In light of a recent report about The Matrix creators the Wachowskis having approached Konami about a game based on the film made by Hideo Kojima, the Metal Gear creator has taken to social media to reveal that he was never told about this happening. In his post, Kojima wrote about having met the Wachowskis before the Japanese release of The Matrix, as well as his attendance of the premiere screening of the release.
“I was surprised to see on social media that the Wachowski sisters had ‘offered me a Matrix game project!’ back in 1999,” wrote Kojima. “In all these 26 years, no one ever told me such a conversation had taken place.”
Kojima also revealed that he had spoken with the Wachowskis through email at the time, with both sides being fans of each others’ works. He also noted that, while The Matrix hadn’t yet been released in Japan, he had already seen the film in theatres in the US.
“When the Wachowskis came to Japan for promotion, I believe I met them three times,” Kojima continued. “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.”
Ultimately, however, Kojima also admitted that he likely wouldn’t have been able to take on a project based on The Matrix, since he was busy with his work on Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty at the time. However, he does note that he would have figured out a way to make it happen if he had known about the meeting to begin with.
“At that time, I was already extremely busy with MGS2 and probably couldn’t have accepted the offer right away,” he wrote. “But if someone had told me, maybe there could’ve been a way to make it work.”
Earlier this week, former vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment Christopher Bergstresser had spoken about this meeting between the Wachowskis and Konami. While the company said “no” at the time to a Matrix-based project by Kojima, Bergstresser noted that Kojima was also present at the meeting.
“The Wachowskis were big fans of Kojima,” said Bergstresser. “So Kazumi Kitaue, Kojima, Aki Saito (who still works with Kojima), and I were at the Konami HQ, and we got a call from the Wachowskis, who wanted to come in and meet with Kojima. So they did!”
“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?’ Aki translated this into Japanese for Mr Kitaue, and Kitaue just looked at them and told them plainly, ‘No’. We did still get to enjoy the Matrix Japanese premiere and afterparty, though.”
While a game based on The Matrix by Hideo Kojima ultimately never happened, the film franchise did end up with a few games – Enter the Matrix, The Matrix Online and Path of Neo. There was also a more recent tech demo based on The Matrix, dubbed The Matrix Awakens, that was used to showcase the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5.
