games are too "preachy", but I don't like games that have nothing to teach. (laughs)”

“I would like to go. Not to Mars, but to the surface of the moon. Just getting out of Earth's orbit, and seeing our Earth from up there… I could die happy. Seriously, I wouldn't care if I couldn't come back.”

“There was a period, before my Father died, where I thought I'd become an artist, but my Father died very suddenly when I was 13. My family was full of artists, you see, and they hadn't been able to make a living off of it.”

“I've said over the years in interviews throughout the world, "Just like the human body is 70% water, I'm 70% film". While this is a figure of speech, there is some truth to it. I learned, or rather was taught, much from film, including things I didn't learn in school or from my parents.”

“It resonated with me, given the loneliness that troubled me in my younger days, which is why it has a very special place in my heart. After I saw it I bought a jacket and a pair of boots to copy Robert De Niro. Needless to say, I did not get a mohawk.”

“This was the first film I went to see at a movie theater by myself, at the OS Theater in Osaka. I have a lot of memories of this film.”

“It instantly made me a fan of Diane Lane. There was a time when I would watch its ending every morning.”

Taxi Driver did not teach Kojima to defeat his loneliness but to live with it, because it showed him that someone else could feel the same way. Decades later he believed that that emotional sickness had vanished around the birth of his first child and when he began making video games: upon realizing his works connected him with faceless, nameless players around the world, the loneliness fell away definitively.

Every time Kojima got into a taxi, he looked at the driver’s name on their ID as if somewhere he were still searching for Travis Bickle. He never found that name in real life, but he wished that someday he could sit in the rear seat and thank Travis Bickle because, unlike the movie’s rescue of fourteen-year-old Iris, Travis had pulled Kojima out of his isolation.

At 43, Kojima ranked his three vital cultural nutrients as movies, music, and novels. His father loved movies, so Kojima was made to absorb films from the time he began forming memories, and music came along with those viewings; by contrast, although the family home was filled with books and his parents placed children's classics on his desk to tempt him, he still did not read even by the end of elementary school.

In 1974 Kojima attended a tutoring school in another city more for the adventure of the commute than for studying. One rainy day he took shelter in a bookstore in Ikeda, and the large cover of the novelization Columbo: Publish or Perish, which contained black-and-white photographs inside, led him to buy with his allowance the first book he had chosen out of his own interest. He used each photograph, appearing about every twenty pages, like a breath of air and read all 261 pages in one sitting.

In his blog entry of July 3, 2007, in a fixed section titled «las películas que ha visto últimamente el director Kojima», Kojima lists three films: Transformers, directed by Michael Bay and produced by Steven Spielberg; Soy un cyborg, directed by Park Chan-wook; and La jungla 4.0, directed by Len Wiseman.

In Kojima's blog entry dated July 3, 2007, the DVD section lists a copy of Soy un cyborg signed by its director Park Chan-wook.

In his blog entry of July 3, 2007, Kojima listed in the books section Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky, the Kobunsha edition.

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.

Kojima saw his first foreign movie at age three, not in a theater but via the analog TV signal in his tatami‑matted living room thanks to Sunday Foreign Movie Theatre; he identified his first Japanese movies as the double feature Gamera vs. Barugon and Daimajin. Those Western film broadcasts came before home video, satellite, and cable.

With no VCR to pause the broadcast, Kojima, his brother and his father finished dinner and their baths before the nine o’clock showing, watched attentively without popcorn or candy, and sprinted during the commercials to be the first to get to the bathroom, sometimes following prearranged turns. Kojima did not know that Nagaharu Yodogawa’s commentaries were prerecorded and imagined the presenter was also waiting for the commercial break to go and stand at the toilet.

Kojima credited much of his film education to commentators like Nagaharu Yodogawa: their explanations made difficult or foreign films digestible, and their reassuring presence felt as if they were watching the films alongside the child. He distinguished commentators from critics with a culinary metaphor — commentators explain the ingredients and the chef before you eat, rather than dictating the taste — and concluded that, after that figure disappeared, he wanted to become an evangelist for different eras and cultures.

Having little contact with large real-life families, Kojima looked for models through television. As a child he was struck by the constant affection and kisses of the married couple in Bewitched and wanted a family like theirs; after losing his father, he admired Charles Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie—loving, dignified, hardworking, and protective even in poverty—and moved from wishing for a father like that to wanting to become that kind of father.

In 2001 Kojima went on a whim with his young son to see Crayon Shin-Chan: The Fierceness That Invites the Storm! The Adult Empire Strikes Back and became hooked on the Nohara family from Shin Chan, whose ability to band together in a crisis struck him as a new model of Japanese family. After the birth of his second son his own family grew from three to four, but he admitted he was still not the ideal father: he might have reached the level of the workaholic Hiroshi, while Charles Ingalls remained beyond his reach; he wanted his children to be inspired by their real-life family rather than by television idols.

Kojima placed his first love at age four in Anne Yuri, the only female member of the Ultra Guard in Ultraseven. A promotional photograph—which was not an actual scene from the episode—showed her brushing her hair unaware of an alien standing behind her; Kojima wanted to warn her, but also blushed and felt heat without understanding why. In the series finale he cried more at the thought of never seeing Anne again than at the hero’s departure or the end of the show.

Kojima bought the 2005 DVD release of Bohachi Bushido but could not finish it because seeing Yuriko Hishimi naked conflicted with the image of Anne he had built up from his childhood crush. A 1997 book, A Letter to Anne, finally allowed him to look at nude photographs and accept that the character Anne and the actress Yuriko Hishimi were part of the same first love; from that point on he began to say this openly in interviews.

Upon learning that Yuriko Hishimi would attend the premiere of a Mamoru Oshii film, Kojima wrote to Kenji Kamiyama pleading that he introduce him to her. Onstage at the premiere, Oshii confessed through a megaphone his own youthful love for Anne, and Kojima felt relieved, as if Oshii were speaking for him; although Kojima did not get to speak with Hishimi backstage, after forty years he saw his first love as a real woman, and at age forty-four he wrote the essay as the love letter he should have mailed forty years earlier.

Kojima placed Blade Runner among his top ten favorite films and said that if he had not encountered it he would not be who he is today. He watched it in 1982, during his first year of college, alone in a conspicuously empty auditorium in Umeda; the film flattened him not so much for its plot as for the sensation of a vital future in which technology, fashion, billboards, accessories and cultures from different times and countries coexisted in harmony. He wanted to live in that city.

For Blade Runner’s 25th anniversary, Kojima made a personal festival: he bought the five‑DVD set, a three‑CD anniversary soundtrack, a making‑of book, and reread the novel. Although immersed in Metal Gear Solid 4, he made time to see the Final Cut; he asked for one ticket for “BlaRun” and the ticket seller did not understand the nickname. After an unusually silent exit from the screening, he found other viewers gathered in the lobby before the display photos, talking enthusiastically; sharing the film in a theater with strangers who loved it was, for him, the true Final Cut.

After leaving that screening into the warm rain of Shinjuku, Kojima saw skyscrapers and neon signs in various languages, heard sirens and foreign voices, and for a moment felt he was in the Los Angeles of 2019 imagined by Philip K. Dick and Ridley Scott. He said he smelled Blade Runner in the air, touched it in the city, and felt it on his skin and in the warmth of a puddle.

Kojima's father, who had survived the Great Tokyo Air Raid and as a boy had wanted to join the navy, drank and built model ships; the family's bathroom "dry dock" held many wrecked Yamato models. Seeing the title on the TV listings, he forced Hideo to watch the premiere broadcast of Space Battleship Yamato on October 6, 1974, but the boy found it boring and from the following week secretly switched the channel to Army of the Apes; only the reruns shown at dinnertime later turned him into a fan.

The first screening of the Yamato movie in Tokyo fell on August 7, 1977, the day of Kojima’s father’s funeral. While handling related paperwork in Umeda with his mother, Kojima bought a presale movie ticket that included a poster and put up Starsha’s image on his bedroom wall. On the day Yamato opened in Kansai he took the first train, waited for hours in the sun in a very long line, and watched probably the third showing in a packed, fetid auditorium. There, for the first time since his father’s death, he was able to process the loss of the man who loved the Yamato.

Kojima said he continued to pursue dreams and roman —aspirations for heroism, adventure and lofty ideals— even though they are not attainable objects, because the goal keeps a person alive. When he was about to lose them or give up, he would sing the verse about the scarlet scarf from Yamato’s ending song; then he imagined the ship sailing into the black sea of space and regained courage.

Kojima described his college years as a dark period in which he could not let go of his dream of making films nor find his break, and had no one to turn to for advice or to talk to. He chose to converse through his work with two young people who had died by suicide, Ian Curtis and the writer Etsuko Takano, rather than with living people who did not understand him; he called Joy Division his silent confidant and said they helped him hang on to life and saved his life.

The premiere of Control turned the city, for Kojima, into a Joy Division festival. He bought the soundtrack and Paul Smith T-shirts, several photobooks, remastered reissues, compilations and rarities; thanks to contacts at Konami’s London branch he also secured two UK-exclusive editions. Seeing posters, shops and cinemas full of the lost band felt like a day he had never imagined, and he expressed the desire to visit Ian Curtis’s grave someday.

“But it's like when Hayao Miyazaki says he is not going to do more, and then always ends up doing it. I think I am kind of in a similar situation; I have ideas other than Metal Gear, and I want to go on to make other new games, but for political, business or technology reasons, there is always a time when I have to return.”

“if I make multiple storylines and allow the users to select which story, this might really sacrifice the deep emotion the user might feel; when there's a concrete storyline, and you kind of go along that rail, you feel the destiny of the story, which at the end, makes you feel more moved.”

Kojima called 2001: A Space Odyssey his all-time number-one favorite movie and said it was the only human-made work he would choose as perfect if he had to name one. For years he consciously avoided speaking publicly about the film because it was so immense and personal to him; he regarded living without knowing it as like closing the door to one’s own evolution and future.

Kojima first discovered 2001 in 1978, in his third year of junior high, when he bought a mook—purchased for its Star Wars coverage—that also included full-color images, diagrams and interviews about Kubrick’s film. As a reader of hard SF who dreamed of becoming an astronaut, he felt more drawn to 2001 than to space-opera. While waiting for a rerelease he read Arthur C. Clarke’s novel and listened to a radio-play adaptation, and he was fortunate to see the film for the first time in Cinerama in Osaka. From then on he attended every subsequent rerelease on the big screen.

Although he was Kojima’s biggest fan, he refused for years to buy 2001 on VHS, LaserDisc or DVD, believing that a work of such gigantic scale should not be paused, fast-forwarded or rewound for personal convenience. He yielded to a two-disc special edition, watched the making-of and listened to the audio commentary, and regretted it when he received explanations and interpretations from the creators; he said he did not need a talking monolith and left the DVD case closed ever since.

As a teenager, Kojima used science-fiction years—1984, 1997 and finally 2001—as future milestones that reality turned into the past. When 2001 arrived he discovered the film still belonged to the future and said his internal clock would remain stopped there until the world reached its perfection and creators managed to surpass it; for him the film was the monolith placed in the path by a god named Kubrick.

“I think in the near future, it will be increasingly like the Hollywood model - there might be a person who will fund, and a person who is the creator.”

“I saw the future. If it weren't for Miyamoto-san I wouldn't be where I am.”

“Inside the park you can't separate yourself from the fantasy. At Disneyland you never go 'backstage'—even when you're in the bathroom.”

“Making a game is very similar to making a movie. It would be ideal if I could spend two years on a game and then the next two on a movie.”

“We're both pretty close to each other in that the movie business has been near and dear to our hearts. The only difference is that he's been able to keep making adventures this whole time.”

“Snatcher was pretty much the same way; there's a ton of references in the game that sort of skirt copyright laws. I never worried about that back then, because doing what I liked in games -- an interactive form of media -- was in itself a new thing for me.”

“Ourselves, we're like the people who made their own films before making it big in Hollywood. I think we've got the skills we need to make anything we want, anywhere we want, on any budget we want. That's where my pride, or my confidence, comes from.”

Kojima’s first memory associated with an elevator is not an actual ride but a black-and-white image: when he was in preschool his father made him watch Elevator to the Gallows on television. Because there were few high-rises then and he may not yet have ridden in an elevator, the film’s immorality and mystery lodged more strongly in him than any physical memory of the device.

After returning to Japan following the freight-elevator incident, Kojima bought the DVD of Elevator to the Gallows and watched it for the first time in about forty years. The film proved different from his childhood impressions: he felt sympathy for Jeanne Moreau and realized it was not film noir to him but a hymn to love. He concluded that he had been trapped inside that movie for decades and that the real elevator accident had set in motion again the elevator that had long stood still in his heart.

Kojima encountered North Face by chance in 2010 when he saw its trailer at an arthouse theater in Ginza. He said the film left a stronger impression on him than any other, praised its restrained camerawork, CG, and direction, and wrote that its documentary blend of humanity, nature, drama, and politics pierced his heart like a climbing piton.

Kojima admired that North Face shifted genres like mountain weather: what first appears to be a war movie becomes a mountaineering film, then a satire of the press, and finally a disaster movie. He emphasized a material contrast: the climbers quit the alpine infantry, assemble homemade equipment and bicycle the entire 700 kilometers because they could not afford train tickets, while the journalists arrive as tourists, dine in formal wear in an opulent heated hotel and watch through telescopes those who sleep in a tent and sip barley soup amid the storm.

North Face made Kojima want to look away and run because of the physical weight of the tragedy, but he felt he had to keep watching because it had really happened. Still, he saw that the film prepared a traverse beyond the disaster: the account of a deadly ascent ultimately became a work about love and about the person one promises to return to.

Kojima recalled that, after he had stopped reading science fiction, he one day found Inherit the Stars in a bookstore and felt reunited with the science fiction of his youth. In the same essay he said the release of Moon in spring 2010 gave him a sense of déjà vu and prompted him to take James P. Hogan's novel down from his library.

Kojima said that as a child he did not read and that he rejected reading without having tried it. In fifth grade he picked up Murder on the Orient Express because there was a film adaptation and he only wanted to see what the book was like; the novel struck him, sparked his curiosity, and led him to read almost all the Agatha Christie he could find before reaching middle school.

Kojima placed the start of his deliberate narrative writing in junior high, when a teacher assigned converting a few lines of kanbun into modern Japanese and expanding them into a story. He reinterpreted those lines into roughly ten pages, received special praise from the teacher in front of the class, and shifted from merely documenting plots like movie synopses to trying to write real narratives.

As a fan of Shibumi, Kojima opened Satori, the prequel written by Don Winslow, with unease. The first two pages —a maple leaf and the recollection of killing a father-figure— dispelled his doubts; he described the prose as so visual that an opera-house assassination scene played in his mind with image and sound, like a storyboard ready to be filmed.

Kojima recommended Darkness, Take My Hand as his choice among the six Kenzie & Gennaro novels and regarded it as a work of exceptional caliber. He said that after reading it for the first time he investigated buying the rights to adapt it into a film himself, and that in his view none of the subsequent installments surpassed Darkness.

“only oddball in my class that wanted to make movies or novels”

Kojima said he had a particular fondness for true escape and survival stories and recalled rewatching The Great Escape and Papillon in theaters, as well as seeing 127 Hours. He came to Hyoryu because novelist Naoki Hyakuta had read Kojima’s essay on Papillon and recommended Hyoryu and Hagoku (Prison Break).

Kojima explained the realism of ’Salem’s Lot as arising from an almost eccentric accumulation of details about the town, enough for the reader to accept vampires without any explanation. He also praised two montage devices: a whole day narrated by jumping between the town’s inhabitants, and a final confrontation structured as hours advancing toward sunset—a countdown that made him sweat, hold his breath, and keep turning the pages.

Kojima said he owns every book in the I Spy series and specifically recommended I Spy 7: Treasure Hunt and Can You See What I See? Treasure Ship. He noted that the dioramas in Treasure Ship took nine months to stage and highlighted a sequence in which each image opens the shot relative to the previous one; that filmlike technique was one reason he considered it his favorite.

“It was during that time that my parents introduced a family tradition: every night we would all watch a film together. I wasn't allowed to go to bed till the film had finished: the opposite of how it is for most children.”

In high school, using a friend’s 8 mm camera, Kojima convinced his classmates to shoot zombie shorts. For the school cultural festival he made a zombie film and sold tickets for about 50p with the idea of raising money to buy more films to watch, but he did not make enough to buy even one. On another occasion he attempted to shoot a Robinson Crusoe–style island survival story, but the group wasted the trip bathing and ultimately turned the project into another zombie movie.

“We had so much more budget so we were able to go to Hollywood and hire a composer.”

“"Silent Hill" is in closed room setting and doesn't require full action so that we can focus on the graphic quality. Enemy doesn't have to be a lot or move fast. It only requires scariness by graphics and presentation. As being a creator making action game in open world, such game is very enviously attractive. Wish someone could create this on FOX engine.”

“It would be a scary game if we make Silent Hill game on FOX engine.”

The scene in The Drifting Classroom where the protagonist has his appendix removed without anesthetic stayed so vividly with Kojima that every time he hears the word "appendix" he remembers the surgery and prays he never has to undergo it. He said that scene affected him more than the improvised femoral artery operation in Black Hawk Down.

“Honestly, I'm kind of a scaredy-cat when it comes to horror movies, so I'm not confident I can do it. At the same time, there's a certain type of horror that only people who are scared of can create, so maybe it's something I can do.”

Kojima said he entered high school unable to tell dogs from cats because he had never had either as a pet; not for lack of wanting one, but because his mother suffered from asthma. In his first summer of high school he picked Jennie by Paul Gallico despite not being a cat lover, and he suspected the title might have reminded him of Jaime Sommers from The Bionic Woman.

“Pacific Rim is the ultimate otaku film that all of us had always been waiting for. Who are you, if you are Japanese and won't watch this?”

“It's not only about my political views, but I really like movies. I try to watch a movie a day, if not more, and through movies I learned about so many different political themes I hadn't been interested in and cultural things I hadn't been aware of and economic factors I hadn't thought about.”

“I think that's part of my role, part of my duty, to put in my games what I experience through movies, to explore this philosophy that movies gave me. I want to provide something similar to people through the games I create.”

“In the case of a movie, in the end it's a different character separate from you executing all these actions. But in the game, it depends on you. It depends on your will to execute, to do something, to be violent or not.”

“I know that no one would ever wear a box in war, but I want to change the mood, relieve the stress and tension and control a little bit the feelings of the player by letting them calm down and relax for a second and then continue through the mission.”

While meeting George Miller in Japan during the promotion of Mad Max: Fury Road, Kojima told him that his games are made inheriting various genes from the director, and that if he exists it is because Miller existed.

“This isn't the kind of movie a child can understand though”

“As a child I couldn't understand this. If they can sit down and talk like that, why do they even need to fight in the first place? I thought.”

“I'll do whatever the (expletive) he wants”

“If I'm going through a difficult patch, and I watch a great movie, it reminds me that there are so many creative people out there all over the world pushing hard to accomplish great things. That really motivates me to keep going. So I guess these are the two reasons why I make sure I watch movies every day.”

“Thank you, Lynch-sensei. You gave me courage.”

“It is not directly related to DEATH STRANDING but I wanted to let them know the direction and the world of Lynch.”

Kojima admitted that analyzing past successes can produce a sellable, low-risk product, but he rejected that method because tomorrow always arrives and what was accepted yesterday does not remain the same. He held that past experiences are necessary not to imitate but to connect differently; therefore he reads, watches movies, listens to music, visits museums, and meets people as a practice to learn from history and create the future.

“I first met Hideo when Guillermo del Toro called me and said, 'Hey, there's a guy who's going to call you and wants to do a video game with you. Just say yes.' I said, 'Who is he?' And he said, 'Trust me, just say yes.'”

“I first met Hideo when Guillermo del Toro called me and said, 'Hey, there's a guy who's going to call you and wants to do a video game with you. Just say yes.'”

“In the future, Kojima Productions will start making films. If you can do one thing well, then you can do everything well.”

“I'm very interested in the new format of game that will appear on there and that's what I want to take on.”

“But this game is, to start with, like Guillermo del Toro told me, not a way to break out, but to make something that the fans expect. There are new elements to the game but the basis is something people are used to playing.”

“Travis [Bickle] was the same as me in a way. I'm Japanese; I thought every American guy never even felt solitude. So this was new to me. When I saw Taxi Driver, I was surprised but I empathized. I felt relieved.”

“I knew what the fans wanted. A big game, up-to-date visuals, something that would surprise even the movie people”

At the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, Kojima suggested that prospective game developers watch two films a day.

According to Vulture, Kojima edits his own trailers for his games, a task typically handled by ad agencies.

“Me as an old man going to the theater by myself on this day? I changed my plan to stay in my office working on my next concept.”

“Shocked to know Ennio Morricone has passed away.. RIP. I just bought the OST of "The Legend of 1900". I used his music "Here's To You" sing by Joan Baez for MGS V: Ground Zeroes, the song used in the film "Sacco e Vanzetti".”

Kojima said he tries to watch one film a day and devotes all his non-working time to that; he gets through meals as quickly as possible and spends the rest of his time on film watching and reading, except on weekends when he plays with his children.

“I have been knowing Mr. Oshii for 26 years now. It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen him, partly because of the pandemic, so I really enjoyed today’s recording. This will be broadcasted on the Spotify program “Hideo Kojima presents Brain Structure”. Please look forward to it. So tonight, I re-watch “PATLABOR THE MOVIE” for the first time in 33 years.”

“I really respect Mr. Oshii as a creator, but as a person too. I've known him for 26 years and owe him for a number of things. Thanks to this show, I was able to meet with him again.”

“At one point, Mr. Oshii called me up and said, "I'm with Cameron in America, and we're going to go shoot some guns. Do you want to come with us?" At that time, I couldn't go though, but that's what our relationship has been like for 26 years.”

“I was already involved in the game industry, but at the beginning, I was staying in a boarding house and was watching VHS tapes. That's when I first encountered Mr. Oshii's mystery article file, 538. I was really surprised.”

“That first scene with Motoko and Ghost in the Shell is like one of my favourite movies, Melville Samurai.”

“It's a little presumption of me to make a commentary on it, but things really changed before and after Mr. Oshii's animation style.”

“I like films, but decided to make games, and that's why I think my work is a bit unique.”

“Mr. Oshii remixed it very precisely and I do that with my games too. It's that sort of thing that makes Mr. Oshii really special. He just builds up all the tiny details.”

“I can't just be like, whoops, sorry about last year. That's the scariest part of it all.”

“She's not motivated by money. She doesn't do anything that she doesn't want to do. If that wasn't the case, she wouldn't have worked on my project.”

“Then for episode 1, I'll direct the opening and you'll direct the rest of the story. For episode 2, you'll direct the opening. And I was like, what kind of nonsense is this?”

“I've been wanting to make one, but I don't have any time. I might be able to do just a screenplay.”

“I really wanted to do it all myself, seriously. If I could just make clones of myself, I would.”

“Movies are just one example, but you won't grow with just movies. Please eat food and drink water and also study.”

“But humans are imaginative, and since I'm also a creator, I don't want to hurt other creators' feelings, even if their work isn't entirely good.”

“It's called NOPE, but for me, it was a resounding yes.”

“There also aren't many people who can understand the creator, especially with something like this. Something that they've never seen before.”

“There was a period of time when that was popular too, aliens as the good guys.”

“In NOPE, and also in Death Stranding, when the UFOs get close, electricity goes out.”

“I think many people react in disbelief when asked if aliens exist, but I want them to exist.”

“We follow each other on Twitter, and he seemed to have played my game too. He said, hope you enjoy my movie. So, if you can come on the show as a guest, that would be great.”

“It was my first time meeting him, but I feel like we've known each other since childhood. I think we are going to be good friends.”

“Making games can be hard, and there's a lot that leaves me scratching my head, but your movie gave me energy. It motivated me to work a little harder.”

“Those kind of movies, even after 10 or 20 years, continue to be loved and even when technology changes, it remains inside of you like DNA.”

“So the incredible thing about NOPE is that it's not just a horror movie, but it's made all the people looking down look up. It's epic.”

“They can see themselves from a bird's eye view or from a micro or macro perspective. I think those kind of talented people are meant to be creators.”

“But characters don't just move on their own. You have to find a part of yourself within them. Otherwise, you can't visualize them vividly.”

“Well, in Japan, they sell movie pamphlets at the theatre, and I saw that they had shot it in the daytime. They didn't have the technology to film at night back then.”

“The amazing thing about Spielberg is that in Jaws, or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Jurassic Park, his technique is to show the surprised expressions of the people. He won't show you what they're looking at.”

“Death Stranding was very slow-paced like NOPE, and the people who were able to play past that point really enjoyed the game. There were a lot of challenges though.”

“By the way, I first learned the word albedo from his album, Albedo 0.39. It's a term often used in the CG industry actually.”

“I went to see Blade Runner because I had already read and was a fan of Philip K. Dick's original work, and I was a fan of Ridley Scott from Alien, and then I found out that Vangelis was doing the music.”

“At that time, if you did electronic music, people assumed you were a weirdo.”

“I understand that I'm known as being made up of 70% movies, but in all honesty, I think I'm 70% books.”

“I get sent tons of books from publishers a week before they're released to the public. I'm able to read books that nobody has read before.”

“They're going to make it into a movie starring Ryan Gosling, but I don't think it's possible.”

“And in these dark times, this film gave me courage and laughter and tears from how moved I was. […] I really felt the power of entertainment.”

“In this world that has become so digital, you shine a light on the beauty and instincts of human beings as living creatures.”

“You can convey emotions and tell a story through movement, and that's the power of movies. I think there are people who have forgotten all that.”

“And players can go left or right but I can't control the timeline unlike with movies. That's the hard part. But with that in mind, I would like to try something new.”

“Yes, I do get offers, and I would like to, but I just don't have the time. Say I spend one year doing a movie. What would my staff do for a year? But I am seeking ways to try to make it work.”

“It'll be like RRR and H for Hideo, so RRR HHH or RH RH RH, we should call it RH Games.”

“And in Mr. Rajamouli's films, the main characters always take their clothes off. Same with my games.”

“It's the making of Death Stranding, but it's also a bit like a documentary about me. I'll announce it when we're ready to announce it, so yeah.”

“I gave him a nickname. I call him Refn-chan. I have the best relationship with Refn-chan.”

“But screens at the movie theatre make you feel like you're walking two or three steps into the screen, giving you a realistic simulation experience.”

“Yet one movie over a span of 36 years has been reborn and has succeeded in reconnecting families, generations and family values. I think that's incredible.”

“I think movies and Games are totally different, like 180 degrees different. But I believe that the gap between the two will shrink over time.”

“But what I want to say is, it's not a matter of digital or analog. It's about sensibility.”

“The actress Lindsay Wagner from The Bionic Woman was my favourite actress growing up. So I wanted her in the game. And when I saw Jeff Bridges I thought about doing the same thing with Lindsay. And that's exactly what I did in Death Stranding.”

“This is seriously number one. I knew it from the moment I read it that it was going to be number one.”

“Molly is just a little bit clumsy at life.”

“So I can't read it, but I'm happy just to own it.”

“But then, the distribution company contacted me saying that the movie was going to be released in Japan, and sent me a CD. Even though I already owned the CD.”

“Death Stranding is also based on the idea that we are not alone. Even if you think you're alone, you find other people out there, and from there you have a connection.”

“So people told me to go with Keanu, but I was always for Mads. I made that character for Mads.”

“And so, just in case Death Stranding became my last work, I wanted Lindsay to be a part of it.”

“There are very few actors like that nowadays but I see that potential in Norman which is why I didn't give him any lines.”

“And Norman plays Daryl, a character that doesn't exist in the original story. And in the end, he became the main character.”

“Hideo, what you're making is already a movie. Keep going as you are.”

“It was my first time meeting Nicolas, and yet, from that moment on, after just 20 or 30 minutes of talking, I felt like he was a childhood friend, someone I had known from ages ago.”

“Well, I'm not an actor, so I'm just kind of there for presents. […] I've played the role of an assassin before too.”

“So Morricone, who changed the film music industry, influenced Hans Zimmer, who, in turn, changed the industry himself.”

“So my heroes were actors like Clint Eastwood, Franco Nero, and Lee Van Cleef, and I fell in love with Morricone's music which was used in those films.”

“Personally, I think this is the best one out of all spaghetti western films. People who aren't familiar with any spaghetti westerns should start by watching The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”

“Movies and music existed separately, but he made them into one entity. That's why I want to emulate him and combine film and video games into one.”

“I referenced it a lot in Metal Gear Solid. Snake and Otacon were really similar to Sako and Vanzetti. So I was going to make it so that in the end, since these two become fugitives, they are made to stand trial.”

“Also, the scariest movie in the whole world for me is The Exorcist. I've only ever watched it once.”

“The movie wasn't great but the music sure was. I've collected all his soundtracks.”

“Yes, to put it simply, he gets me. There aren't a lot of people like that out there. We don't have a language barrier.”

“I did scan him. […] Yeah, you'll probably show up getting a shoulder ride. If you see someone on a shoulder, you'll know it's him. Maybe I'll be the one carrying him in the CG.”

“Well, compared to like Clint Eastwood, I might be more stubborn. There are some people who will do 30 takes. James Cameron does over 30. […] Well, I think the first two or three takes are the best ones.”

“And actors can't do exactly the same thing every time, every take. Their expression may change slightly and that little nuance makes me really happy.”

“But it's meaningless if you lose your own colour in the process, so you have to find a place for yourself among the symphony but bring out the Japanese part of yourself too. Like, you can hear a Japanese flute from within the symphony.”

“One of my favourite movies is Mary Shelley. I saw that in theatres, and that did it for me. I knew it right there and then.”

“I make the games as I film the cutscenes, and the staff and I give each other feedback to make sure we keep consistency throughout the game.”

“I also think that, ultimately, this was the first step in proclaiming that games are just like movies, and that they are all entertainment.”

“In my first idea, Chiko was alive but has become a deranged killer. He was supposed to appear as someone violently killing people, kind of like Christopher Walken's character in The Deer Hunter.”

“But I wanted to see a Kikuko version of Lindsay. So I asked you to play the two roles of Amelie and Brigitte.”

“Okay, now you cry [...] I have to get in the mood but in the whole suit.”

“But if you say, "It's visually different from anything that exists", they can't visualize it.”

“I like film directors such as David Lynch and Cronenberg. Keeping things edgy, but still appealing to mass audiences. They're the games I want to create.”

“For me, films are the sun. It's like plant photosynthesis with sunbeams.”

“Things that leave a deep impression on me, like Kubrick, are innovative or new things. They can split opinion. But ultimately, it's precisely these things that stay with you.”

“They were the kind of people that I wanted to work with. ... I wanted to do something with them that probed slightly deeper.”

“Most games look so similar, you can't even tell their title from looking at a scene. The newer it is, the more they fear it.”

“When you are creating things, you need references from other genres.”

“a new form of media”

“[OD] is a game, don't get me wrong, but it's at the same time a movie, but at the same time a new form of media”

“so this collaboration will be really awesome”

“I can say that from the first moment I played Metal Gear Solid 2, I knew I was experiencing the work of an artist whose craft just hits different.”

“The films they are delivering to the world are high in quality and very innovative. I have been attracted to their creations and they have even inspired my own work.”

“There are a lot of "game adaptation films" out there but what we are creating is not just a direct translation of the game. The intention is that our audience will not only be fans of the games, but our film will be for anyone who loves cinema.”

“He is my God, and the SAGA that he tells is my Bible”

Kojima describes the family house in Kawanishi (Hyogo) where he lived from fifth grade: his room and his brother’s were symmetrical, separated by a sliding door, with identical beds facing each other, and when they slept they could hear each other’s breathing and even what they said in their dreams. After dinner, the bath and the living-room TV were finished, the children would shut themselves in their room and turn on the radiocassette; as a result he developed the habit of lying on his bed and listening to the radio.

“I create films and art within the medium of games. This is not a conscious choice, it is simply an inevitable result.”

“Music accounts for 80% of what moves people emotionally. I hope that the songs, whether they are songs that play in moments of solitude or ones that evoke cinematic spectacle, I hope that they will touch your hearts.”

“I'm getting older, and I'd prefer to do it while I'm still young!”

Asked by GQ, Kojima named as his four favorite films 2001: A Space Odyssey, Taxi Driver, Mad Max 2 and High and Low, although he clarified that his top four changes all the time.

“If Scorsese's doing it, I can't criticize Scorsese. He's the second god. The first is George Miller.”

“Every day, if I tweet something that I like, a director or an actor or a musician contacts me. They say, 'I'm a creator because of your games.' But they didn't receive the baton of Hideo Kojima. They received my small fire.”

“When we started working on the song with Hideo, he's like, "Should we have her sing it?" It was like, "Yes, I was dreaming for you to ask for it."”

“When I see movies and get ideas, usually just talking to people, eating or walking, or maybe I'm in a bath, I come up with these ideas. So it's almost like a disease, I call it. Even when I'm talking with my family, in my head, I'm in a totally different world.”

“I don't play games so much. I watch movies, read books, meet people and go to museums, and I'm not copying anything from a game. And there are lot of game creators just watching other games,”

“we've actually never spoken together. [I] don't speak Japanese and Hideo doesn't speak English. So, we communicate through music and images, through emotions rather than words”

Kojima's father worked for a pharmaceutical company and was an obsessive film fan; from Kojima's childhood he showed him a wide range of films and explained them. The family moved to the Kansai region when his father was transferred for work.

While in middle school, Kojima's father suddenly collapsed and died in front of him. For economic reasons he gave up his dream of becoming a novelist or film director, and after graduating from university in 1986 he joined Konami.

At Lucca Comics & Games 2025, Kojima updated his old line about being made of film: he said that of the 70% of films he carries inside, 35% is made up of Italian cinema.

“The book includes a selection from "70% of My Body Is Made of Movies," which was published years ago by Sony Magazines, film critiques I wrote for Bunshun Online after becoming independent, novel afterwords and contributions, a collection of comments from 'Hideo's Mysteries,' travel essays serialized in the Nikkei Sunday edition newspaper, and essays about Kōbō Abe, among others.”

Kojima's debut as a voice actor — his first time voicing a character in an animated film — was in the Japanese dub of Zootopia 2 (Zootrópolis 2), in which he voices Paul Molebrandt, nicknamed the Mole, a minor IT department employee at the Zootopia Police Department; the Japanese release was 5 December 2025. Recalling his participation in Zootopia 2 on KOJI10, Kojima said he was not told which character he would voice until he arrived for the recording.

“I started to go see foreign movies from 5th grade, and always bought the movie pamphlets. I still have all of them.”

“This is the score to "Death Stranding 2" by Woodkid on vinyl. The "Jaws" score by John Williams. ... A single by Koji Tamaki. The Japanese edition of the Last Dinner Party's new album. ... Spandau Ballet is a band from my youth. A CD box set.”

“I admired TAG HEUER because it was worn by Steve McQueen or by 007 ... I bought watches worn by movie actors or popular stars. ... Although a Rolex can save your life from the yakuza, as it was written in a book by Teru Miyamoto. I was tempted to try it, but I stuck with my favorite watch.”

“The first one I bought myself was for "The Towering Inferno." ... he said "Hideo, you don't need it. I've already got one." I didn't want to share it, and it made me angry ... So, I stopped going to the movies with my brother. I went alone and bought the pamphlet by myself.”

“We've been collaborating for a long time. We devised a few pairs that consolidates into one. In the past, we made one where the lenses open to the side. But they were unstable when it was windy. ... The visors that change color from "2001: A Space Odyssey" would be cool but hard to achieve.”

“Saw Captain Marvel.”

“Watched 'Return to Silent Hill' on Amazon Prime”

“This is the PC Launch Trailer for "DEATH STRANDING 2 ON THE BEACH." Once again, I did the structure, editing, sound design, and mix myself. It features a track by WOODKID.”

“I pitched to many people, to the big companies, and also to the up-and-coming companies. All of them said the same thing... They said that I'm crazy, and that they really don't understand the concept — that they will not be able to do it.”

“Currently, I've been buying up a lot of Blu-rays, such as various movies, and CDs too. [...] So, what is happening to video games in 2028, might also happen to movies.”

At the Il Cinema in Piazza festival in Rome, Kojima said he has always thought he wants to die in a movie theater, specifically at the moment just before the film begins, after the trailers and commercials have played.

“I made a cameo appearance in Episode 11 of TBS’s Sunday Theater drama, “VIVANT.” For the role, I took off my glasses, slicked my hair back, got into costume, and gave it my best, but it was decided that I looked “too young” to be the Superintendent General of the Metropolitan Police Department, and that “there are no real-life examples of one with a beard.” So they adjusted my appearance with CGI. See if you can spot me.”

Norman Reedus took a photo of Kojima in the cafeteria on the set of “The Walking Dead.” The photo also appears in Reedus’s photography book; Kojima said he still had some muscle back then.

Kojima was playing Mr. Horii’s remake of the adventure game “The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case The Okhotsk Disappearance” and enjoying the nostalgic game. Time management was important to him, so he was shifting some of the time he spent on movies and reading to games.

Kojima expressed nostalgia for the atmosphere of the Showa era and said he could not resist purchasing Volume 2 of the “Taiyo ni Hoero!” DVD collection. He evoked its streets, signs, fashion, hairstyles, cars, police cruisers, black rotary phones, red pay phones, phone booths, tobacco, hi-lite cigarettes, electric fans, cafes, amusement parks, and the warmth of the people. He clarified that he would not go so far as to say those days were better, but that everything felt nostalgic. That night he would watch episode 5, featuring Keiko Sekine—now Keiko Takahashi—of whom he had been a huge fan at the time; Shohei Hino also makes a guest appearance.

“I'm making this new IP, and I want to consider everything like movies, dramas, anime, TV, comics, music. Let's create a new IP with all of this included.”

“These days of digital production, we could actually kind of use the same assets for a movie and a game. […] Of course, I'll release the game first probably!”

Kojima watched David Ayer’s “Heart of the Beast.” He described it as a story about a veteran and a former military reconnaissance dog, both suffering from PTSD, trying to survive and make their way home while the beautiful but unforgiving Alaskan wilderness stands in their way. He said there was very little dialogue but that the strong bond between the two, Brad Pitt and the dog, could really be felt. He admitted that the film made him cry, that the dog’s name, “Odin,” hit like a body blow at the end, and that it was a shame they did not make a program for the film.

Kojima finished reading Eric Heisserer’s “Simultaneous” during the flight. He explained that the novel begins with reincarnation and past-life regression before becoming intertwined with a series of murders, and identified its distinctive concept of “simultaneous lives,” in which multiple people in the same generation share a single soul. He said the novel is driven less by its lore or world-building than by its cinematic, Nolan-esque narrative momentum, and also feels cinematic because the threat of an unknown serial killer is confronted by an investigator, a counselor, and an ordinary patient rather than by a vast government conspiracy or institution.

“But I grew up watching Hitchcock and little surprises like that are fun, aren't they?”

“I don't like playing myself, though. That happens a lot.”

“And we're making two animated projects. […] A film and a series. They're progressing well, too.”

“To give them freedom. […] But when they ask, I start getting nitpicky. […] Like, "I would do it this way." […] I don't really want to do that.”

Kojima said he had watched the first four episodes of Mike Flanagan’s “Carrie” and was really enjoying it. He explained that Flanagan had brought the classic into the world of today’s high schools and reconstructed it for a new generation, exploring social media, the current education system, the struggles and crises facing young people, and each character’s background. He said what he found most interesting was the portrayal of Carrie not as a terrifying monster but as an innocent human being treated with sincerity and compassion; he also praised Summer H. Howell and said he could not wait to see what happened next.

Kojima said he had waited until the interview was released before posting his thoughts on director Iñárritu’s “DIGGER.” He said everyone living in today’s world should see it and described it as a work that remains with its audience, provokes reflection, and sounds alarms; he added that absorbing and carrying the film would shape a tool for delving deeper into the future and that the film would stay by the viewer’s side for years.

Kojima described Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s DIGGER as a frightening film that turns things actually happening into comedy, rather than depicting falling meteorites or attacking aliens. He was surprised by its dual structure of film and theatre: the theatrical performance ultimately appears as the past, not the future.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s DIGGER reminded Kojima of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and the BBC nuclear-war drama Threads. Tom Cruise’s monologue also brought Chaplin’s The Great Dictator to mind.

In his conversation with Alejandro G. Iñárritu about DIGGER, Kojima recalled depicting social media taking on a kind of life in Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001), something he felt had now become reality. He saw a structural similarity with DIGGER: untruths swell until they change politics and daily life, leaving people feeling as though they are on a stage being moved by some other force.

Kojima compared criticism of DIGGER by people who had not seen it with people calling Death Stranding a walking simulator without playing it, as though they had. He said the label still persisted and that this was particularly frightening.

Kojima feared that AI in social media would show people only the things and opinions they like, shutting out different perspectives and chance encounters. He imagined AI acting as a concierge, leading people to eat only their favourites and meet only those who share their opinions; he likened this to DIGGER’s characters being manipulated by someone whose identity they do not know.

Kojima watched “Love of Your Life” on Prime Video and said it was wonderful. He said the film brings together everything that makes Margaret Qualley compelling, calling her performance mature and her screen presence explosive. He compared her role as an ordinary woman to her role in “Maid” (2021), a series he said he loved; he described the film as tracing one woman’s love, loss, and renewal over seven years amid beautiful landscapes and changing seasons. He said there were moments that moved him to tears, highly recommended the film, and noted that it also features Aaron Pierre.

Kojima said he went to the Japan premiere of “Godzilla Minus Zero” at TOHO Cinemas Hibiya. He described himself as a huge Godzilla fan and a fan of Minami Hamabe, said he had been eagerly waiting three years to see the film, and got to see it in IMAX. He said there were moments that played out just as he imagined, moments that surprised him in the best possible way, moments beyond anything he could have imagined, and scenes for hardcore fans that brought tears to his eyes or that he had always dreamed of seeing brought to life. He said the final climax made him extremely excited, that the film also had a little of the “Always: Sunset on Third Street” feeling, perhaps because it was directed by Takashi Yamazaki, and that he intended to see it a few more times in IMAX after its release.

Kojima got up early and watched Episode 2 of the TBS drama “LOST10” on streaming. Kojima said the series had not lost any momentum from Episode 1 to Episode 2 and was getting even more interesting; he highlighted its transition from sweeping aerial shots of the Hokkaido wilderness in Episode 1 to the eye-level perspective used in Episode 2 to explore the human drama and the truth behind the incident. Kojima said he started watching “LOST10” because he is a fan of Ryusei Yokohama and that he really liked the contrast, as a duo, between Yokohama’s character, a detective in Hokkaido, and Shun Oguri’s character, an insurance investigator. He called the series a winner and said he would watch the rest.

That night, in memory of Chiba-sensei, Kojima was rereading the José Mendoza world title match from “Ashita no Joe,” the manga that defined his youth, and rewatching Episodes 44–47 of “Ashita no Joe 2.”

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's parents began a nightly tradition of watching a film with their children; the children were not allowed to go to bed until the film had finished.

Kojima uses as the biography on his Instagram and X profiles the line Game Creator: 70% of my body is made of movies. On Instagram he presents it in English and in Japanese (ゲームデザイナー：僕の体の70%は映画でできている).

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.

“I wanted to create a game [that played] like the movie, with the character running away· escaping without a fight and trying to avoid being seen by the enemy. I wanted to do that, but I couldn't get approval on that concept alone. I had to add more features.”

“That is how I got the snake part. I guess the slithering of the snake is definitely not a solid motion. It's smoother, more liquid. I also wanted to create a paradoxical name.”