Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition

Blade Runner is a point-and-click adventure game played from a third-person perspective, in which the game world is navigated, explored, and manipulated using the mouse. The pointer has four different styles depending on the given situation; a standard grey pointer is used to move McCoy by clicking on any location, and scan the screen for elements with which to interact; an animated green pointer indicates McCoy can interact with an object or begin a conversation with an NPC; an animated blue pointer indicates the screen can be changed and a new area accessed (usually appears at the sides of the screen or in doorways); an animated red target becomes available only in combat mode and indicates McCoy can fire (if the target is grey, it means McCoy cannot fire).

Blade Runner's main focus is detective work rather than puzzles or combat, and the majority of gameplay consists of searching for evidence, questioning suspects and analyzing clues. Occasionally, the player must solve compulsory puzzles, and often, to progress the story, certain clues must be located. Clues are found by searching crime scenes, and come in the form of items, photographs, interviews, or unusual markings. When analyzing photographs, the player must use the ESPER system, a high-density computer with a powerful three-dimensional resolution capacity which allows for the enhancement of photos and enables the player to find details within the picture.

Ray McCoy (voiced by Mark Benninghofen): the game's protagonist and a rookie Blade Runner. McCoy shares his apartment with his pet dog, Maggie.

Crystal Steele (Lisa Edelstein): one of the best Blade Runners on the job and an expert in undercover work. She hates replicants, believing they should be exterminated. She is somewhat condescending towards McCoy early in the game but grows to respect him as the story progresses.

The initial idea for a video game adaptation of Blade Runner came from The Blade Runner Partnership (composed of Bud Yorkin and Jerry Perenchio of Tandem Productions). They originally approached Electronic Arts, Sierra and Activision, before Virgin Interactive agreed to take the project on. However, the rights to the film were spread out over several entities, each of whom owned a different aspect, making production of the game complex from a copyright perspective; The Ladd Company owned North American distribution rights to the film; Run Run Shaw owned international distribution rights; and The Blade Runner Partnership owned all ancillary rights, and were the bond guarantors, who had taken control of the film when it went over-budget and over-schedule towards the end of production. As a result, sorting out the rights took several years before Virgin were in a position to actually begin development.

They ultimately hired Westwood Studios to work on the game, but even with the rights secured, and the game in pre-production, there were still legal problems. As Louis Castle, the game's executive producer, art director and technical director, explains

Blade Runner received generally positive reviews. It held an aggregate score of 77% on GameRankings, based on sixteen reviews.

Next Generation rated it four stars out of five, and stated that "the game's shortcomings seem irrelevant as the journey that Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford began 15 years ago is brought to an entirely new end at the player's command. All movie-licensed game publishers should take note." GamePro likewise judged that the game's strongest points are its faithfulness to the book and movie and the way the ending is determined by the player's actions throughout the game. They also complimented the cinematics, dialogue, and "riveting plot and slick style", though they criticized the character models for their "overwrought body language" and said that those who are not fans of Blade Runner would find it solid but unexciting. They gave it a 4.5 out of 5 for graphics, 5.0 for sound, 4.0 for control, and 4.5 for fun factor.