09/07/2025
Sin and Punishment – This Country Has Nightmares That Are Eating Its Dreams
Looking at this game’s cover is as fun as playing it. Just look at this cover. Yoji Shinkawa cosplay via fax machine. A dirty sci-fi anime palette from the better shelves of your local 1998. Giant kanji asserting itself over the confidence of tiny Latin letters. Everything about Sin and Punishment’s box art was designed to grab me. And the game itself? That was designed to be loved by me.
Treasure, the developer of Sin and Punishment, was founded in 1992 by former Konami employees who were frustrated with the industry's growing reliance on sequels and licensed titles. Their goal was to create original games with inventive mechanics and distinct visual identities. Their first title, Gunstar Heroes (1993), set the tone: fast-paced, mechanically dense, and visually maximalist. Treasure quickly earned a reputation for crafting technically ambitious action games like Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, Alien Soldier, and Bangai-O, titles that often prioritized pure gameplay expression over commercial viability. Treasure was more interested in prototyping gaming experiences, not polishing.
Sin and Punishment, released in 2000, arrived at the very end of the Nintendo 64’s lifespan, and pushed the hardware to its limits. Despite the N64’s aging tech and shrinking market share in Japan, Treasure developed a new engine specifically to realize the game’s unique blend of on-rails shooting and free aiming. It was never released internationally at the time, not due to content concerns, but because of its late release window and Nintendo’s shift in focus to the upcoming GameCube. The game’s English voice acting, though performed by native speakers, was included to give it a cosmopolitan, sci-fi tone for Japanese players, not for export. Localization would have required additional effort, and Nintendo chose not to invest in a fading platform. It wasn’t until 2007, via the Wii Virtual Console, that Sin and Punishment saw an official release outside Japan.
Sin and Punishment is an on-rails shooter, which means you're not in charge of tempo. It's a merciless conductor. The game has two verbs of aim and dodge but these mechanics have very little bearing with one another. Dodging does not affect your ability to aim and you don’t have to stop dodging to aim. Aiming with one half of your brain and dodging with the other the game demands you perform cranial mitosis to succeed in the incoming onslaught of obstacles. The missions are simplistic in action but the display of bombast is so enthralling every shot feels like life or death. On the surface the system seems as simple as point and shoot but the constant moving camera keeps things forever changing.The action never lets up, even in those moments of traversal between pitched battles the game keeps you firmly attentive with bonus life and point pickups. Some are impossible to attain without fore-knowledge of their eventual spawning, prompting you that this is a game you should play more than once. Asking you gently, if you’d like to master this game.
The game just refuses to ever give a moment's pause as its plot sends your characters into ever increasing world shattering situations. From all too familiar general militaristic sci-fi grey un-memorable corridors to a floating pavement twisting a turning over-head of the United States navy. This forever tumbling camera in the skies over what I assume is the pacific ocean had me firmly LOCKED IN, I could feel a sudden weightlessness as I climbed in and squatted inside my N64 emulator. It has been a horrendously long time since I hit that elusive flow state. Nothing in a while has had me so enraptured in its video-audio-tacticily so wholly and beautifully like Sin and Punishment.
As Brian Eno once said, “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature.” Sin and Punishment embodies that completely. Its jagged animations, blurry textures, and chaotic sound design aren’t flaws; they're the medium screaming under pressure. This is the sound of a game engine pushed to its limits, a console cracking under the weight of ambition. Every rough edge, every flicker of polygonal strain, is the signature of a game too momentous for the plastic it runs on. The kind of thing that makes you nostalgic for a time you weren’t around in.
The music is synths working on all cylinders, rolling drums and wailing digital guitars create a soundscape so ear-bleedingly 90s it’s hard not to love. The music is as unvirtuosic as the game's visuals. Together culminating in a spectacle so of its time and place that if you know anything about said time and place you could name at least 2 inspirations that have bought monopoly mansions inside these creator’s minds.
Sin and Punishment is steeped in mid‑Heisei‑era malaise, a collective anxiety born from Japan’s economic collapse and cultural fracturing during the 1990s and early 2000s. After the 1973 oil crisis exposed Japan’s vulnerability, the country shifted heavily into nuclear power to reduce its dependence on imported oil . The Japanese government then imposed a top down plan to shift the economy towards technological industries causing the 1980s “bubble economy”. Characterized by speculative real estate and stock market excess. It burst in the early 1990s, triggering the so‑called “Lost Decade” of stagnation, deflation, and soaring non‑performing loans . As Japan limped into the late ’90s, its national psyche was battered, not helped by severe events like the 1995 sarin gas attacks, which shattered public trust and intensified a widespread sense of fragility. Add Y2K jitters to a tech‑obsessed and tech-reliant culture, and you get a society both tethered to and terrified of its own innovations. The result: a pervasive mood of crushed salarymen, national self‑doubt, and fatalistic tension, and Sin and Punishment channels that exact mood through its narrative, visuals, and sonic intensity.
The awkward opening cutscene with beautiful early 3D graphics fumbles to introduce us to this story. Voice acting by people who just learned English and are just about to learn how to have emotions. The flashing start -> skip dashing any hopes of having perfect footage of these cutscenes begs the player to ignore this frantically told, confusing Evangelion narrative. Absolutely no time for exposition. The world is ending and only two teenagers who are almost in love can save it, maybe? The plot is obfuscated by the unrelenting action and I cannot read the Japanese only light novel. But the wikipedia page gave me a rundown so here’s one to understand what’s going on.
In 2007 the world is in danger of a looming, devastating famine. The genius scientists of Japan are able to create a genetically engineered species they farm for food in Hokkaido. One day these beasts of humanity’s salvation mutate and begin to ravage people. They are named “Ruffians”. The mutation spreads across the country infecting most of the human and animal populations. The nations of the world quarantine Japan and form the “Armed Volunteers”, specialising in defeating Ruffians and stopping any uninfected from leaving. The mysterious Aichi forms the “Savoir Group” to save Japan from both the Ruffians and the Armed Volunteers. After a purge, only Aichi, Saki and Airan remain.
Spoilers Begin Here —— But the game is so bad at telling its story I recommend you read to understand what's happening anyway.
While the Savoir Group attempts to escape Tokyo a battle between Ruffians and Armed Volunteers breaks out in Shinjuku Station. As the group fight their way out they come across Radan, an ex-Volunteer commander that was turned ruffian and is now a quadruped beast hunting a Volunteer commander Kachua, who in turn is bent on capturing Radan. Saki manages to push Radan off a building, causing Kachua to attack Saki with her strange powers. After the fight, Tokyo is swallowed up in a tsunami of blood from the mass-conflict and the pair fall in. In this crimson mire Saki is turned Ruffian himself and does combat with a fully formed Ruffian Kachua. Airan and Aichi are teleported away for safety from the ensuing Evangelion mech battle in bloodsoaked Tokyo to the Armed Volunteer fleet on route to destroy these two hulking beasts before they can do any more damage elsewhere.
On a ship in the pacific ocean Brad the leader of the Armed Volunteers mourns the loss of his commanders Kachua and Radan. Aichi and Airan teleport here as it's now the safest place in all of Japan. Brad announces the fleet is on route to Tokyo to destroy Saki. Airan fights through the bowels of the ship to stop them. On the bridge Airan and Brad fight, after knocking him through the bridge’s windshield Aichi reveals he was once one of her disciples, deserting her once he realized that the power he had been given by her blood isolated him from humanity. Aichi says that Brad passed this blood on to his subordinates, Radan, Kachua and Leda, to make friends for himself and create a sense of belonging. By the time of his eventual defeat by Airan, Brad eschews his Ruffian powers and dies along with the rest of the volunteers like a human as she goes on to destroy the entire fleet in the hopes of protecting Saki.
Once the pair reach the giant Ruffian Saki Aichi tells Airan the only way for him to regain his humanity is for her to enter his body and find his heart by revealing to him all her thoughts, memories, hopes and dreams. Airan refuses and Aichi sends her into a dream state where she is in a New York Subway car barreling through an artery. There she is politely asked to protect a manifestation of their love that hasn’t even bloomed yet on this particular battlefield, their son Isa. Inside the train after battling swarms of Ruffians she encounters Saki's human form surrounded by Ruffians. Saki criticizes Airan's choice of having a child as he believes the future is no place for children. Airan says their son will live in a different future. She then proceeds to shoot Saki before waking up in the present day and realizing she just shot the real Saki too. Appalled at Aichi using a child to deceive her, Airan questions Aichi's motives. Aichi reveals that her real enemies are not of this world and that she was grooming Saki to be her champion in this galactic fight. She sends Airan into Saki’s chest and the pair teleport away leaving Aichi in the Pacific.
The two find themselves on a beach in Hokkaido, the Ruffian’s homeland. Saki has partially regained his human form. Saki wants to ask Aichi about his transformation whereas Airan wants the pair to escape to America where a doctor can look at him. They’re ambushed by a ruffian and Aichi kidnaps Airan. Saki moves to rescue Airan and Aichi criticises him for not revealing himself fully to Airan, Saki rebukes that their hearts have grown closer despite everything, however there are still feelings and doubts they can't express to each other fully. Aichi transforms herself into Earth Mimicry in an effort to replace the real earth with one of her own design. Saki and Airan defeat Aichi and save the Earth. The pair decide they will continue the fight against the Ruffians and use Saki’s ruffian form to travel back to Honshu. Airan tells Saki what she saw in her vision of the future and that the pair will have a son.
Mirroring Y2K anxiety, the technology that saved Japan has come to destroy it. Especially during Act 3, when Saki becomes half Ruffian, more powerful, more efficient, and, by his own admission, more grotesque. He gains strength, yes, but at the cost of recognizability. The cost of being human. By interacting with this new technology we partially lose our humanity and ability to connect easily with others. Instead all connections are interfaced via this new technology.
Brad and his blood-bound followers embody another corner of the post-bubble psyche: the isolated, the directionless, the ones who mistake desperation for connection. What’s a messiah without disciples? What’s a failed man if not a lonely one in search of meaning? They drink down Aichi’s blood not for power, but for belonging. Even Aichi, prophet and antagonist, doesn’t want domination. She wants redemption, just not for herself. That’s too hard. She wants to upload it into someone else and let them carry the burden.
There’s a desperate hope in the idea of escape. To America. To the stars. To a version of Japan that isn’t crumbling. But escape is never clean. Airan and Saki dream of it anyway, fleeing to a future where maybe they can be parents instead of pawns. But they don’t get out. The game won’t let them. The final cutscene is a lull, not a resolution. The cycle continues. The war isn’t over. The baby hasn’t been born yet, but he’s already inherited the trauma.
Sin and Punishment ends the only way a game like this can: with the world saved, but unchanged. With its heroes alive, but altered. It is a game about surviving the end of the world, only to realize it will end again. Subtly asking you if you’d like to try again and get a higher score this time.