Policenauts

Policenauts is a graphic adventure game with a point-and-click interface. It has also been called a visual novel and an interactive movie. The player moves a cursor freely across the screen to click on objects to examine them. During conversations, the player is given dialogue options to choose from.

Once the right object in the scene has been examined or the dialogue options have been exhausted, the game progresses to the next scene in the story. In versions with cel animation, these scenes the player must examine are stills from the animated cinematics, so the game moves seamlessly between them and cutscenes. There are occasional action scenes where the player must fire a gun at enemies in a first-person perspective. The Sega Saturn version supports a light gun for these segments.

In 2013, Los Angeles Police Department officer Jonathan Ingram (Hideyuki Tanaka) was one of five "Policenauts", police officers who received astronaut training to protect Beyond Coast, humanity's first functional self-supporting space colony. During the test of a new space suit, an accident causes Jonathan to drift into space, presumed dead by his colleagues. In reality, the cryogenic survival system in the suit preserved him, and he is found and revived 25 years later. During that time, Beyond Coast has become the principal development location for potential interstellar travel, and is protected by a dedicated police force dubbed the Beyond Coast Police Department (BCPD).

In 2040, Jonathan has become a private investigator on Earth in Old Los Angeles. He is visited by his former wife Lorraine (Chiyoko Kawashima), who remarried while he was presumed dead. Lorraine asks for Jonathan's help in solving the disappearance of her husband, Kenzo Hojo; the only clues are a torn leaf, a set of capsules, and the word "Plato". Jonathan is reluctant to take her case at first, but after Lorraine leaves his office, she is murdered by a man in a black motorcycle suit. After failing to catch the culprit, Jonathan decides to fulfill Lorraine's final request and travels to Beyond, where he is reunited with his former LAPD partner, BCPD Vice Department chief Ed Brown (Shōzō Iizuka), who agrees to help Jonathan investigate the circumstances surrounding Hojo's disappearance and Lorraine's murder along with Vice Unit members Meryl Silverburgh (Kyoko Terase) and Dave Forrest (Bin Shimada).

Policenauts was developed by Konami and directed by Hideo Kojima. Kojima began to explore concepts for Policenauts during the development of Snatcher (1988) when memory limitation issues prompted them to take a break. He wanted the game to remain in the adventure genre, feeling it was the best method to express what he wanted with video games. He was also growing frustrated with game development and wanted more creative control.

After the release of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990), he developed a scripting engine so he could maintain control over when animations and music played instead of the programmers. Kojima wrote and implemented the text-based based portion of Policenauts himself in 1990, which is when development began in earnest, but was not given resources to proceed, keeping it alive as a technical project for its game engine. This changed from 1992 onwards when a boom of adult-oriented PC adventure games such as Dōkyūsei demonstrated there was a market for Policenauts. The game's development lasted for four years in total.

In Japan, critics praised Policenauts for its high level of presentation. Both Sega Saturn Magazine and Famitsu praised the quality of animation, voice acting, and its engrossing setting. Sega Saturn Magazine felt it was more like a movie than a game and praised its unique blend of genres, but found some of the text difficult to understand and warned that its heavy scientific writing may not be suitable for everyone. Famitsu described the narrative as "hardboiled". Both publications recommended Policenauts to fans of adventure games and anime.

The game was also reviewed in contemporary Western publications despite its lack of localization. Computer and Video Games previewed the 3DO version and considered it a sequel to Snatcher. They felt the game had an interesting plot, "bizarre and inventive" characters, and appreciated the "level of senseless violence and gratuitous rudity of graphics." GameFan reviewed the PlayStation and Saturn ports; they felt it pushed the genre of interactive movies better than previous games in the genre and praised the game's intricate technical details, although they cautioned that its specificity may put off some players.

Policenauts was not well known in the West until the fan translation was released in 2009. Critics have expressed interest in a re-release or sequel. Sam Bishop of IGN included it among a list of games he wanted to see receive a high-definition remaster. N.

Ho Sang and Peter Tieryas of Kotaku included it on a list of desired sequels, and expressed interest in a proper English port of the original. Writing in 2013, Jon Leo of GameSpot wrote that he wanted to see the game re-released for the PlayStation 4, feeling it could be a good mainstream push for visual novels and adventure games. While still working with Konami in 2012, Kojima expressed interest in exploring a follow-up to Policenauts, but felt it was difficult to carry out from a business perspective. In 2023, he shared one concept for a sequel which featured Tony Redwood returning to Home to seek vengeance.