Lay Down the Law

Chun-Li is the first lady of fighting games and one of the strongest female characters in video game history, but it’s easy to forget that she works in law enforcement. After all, she certainly doesn’t dress like a typical cop and she spends most of her time participating in street fights. Aside from being an expert martial artist, Chun-Li is an undercover Interpol agent working to topple the criminal organization that was responsible for her father’s death. She also seeks justice for a number of girls who were kidnapped and brainwashed by the syndicate. Chun-Li strongly believes in protecting the innocent, and her investigating skills and penetrating eyes make her an ideal undercover agent. She’s a skilled firearms user, but she prefers to dispose of her enemies with her powerful legs. Now that’s what I call versatility.

Mappy doesn’t get a lot of love from modern gamers, but he was one of Namco’s most popular characters in the 1980s. The premise in Mappy involves the titular policemouse venturing his way into a house full of cats in an effort to retrieve stolen goods. Accepting the assignment will likely result in death, so he deserves tremendous respect for his unmatched bravery. The fact that Mappy risks his life to recover cheap knock offs of the Mona Lisa speaks volumes about how strongly he must feel about maintaining law and order. He has also been known to steal cheese, wedding rings, and baseballs that clearly don’t belong to him, so it’s entirely possible that Mappy’s not as altruistic as I’m making him out to be. In any regard, he deserves a place on this list for being one of the earliest examples of a video game police officer.

Jonathan Ingram was one of five officers chosen to maintain law and order on Earth’s first space colony. His time as a “policenaut” was cut short by a space walking accident that left him stranded for 25 years. The cold sleep module in his suit preserved his youth, but Ingram awoke to a world that had left him behind. The murder of his former wife eventually motivated Ingram to return to the space station and seek the help of Ed Brown. Brown had been Ingram’s partner in the LAPD and was one of the five original Policenauts, but he had a family to look after and was getting too old for this shit. The relationship between Ingram and Brown makes Policenauts feel like a buddy cop movie – which is appropriate since they are mirror images of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. The game may as well have been called Lethal Weapon in Space.

As an undercover cop working with the Hong Kong Police, Wei Shen infiltrates a dangerous criminal triad known as the Sun On Yee. His natural aptitude for police work made him an ideal candidate for an undercover assignment. After being accepted into the triad, Shen helped police catch drug dealers, street racers, and serial killers. He even managed to solve a series of kidnappings. Shen graduated at the top of his class at the academy and was held in high regard by his superiors, but he was also prone to violent outbursts and greatly motivated by personal vendettas. He’s not above murdering or even torturing the bad guys in the name of justice, but he’s also driven by a strong moral code and shows steadfast loyalty to his friends and family regardless of which side of the criminal spectrum they fall on.

There was no way that a character who was named after a paddy wagon wasn’t going to be mentioned on this list. Patricia Wagon is a cybernetic peace-keeper, a member of the Tangent City Police Force, and a really rad chick. Her assignment in Mighty Switch Force is to ward off alien monsters and recapture the escaped Hooligan Sisters. She’s armed with a trusty pellet gun, and the siren on her helmet gives her the ability to shift the dimensional position of items in the environment. Chasing down renegade criminals is admirable, but what makes Patricia special is the fact that she inspires the mischievous sisters to change their ways. The criminal justice system should make an effort to reform convicts rather than simply punishing them, and Patricia’s treatment of the Hooligan Sisters exemplifies this.

Frank Tenpenny is voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and serves as the primary antagonist in San Andreas. He’s basically the quintessential “bad cop” of gaming. Tenpenny is a corrupt officer in the Los Santos Police Department. He accepts bribes from gang members, regularly commits acts of police brutality, and even kills his own partner for cooperating with internal affairs. His influence eventually reaches critical mass, and he’s brought in on charges of racketeering, corruption, possession of narcotics, and numerous sexual assaults. However, since all of the prosecution’s witnesses were killed, Tenpenny is acquitted of all charges. He eventually got what was coming to him, however. After he was run off an overpass, Tenpenny was mobbed by homeless people amidst riots that were ignited in the wake of his acquittal.

Aya Brea looks amazing in an evening dress, but she’s defined by her stellar police work rather than her looks. Mere months after joining the NYPD, Aya witnessed a heinous creature named Mitochondria Eve kill almost everyone in attendance during an opera performance at Carnegie Hall. The rookie cop spent the next six days chasing Eve around New York. Along the way, Aya developed strange abilities and learned that she had the same mutated strain of mitochondria that Eve possessed. Her powers allowed her to heal herself and create energy blasts, but Aya had to use them sparingly since they made her become more like Eve. Aya eventually finished the fight with Eve on Liberty Island and enlisted the help of the U.S. Navy to destroy a strain of rapidly evolving mitochondria that threatened to enslave all humanity.

With three critically-acclaimed games and a Hollywood motion picture to his name, Max Payne is possibly the most famous video game police officer of all time. The gritty NYPD cop acts as an undercover agent for the DEA, but he becomes a vigilante following the murders of his family and his partner. Max is framed for these murders and takes on the role of the fall guy as he works to clear his name. Death and betrayal follow Max through his neo-noir adventures, and his grip on reality is questionable at times. Max is a guy who could be a complete badass, but he spends as much time delivering cynical soliloquies as he does fighting bad guys. His cynicism is not entirely unfounded. After his wife was killed, Max ended up falling in love with a contract killer who was hired to eliminate him. If it wasn’t for bad luck, he would have no luck at all.

Leon is really put through the wringer in Resident Evil 2. His police cruiser was smashed almost immediately and he was forced to wade through a sea of zombies in order to get to the police station. After arriving at HQ, he found most of his fellow officers have been killed. He then uncovered a vast conspiracy and learned of experiments that had taken place on the outskirts of the city. During his investigation, Leon also met a sultry spy named Ada and took a bullet to save her life. He later blew up a giant alligator in the sewers and used a rocket launcher to blast a mutated monster to oblivion. It’s safe to say that he accomplished more in a single day than most officers will in their entire careers. His achievements are even more impressive when you consider that it was his first day on the job as an officer on the Raccoon City Police Department.

Chase McCain is a central figure in the LEGO City toy line, but he’s fair game for this list since he made his first appearance in LEGO City Undercover. He might not be the most obvious choice for the number one position, but I figured he deserves recognition for actually behaving like a police officer. While other characters on this list are busy killing zombies or participating in fighting tournaments, Chase is gathering evidence, meeting with informants, going undercover, and arresting the bad guys. This isn’t to say that he doesn’t have any excitement in his life. He’s involved in numerous high speed chases, he foils a bank robbery, and he even takes a trip to the moon! LEGO City Undercover is one of the most underrated games of its era and the closest things we’ve gotten to a Grand Theft Auto game from a cop’s perspective.