A new report reveals Kojima was asked to make a Matrix game, which he denies

Many years ago, in the last century in fact, there were rumours that Hideo Kojima was in talks to create a video game based on the blockbuster film The Matrix.  That never came to pass and Shiny Entertainment took the license and released two games which were cannon within the Matrix universe. They were Enter the Matrix and The Path of Neo, and both were rather good, I remember spending most of one Christmas playing Enter The Matrix.

A new interview with Christopher Bergstresser, a former vice president of licensing at Konami Digital Entertainment, has revealed that “the Wachowskis were big fans of Kojima” and met with him along with Aki Saito and Kasumi Kitaue, an executive at Konami.

“The two of them came in with their concept artist, and effectively they said to Kojima, ‘We really want you to do the Matrix game. Can you do that’?” recalls Christopher. “Aki translated this into Japanese for Mr. Kitaue, and Kitaue just looked at them and told them plainly, ‘No’.”

It seems that Kojima continued to be interested in the idea, but it never came to pass, probably as Konami had him busy with Metal Gear Solid 2 at the time.

UPDATE: Kojima has stated that the meeting described below did not take place. He posted this message on Twitter:

“I was surprised to see on social media that the Wachowski sisters had “offered me a Matrix game project!” back in 1999. In all these 26 years, no one ever told me such a conversation had taken place. At the time, we were mutual fans and exchanged emails. The Matrix hadn’t been released in Japan yet, but I had already seen it in theaters in the U.S. and at a preview screening.”

“When the Wachowskis came to Japan for promotion, I believe I met them three times. In the morning, we had a Famitsu interview in Shinjuku — that time, Geof Darrow joined us for the talk session. In the afternoon, they were invited to the headquarters of KONAMI’s CS Division. Back then, I was Vice President of KCE JAPAN, a wholly-owned subsidiary. When I arrived at the headquarters, their meeting with Mr. Kitaue, the head of the CS Division, had just ended. I joined them afterward, and we chatted for about an hour without an interpreter (Aki wasn’t even there). I think John Gaeta, the visual effects supervisor, was also present. That evening, I attended the premiere screening and party, where I also met Joel Silver. Even then, there was no mention of an offer.”

“At that time, I was already extremely busy with MGS2 and probably couldn’t have accepted the offer right away. But if someone had told me, maybe there could’ve been a way to make it work.”

Original story continues below…

Kojima continued to correspond with the Wachowskis and in 2000 met with them to discuss the similarities between their works.  “I have seen (The Matrix) four times. I like this type of work. What I was planning to do in my next project, they pretty much made into a motion picture. We were planning on certain things like characters running on walls and such, but they’ve beat me to it (laughs).”

Later, Kojima’s hit Death Stranding explored similar themes as The Matrix franchise, such as the blurring of reality and another world, while the character Higgs has similarities to Agent Smith.

However, this might not be the end of the story. Kojima is working on OD for Microsoft, and we now know that is going to be an anthology horror game with a famous directors taking on an episode. The only confirmed name is Jordan Peele, but the Wachowskis would be an excellent choice for an episode.

Source: Timeextension.com

Tags: Hideo Kojima, OD, The Matrix Awakens