The main characters resemble those from Lethal Weapon. Kojima was a huge fan of buddy cop films, and science fiction films like Blade Runner.
In terms of appearance Jonathan and Ed almost perfectly parallel the main characters from the buddy cop film Lethal Weapon (with Jonathan taking the role of the Mel Gibson character, and Ed taking the role of the Danny Glover character), and the similarity goes beyond just the superficial resemblance of the characters. There is quite a bit of drama, and psychological issues of living in deep space deeper questions of what is right and wrong morally are explored.
It all eventually leads him to a plot of drug trafficking and organ smuggling, and large-scale corruption. He gets reunited with one of his old Policenaut friends, who is now the head detective on Beyond named Ed (who’s “getting too old for all of this”), and the two team up and start following the clues about Kenzo Hojo’s disappearance. Jonathan follows the suspect after a shootout and decides to take the case and go to the Beyond colony. As Jonathan thinks about taking the case, his ex-wife is killed in front of his office with a bomb blast. This powerful company is named after the man who established it, who was coincidentally one of the Policenauts like Jonathan. Her husband worked for a large industrial firm primarily known to produce pharmaceuticals, called the Tokugawa group. The Hojos both lived in the newly expanded Beyond space colony and have a teenaged daughter. One day his former wife (who was half-Japanese) Lorraine Hojo (who unlike him has aged) contacts him and asks for help finding her missing husband, a Japanese man named Kenzo Hojo. He lives in Los Angeles and works as a kind of P.I., catching kidnappers, etc. He returns to Earth, which has changed quite a bit, and is now called Home. One day, while outside of the spaceship in a spacesuit, a terrible accident with his space suit occurs, and he is frozen cryogenically and does not age for 30 years until he is finally revived. He is to be one of the elite Policenauts (a Portmanteau of Police and Astronauts). The game is set (at the time of its release) in the near future where our protagonist Jonathan Ingram gets chosen to become a police officer in outer space, on a new space colony called the Beyond Coast. There are patched versions of the game floating around online. For this review I played the PlayStation version which has thankfully been localized by a team of dedicated fans, and I must say that they did a fantastic job, with an attention to detail. The PlayStation and Saturn versions come with FMVs. The versions of the game for different systems all have various differences. This game was never officially localized in Europe, or America, and has never been released outside of Japan.
So, although I recommend this game, I would recommend it mostly to a certain type of player. I did have some issues with this game, but I believe that many of the things that those reviewers didn’t like about the game is what appealed to me. Although I really did enjoy this game, I found that a number of retro-reviewers gave this game a mediocre score. This game is an adventure game with point and click elements but mostly an interactive anime film it doesn’t quite have enough puzzle solving elements to be a ‘true’ point and click adventure game like the Monkey Island games. One game that came across my radar and was recommended on several websites was Hideo Kojima’s forgotten gem Policenauts, released first on the PC-9281 in Japan in 1994, then the 3DO in 1995, and later the Playstation, and Sega Saturn in 1996. I like scouring the web for relatively obscure games for 5th and 6th generation consoles. Policenauts: A Game For Fans of Interactive Films, Buddy Cop Films, and Hard Science Fiction "It is basically an interactive anime buddy cop film with elements of hard science fiction."
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