Surveillance Kanshisha — BrandWiki

Surveillance Kanshisha

Surveillance Kanshisha (サーヴィランス監視者) is a 2002 adventure video game developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. Animated cutscenes was provided by Production I.G.[2] It was not released outside Japan.

It takes place in the 2050s where a United Nations-created special forces unit called Shadow Sword is deployed to protect the Earth-Mars travel route from anti-UN terrorists called Neo Kleit, conducting terrorist attacks to remove the UN's control of the space program. A special public security surveillance network is unveiled for the first time called Project Surveillance, which is used to assist Shadow Sword operatives in their work in apprehending and hunting down the terrorists.

Japanese critics praised the game's animation and use of the gameplay mechanics in telling the story, although it is criticized for little to no involvement of the players themselves.

Gameplay

Players play the game by assuming the role of Shadow Sword team leader Yusuke Sasaki, who the player use in monitoring cameras of Project Surveillance at a Shadow Sword surveillance truck in the game's six chapters. There are six sub monitor screens with the main screen above them as players would use the latter to observe and analyze to obtain information for the level to progress,[4]

Plot

The game takes place in the year 2053 when space travel between Earth and Mars is made possible thanks to the UN's goal to conduct space travel.[8] But with the presence of a mysterious terrorist group called Neo Kleit preparing to oppose to the UN's attempt to expand on space travel, a UN-established counter-terrorist unit called Shadow Sword is called in by the International Cosmic Security System or I-COSS to eliminate the group and protect the space development program and civilians with the help of a high-tech computer surveillance system called Project Surveillance.[1][8][9]

As Shadow Sword continues to protect civilians in their space travel and hunt down terrorist members of Neo Kleit, the unit gets tangled in a black ops project that involves genetically enhanced creatures with some Shadow Sword operatives killed while trying to find out who was responsible for the project's existence.

Characters

All of the characters were both created and animated by Production I.G.[10]

The Shadow Sword team was described as being similar to the Policenauts team in Konami's Policenauts.[11]

Yusuke Sakaki (榊悠輔) (Kenichi Suzuki) is a Japanese Shadow Sword operator and commanding officer of the team. He is a lieutenant colonel and an ex-JGSDF officer who had served in the 1st Airborne Brigade in its 4th Airborne Infantry Battalion. He is in charge of using the Project Surveillance system to direct his comrades in the field.
Edward Banfield (Yūichi Nagashima), referred to as Ed by his friends, is a British Shadow Sword operator with the rank of major. He's Shadow Sword's lone electronics warfare officer, and he is quite knowledgeable on the use of The Surveillance due to time spent on the system related to his position.

Maurice Bilal (Nobuo Tobita) is a British Shadow Sword operator with the rank of major. He was trained with the United Kingdom Special Forces on explosive ordnance disposal and serves as the team's demolitions expert.
Amanda Grace (Junko Noda) is the only female Shadow Sword operator, also experienced in explosive ordnance disposal.
Nicholas Gump (Takashi Nagasumi), referred to as Nick by his friends, is an American Shadow Sword operator with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He's in charge of the team's logistics.
Steve Hammond (Yasunori Matsumoto) is an American Shadow Sword operator with the rank of captain. He's the team's trained sniper and had once participated in the Olympic Games, which gives him self-confidence.
Ned Hardy (Kiyoyuki Yanada) is an American Shadow Sword operator with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He had been formerly under the United States Army Space Aviation Strategic Command Center Department (米国陸軍航空宇宙戦略司令部教育センター).
Charlie Hix (Katsuyuki Konishi) is an American Shadow Sword operator with the rank of major. He has the smallest stature of any of the Shadow Sword operators, which allows him to conduct rappelling without running into any kind of problem.
Jim Perkins (Hiroyuki Yoshino) is a former United States Air Force Astronaut trainee, who is recruited to Shadow Sword.

Production

Development

The game's design was created by both Junya Ishigaki and Atsushi Takeuchi with Takashi Watabe and Yasushi Ohara.[12] Hiroyuki Nishimura was the main director of the game with Hidekazu Terakawa being in charge of game design and was one of the game's director.[10]

In an interview with Hidekazu Terakawa (Game Designer/Director), Atsunori Maeshima (Game Director), Tetsuji Yamamoto (Executive Producer, SCE) and Junichi Fujisaku (At the time of interview, Chief Director of Production I.G's Section G - Software Development Section), they had said that the game was entirely created by various staff members from Production I.G alone with little to no involvement from Sony Computer Entertainment, including planning.[13] Maeshima had pointed that during game development, he saw the game in comparison to the Blade Runner movie.[13]

The game's cutscenes, which were in MPEG-2 format, made the team decide to move the platform from the PlayStation to the PlayStation 2 due to issues of the former's loading capabilities as the cutscenes are at least 5 hours and 30 minutes long according to Yamamoto.[13] In addition, they had used real photos of Mars and Phobos as part of the cutscenes.[7]

News

IGN had first broke news of the possibility of the game based on the Yarudora series.[14] On August 31, 2001, Sony Computer Entertainment made an official announcement that Surveillance Kanshisha would be created for the PlayStation 2 with Production I.G working on the animation for the game.[8][15]

In the 15th Anniversary Production I.G World Tour 2002 in Ginza on April 20 and April 21, 2002,[16] Surveillance had been unveiled by Production I.G with guests including Mamoru Oshii

Promotion

A movie clip was shown on the internet for free from April 25 to May 14, 2002, to promote the game to the public from the website of Morrich Club, now a part of Sony Music Online Japan.[18][19] A Surveillance commercial had aired on SKY PerfecTV! on April 29, 2002, and on TV Tokyo on August 29, 2002.[20][21]