Policenauts version differences. Last updated: December 13, 2020 by December 13, 2020. The patch contains a complete, 100% English, translation of all Japanese text and graphics. There is not one character of Japanese left in the game - including opening and ending credits. Aside from the translation, the patch also fixes graphical glitches and crashing that was in the original game. A translation of the Playstation version of Policenauts, it translates all text and graphics. In short, everything is translated and the game is fully playable in English. There is also a new option to toggle off character introductions, and a few text choices that were dummied out of the Japanese version edited back in. Policenauts, Hideo Kojima’s 1996 interactive sci-fi detective story, wasnt available in English until 2009 when a group of dedicated fans at Junker HQ released a translation patch for the game. The Saturn version has some stuff added but it’s not something that makes it considerably better, the Saturn version has light gun support, more close ups when you talk to certain characters, an extra ending and an encyclopedia of sorts that you can look at throughout the game as well as a scene or two from the PC 98 version if I’m not mistaken as I heard some small stuff was taken out.
with director Hideo Kojima
Conception and Themes
The design plans for Policenauts are actually very old. During the development of the PC-88 and MSX versions of Snatcher, we encountered various problems all related to the limitations of the memory, and had to take a break in the middle of the development. That was when I came up with the idea for Policenauts, and I once again realized, as I had for a long time already, that things I want to do with games are best expressed in the adventure genre.
When players finish a game I’ve made, I want my feelings to have reached them in one way or another; it’s sort of like playing catch, but the ball is the themes I want the audience to receive. For example, with Policenauts, I wanted to ask questions like, “what will happen if humans go into space?”, or “what will be the influence of living in space on the human body and human relationships?”, and so on. Having a colony in space has something humans have dreamed and hoped for, but what will actually change if we migrate there? On the other hand, what unchanging aspects of human nature will be revealed by this new environment? I didn’t want something strictly science-fiction, but rather something that realistically examines a future that is a little nearer to us.
And so, my hope is that for the next week or so after playing Policenauts, players would be thinking things like “I want to learn more about organ transplantation” or “I wonder what life would be like in space…” In other words, I’m trying to create a game that will have a small but positive affect on players’ actual lives. I know it sounds a little dramatic, but that’s what I’ve been thinking about for a long time now. (laughs)
The story itself is something I thought up in the 1990s, in response to two things. 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. Also, in 1990 Toyohiro Akiyama was the first Japanese person to go into space, and we were suddenly getting to read a lot of amazing NASA documents that had never been published in Japan before. All sorts of information was coming in, answering questions like “what is the effects of weightlessness on humans?” and “what does space travel feel like?” My friends and family were all talking about it.
I wanted to take those social problems as my story theme, and the result ended up being Policenauts. In the choice of words “Home” and “Beyond” (aka “Earth” and “Colony”) it shows a cordial relationship like parent and child, but “Beyond” has two meanings for me: the physical distance between Earth and the colony, but also the 25 years that Jonathan Ingram passed in cryosleep. That was one of Policenaut’s themes, that even if technology advances and we can go into space—even if something as amazing as time travel became possible—in the end you still have the persistence of human relationships and human society.
Policenauts Wiki
Cinematic Aspirations
As for the cinematic sections of Policenauts, 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. Then there’s the depth of the story, the accurately depicted relationships, and the final polish of your story… I think it’s incredibly difficult to make a game that matches the production quality of a movie. Policenauts uses cinematic camera work and cuts, and it was my awareness of movies that caused me to use those techniques.
As for the subtitles, when the PC-98 version went on sale I received a letter from a hearing-impaired player. “I’ve been able to enjoy games up to now,” he said, “but now that CD-ROMs are here and games are using actual speech, they don’t include text and I’m sad that I can no longer play them.” So yeah, I didn’t include the subtitles so it would look more like a movie. As a director, there’s lots of scenes where I’d rather not have subtitles, but in the end I will choose what makes players happy, of course.
The Saturn Port
This Saturn version of Policenauts is truly the final version. In one sense the Saturn port isn’t really all that different from the previous versions–that is to say, it is a perfect port. The reason we chose this platform to do that is because Saturn users are people who truly love games, so I knew it wouldn’t go over with them unless we released something superior to the previous versions. For the movie clips, the 3D0 had 24fps playback, but we had to lower that to 15fps for the Playstation. That was something I insisted on with the programmers, that the Saturn version not movies look good, not using Cinepak encoding.
I think the Saturn version is the most charming. (laughs) The PC-98 version was the first, so I do have an attachment to it, and when the Playstation version came out I remember thinking “this is the best!” But after some time passed I started to think differently. It’s pretty minor, but there were some detailed lines that suggested substories, and we had to remove those lines in the Playstation version, but now we’ve added them back for the Saturn.
As a nice immersive touch, the Saturn port
actually came with stickers you could
put on the Sega Saturn gun peripheral.
Also, I had been wanting to add lightgun support to Policenauts. Gun games like Lethal Enforcers are really fun, but they don’t really evoke much empathy from the player. I mean, enemies just come out of nowhere, then they die in one shot, ok bye bye! In Policenauts, take Redwood for example. As Jonathan comes to see him as a villain in the story, his (and the player’s) anger rises, until it reaches a boiling point and, at the time, Jonathan draws his gun. That’s the kind of virtual sensation I wanted to convey. For that, a mouse just isn’t going to give you the same feeling.
Policenauts, Hideo Kojima’s 1996 interactive sci-fi detective story, wasnt available in English until 2009 when a group of dedicated fans at Junker HQ released a translation patch for the game’s PlayStation port. Since Konami never officially localized the game, English-speaking players had to make do with this, dealing with some cut content and other issues. No longer.
Policenauts Psx
Earlier this month, the Junker team finished work on a patch for the “complete” Sega Saturn edition, making it possible to finally play Policenauts in its entirety without a working knowledge of Japanese. If you’re a fan of Kojima’s brand of storytelling, you’ll want to check it out.
Policenauts Pc 98 Translation Free
Over at Policenauts.net, the team has released very detailed instructions on what you need to do to get the game up and running on your PC (or Mac), and it requires a little bit of legwork. The patch itself is a series of files that must be applied to the game’s .iso and .cue files, which means you’ll need to do a little bit of command line tinkering to ultimately replace the Japanese with English text.
Policenauts Iso
As for getting the game to work, it took me about an hour to muddle through the process and get it working on my MacBook Air with no coding knowledge whatsoever, though the process is actually short and relatively simple. If you follow the instructions, you shouldn’t run into any major issues. Just keep in mind they include extra steps to rip the necessary files from actual Policenauts discs, which you can skip if you feel comfortable finding the .iso files needed for emulation online.
And what does playing Policenauts feel like 20 years after its release? If you can stomach the point-and-click interface, it holds up pretty well. The pixel art of the Saturn release is great, particularly in the game’s light gun shooting sections, a holdover from Kojima’s Snatcher. Junker should also be commended on their stellar translation work, which captures the voice and tone of the game’s hardboiled protagonist with what I can only imagine is extreme authenticity; and it helps make up for the age of its design. Even two decades later, this is definitely a Kojima game.
It’s also interesting to play now as an early glimpse at Kojima-isms. His attentive prescience about technology and society is present here in mentions of things like virtual reality porn and artificial organs, and if you’ve ever wondered where his use of the font Helvetica and tendency to introduce characters by name and voice actor during cutscenes comes from, it’s here.
Need more convincing? Right off the bat there’s relatively blatant references to Blade Runner, Lethal Weapon, and 2001. Some things never change. Now you have no excuse to not see it for yourself.