Games of the Abstract: Police 911 (2000)

 

a.k.a. Police 24/7, The Keisatsukan

Developer: Konami

Publisher: Konami

One Player

Arcade

 

Wishing to innovate with the light gun genre, Konami by 2000 came with two distinct arcade cabinets worthy of this. Silent Scope, which got a series of sequels, captivates as a cheesy American action film in video game form, but with the factor that this story is about playing a sole sniper against terrorists, which drastically changes the pacing of the game with a scoped rifle peripheral to tackle challenges from far away as much as close. Police 24/7 as it became known as in Europe, but will be called Police 911 here onwards, had continuation including in terms of the technology used, but is maybe more obscure nowadays. It is a shame as it is a really idiosyncratic game in that, using infrared technology on the machine, could re-release for the virtual reality headsets as it is entirely about letting the player themselves move, duck and take cover to avoid bullets as they play a police officer fighting for the law and shooting back.

It is a simple game where, depending on whether you are playing the Japanese or Western releases, which change around the levels and story as a result, follows the American and Japanese police forces across two countries teaming up to tackle a Japanese criminal organization involved with arms smuggling. For the European arcade cabinet at least, you begin storming into a night club, and story is less of a concern then a series of specific criminals in the hierarchy of the organization to arrest and a lot of shoot outs to get to them. The motion capture itself is a huge factor from the get-go, the selling point and the make-or-break for playing the game, and for a machine from 2000, even an old but well preserved cabinet hardware as I was lucky to play shows Konami succeeded and deserve applause for what could have been a botched disaster. You cannot wear a hat, even police standard, which is one of the few things the machine warns of alongside potential health concerns for those players who are with heart conditions, and to not attempt to play it drunk, which is legal content clearly put there to prevent Konami being sued. The game is sound in its machines however beyond one piece of fashion that would likely affect the infrared technology; you are restricted to one floor mat to move in, and the comparison to modern virtual reality technology does feel apt to compare to, as this accepts the limitations from the time and yet does so much. You have to move your body and duck, but you can also lean around obstacles to take pot shots.

It is a fun challenge, especially as the bullets are visible when they are fired at you, and you are on a time limit like many light guns from this era had, like those with other ducking mechanics like Time Crisis forcing you to plough ahead rather than camp behind a seat for an infinite time frame. That there is a ranking system with rewards is also a factor; avoid being shot, running out of time, and/or hitting civilians or other cops, and you can claim in promotion in ranks with increase your time and lives. There is no cross hair onscreen though for your firearm, which represents a huge issue/challenge expect if taken that you need to actually use the plastic pistol as a real one, i.e. learning to aim up to your eyes and using the end of the barrel to target. It is a curious touch of realism to a game which is cartoonish in its core. It is also a one player machine, but that is not a surprise considering practicality has to be considered for total movement of a player, as with Silent Scope needing to focus on making the plastic sniper rifle work.

The realism comment comes in mind that, as Silent Scope initially felt uncomfortably real in having in a plastic fake of a sniper rifle in my hands, Police 911 is a strange game to come to as criticisms against the police have made the idealized concept of the police force more suspect for some, specifically the North American (and British) police in the 2010s for aspects like institutional racism. This game is a cultural object from the past, made without this factored in, unadulteratedly a game of good police officers, stereotypical thugs as villains. Call this the cheap “woke” moment of the review, but there is a dichotomy against the reality and a game from a  Japanese developer that, as with Silent Scope, is an outsider’s view of America (with tangents in Japan), a pulpy action work which is oblivious to these real life concerns. The fact there is a side character you trail behind in stages who looks like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, or even a Sonny Chiba by way of Dirty Harry, and feels like a deliberate choice to have a plainclothes officer in brown suit slacks and big seventies hair, does emphasis the difference between how time forces one to reflect on the pop cultural images of the police and the real one. A work like this feels cut-off and alien, the arcade game forcing the game play to be streamlined to the idea as a thrill ride on infinite continues, or the coins or skill to continue to the end of, i.e. imagining being a Dirty Harry (or normal officer here) in a shootout from a Lethal Weapon film.

Or if you want to be more apt in reference, in a Lethal Enforcers game as Konami had been here before, with the 1992 Lethal Enforcers light gun game, followed by Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters (1994) which was set in the days of the Wild West, and Lethal Enforcers 3 (2004), explicitly making Police 911 a sibling in that it took the infrared motion capture of the players for that game’s mechanics. All four do not represent the reality – all are reflections of American pop culture from digitally photographed goons with perms to the main targets in this game, when challenged, having their eyes censored as if an American reality TV show. It is not even a criticism on my part for Police 911 having its subject for propaganda purposes, which it really is not, but a fascinating turn in time where, if this was an American game released in the 2010s, it would have gained a lot of controversy for even existing or could have ended up in a social media argument for and against where someone uses “woke” without knowing what the term means and questions of how to represent the police in pop culture.

Personally my biggest criticism of the game is that it needed a lot more personality, in contrast to its construct working perfectly mechanically. This is the police as b-movie characters, against a comical number of goons in the streets, in a car chase, on busy downtown at night between nightclubs, and in the subway for the final act. The main antagonists, who can be taken out by one headshot but weave, duck and even drive cars at you, are taken away very much alive even if you succeed in doing this, when it would normally kill a person. Goons too, if not hit point blank, sit down sore or waddle off if you shot their gun from their hands without physical cost, all part of a bloodless action story. As a result, it contrasts the look of “realism”, in ordinary environments, which does mean there is not a lot of variety in terms of locations and enemies. There is a result something missing which Silent Scope had, that just embraced being very silly. That game had set pieces and was literally a sniper being bad enough to rescue to president, from trying to pick off a goon with the president’s daughter on his back, fleeing American football players in a circle around a sports stadium, to a final boss being the boss’ female secretary, a metal one-piece and Wolverine claw wearing dominatrix skipping about and feeling up the tied up president when not attacking you. You sadly do not get something with the tone, even if just the music, of some of the best of this genre, which is a shame as this has everything right in terms of the mechanics but needed to be campier than what we got.

Both games could have presented huge issues to ever convert to home consoles, but interestingly both were. Silent Scope, even if it had to compromise the original point of the mechanics, got released on multiple consoles with the scope a button function, but Police 911 did get a Sony Playstation 2 release, using USB motion sensor technology (with a compatible camera) to take advantage of the original gimmick of the arcade machine.  The problems that affect these games affect all light gun games, in which the transition from cathode ray tube televisions to digital flat screen ones made the technology to make the games work obsolete, presenting an issue of ever playing them. There is a chance for resurgence, as when the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3 brought in full motion controls and a flood of old with new titles came to the consoles, but it will take another day for the genre to return. I see this potentially happening, as these machines are still available in the arcades, and it can take an indie production to figure a way around this and becoming a hit as an indie production to figure a way around this and becoming a hit as Cuphead (2017) did for hard scrolling shooters and games like Hades (2020) did for the rougelike, bringing these obscurer genres forwards in the consciousness with greater interest.  I can see too Police 911, even if the content as mentioned will be more cautiously viewed nowadays, working for the virtual reality headsets of today, even overcoming issues to this day of potential motion sickness and limitations in an owner’s game room from what the simple structure is. Whilst Konami have had their shaky moments, especially in the 2010s, there is an undeniable fact they were innovators in gaming for consoles and arcades, in mind this was a time when the Beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution games starting in the late nineties were a success for them in other fields of gimmicked arcade cabinets. This title I am covering is one of many of the interesting and entertaining machines they worked on, and for the flaws I have brought up, it is still undeniably a great achievement in taking its central gimmick and making it work fully.