The legendary designer Hideo Kojima recently mentioned that he once wanted to make a sequel to what could very well be his least well known game, Policenauts. This graphic adventure title is all about astronaut police officers preserving the peace in distant space colonies.
Policenauts was launched on July 29, 1994. While this came out for both Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation a couple of years later, Policenauts has in fact never been released outside of Japan. The game was on the other hand localized by a fan group at some point in 2009. Policenauts represents the first in a series of collaborations between Kojima and artist Yoji Shinkawa, mostly known for his work on the various entries in the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
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"I miss the Policenauts actuality," Kojima pointed out on Twitter. "I completed the planning, setting, story, storyboard, and commands, but it was in 1990, so 32 years ago. After that, I had to transfer to the other department, and full scale production was delayed.”
Policenauts engaged with various debates and conversations that were taking place at the time including space exploration and medical developments. "Space development and the medical scene had changed drastically," Kojima remarked on the same social media platform. "At that time, no one even imagined that a private company would go into space. However, Japan did not have a division of labor in dispensing and prescribing at that time."
There was apparently a sequel to Policenauts planned at one point. "I was thinking of a sequel where Redwood comes back to Earth (home) for revenge, but it never happened," Kojima explained in reference to Tony Redwood, a primary antagonist in the game. Similar to the player character Jonathan Ingram, Redwood is an astronaut police officer who turns out to have a troubled past. Policenauts takes place in a space colony called Beyond Coast, Earth of course being referred to as “home.”