Policenauts is structured much the same way as Snatcher, with the main difference being the interface. Quite a tall order for two men, one of whom is, quite clearly, getting too old for this shit. Piece by piece, Jonathan and Ed must piece together the conspiracy, locate Kenzo Hojo, avenge Lorraine’s death, and take down the Tokugawa conglomerate. Jonathan obviously suspects his old friend of corruption on multiple levels, but without any hard proof, there’s little he can do. Karen’s ex-husband Kenjo was an employee of the Tokugawa Corporation, who appear to have some backdoor deals going on with the police. Naturally, once Ed shows Jonathan around the colony, things seem more than a little bit fishy. Unable to come to terms with his past and intrigued by an obvious conspiracy, Jonathan leaves Old LA to follow the few leads – back onto Beyond Coast. Jonathan is too stunned to take the case, but as soon as Lorraine leaves, her car explodes into a fiery blaze, leaving her to die in her old love’s arms. Her only clues are a pair of capsules, a leaf, and mention of the world “Plato”. Her husband, Kenzo Hojo, has mysteriously disappeared. Lorraine stays in the dark, having aged while Jonathan has not, ashamed of what she’s become and what she did to him. It’s far from glorious work, and pretty boring… until his ex-wife visits him with a case. With everyone having abandoned him, Jonathan takes up a job as tracking down kidnappers, junkies and bail jumpers.
The space colony had grown into its own nation, with its own culture and industry. (The resemblance to the tale of Taro Urashima, a fisherman who went underwater for three days and returned to the surface, finding that three hundred years had passed, is noted several times throughout the game.) His wife, Lorraine, had given up on him and moved on. Fast forward to the present, and Jonathan is miraculously rescued, not having aged at all during his hibernation. Assumed dead, he actually enters a state of hypersleep, suspended in time and floating through outer space. During a routine spacewalk, his suit goes haywire and sends him flying off into the yonder. Thirty years ago, he was one of the five elite policeman chosen to serve aboard a brand new space colony called Beyond Coast – the Policenauts. Jonathan Ingram is a private detective with a bit of an odd past. The story begins on Earth, now called HOME, in Old Los Angeles in the year 2040.
The price of Snatcher in the aftermarket shot up, and gamers everywhere wondered, just what the heck was that Policenauts thing? It wasn’t until 1998 that Kojima’s name entered the video gaming world with the release of Metal Gear Solid, which not only revived interest in the old 8-bit series, but renewed interest in Kojima’s other works. While Snatcher was released in English for the Sega CD, it gained a cult audience in America and Europe, although the sales were beyond dismal, mostly due to it being released at the tail end of the system’s life span. Why all the hype? At the time of its release, Policenauts was advertised as “The Next Generation of Snatcher“.
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