Welcome to our review of one of my favorite games of the year (and it’s only May!) – The Famicom Detective Club re-release on the Nintendo Switch. The title actually contains two games and is an adventure game duology developed and published by Nintendo for the Family Computer Disk System in 1988. The first entry, The Missing Heir, was followed by a prequel released the next year titled The Girl Who Stands Behind. In both games, the player takes on the role of a young man solving murder mysteries in the Japanese countryside. So, let’s dive in!
History!
Before we dive into the actual gameplay, let’s date the games first, since it’s actually pretty rare that such titles get the treatment these games got. .The duology was the first writing project for Yoshio Sakamoto before discovering greater success and recognition with Metroid. The games were inspired by Dario Argento’s Portopia Serial Murder Case (1983) and horror films. Critics reviewed both games positively upon release. Nintendo revisited the series on the Super Famicom with a remake of The Girl Who Stands Behind and an episodic Satellaview broadcast featuring a new story. Fast forward to 2021, and the games got localized for Western audiences. And I’m glad they did since I love games like these! Phoenix Wright, move over.
Famicom Detective Club
The gameplay is nothing spectacular since it’s basically a visual novel x adventure game. Games like these excel in excellent storytelling, and yeh, they both are great. If we look at the actual gameplay, the player chooses commands from a menu such as Ask, Examine, Take, Show, and Go to interact with the environment and characters. Character dialogue is displayed in a message box at the bottom of the screen. Commands are only listed in situations when they can be used. Some commands like Examine or Take place a cursor over the scene, which the player can direct to an item or area to interact with. At certain points in the story, the player is asked to answer questions and scroll through letters to write out an answer. The player may save their progress to return to the game later when the option is listed in the command menu. And cut! That’s a wrap. Yeh, that’s about it. So, what makes these games great?
The right order?
The Missing Heir is the first title I played and was also the first title released on the original system. Still, you can also opt to start with The Girl Who Stands Behind, which is actually a prequel to the original title. I personally prefer to play games in the order they are released, and I did the same with games like Borderlands and the Ace Attorney trilogy, even though they give you complete freedom to do otherwise. Without spoiling too much, I’ll give you a sneak peek into both titles;
Our story began in The Missing Heir, as our nameless protagonist (which you can actually name yourself) wakes up by a cliff, suffering from amnesia. Eventually remembering he’s an assistant detective, he teams up with Ayumi Tachibana, realizing they’re both investigating the murder of Kiku Ayashiro. Soon enough, the duo gets wrapped up in a legend surrounding the Ayashiro family’s treasure, one that not only threatens to resurrect the deceased but kill anyone who’d try stealing it.
“Though not especially original by today’s standards, these stories set a high-quality standard, and that’s attributable to Yoshio Sakamoto.”
Proving successful, the series got a prequel, released the following year (1989), called The Girl Who Stands Behind. Set two years before The Missing Heir, we find our protagonist taken in after his parents disappeared and trained by an investigator to become a detective himself. Tasked with looking into a murder at Ushimitsu High School, a place haunted by ghostly rumors for many years, the protagonist and Ayumi eventually discover connections to a much older murder case, one nearing its statute of limitations.
Remakes
Though not especially original by today’s standards, these stories set a high-quality standard, and that’s attributable to Yoshio Sakamoto. These days, he’s better known for working on Metroid and even the WarioWare games, but it’s actually Famicom Detective Club that marked his first experience as a scenario writer. Just a novice at the time, Sakamoto was approached by Nintendo’s legendary Gunpei Yokoi, the father of, amongst other things, the Game Boy. Acting as the game’s producer, Yokoi asked Sakamoto to create an idea solely based around a working title, Famicom Shonen Tanteidan (Family Computer Youth Detective Group).
The remakes got a visual upgrade, making the Ace Attorney games look like 8-bit games in hindsight. Everything feels alive (except for the murders happening everywhere) and interacts with the world that revolves around our nameless protagonist. Both titles feature full voice-overs, which interact with other people and look for clues much less ‘stale’ than with other Visual Novel/Adventure titles out there. I personally loved the suspense and unraveling of clues and details in both titles (I’m not done yet, so don’t spoil the ending!) and did not notice any aging problems we often see with re-releases of this kind, especially since it’s a pretty obscure title for anyone in the west.
Visual Novels
Both games are divided into eleven chapters. Each chapter consists of the protagonist arriving at a scene and then choosing how to interact with that location. Typically, players can choose to Talk to someone to ask questions from a list of topics, Call/Engage someone in the area they aren’t already talking to, Show a clue, Look/Examine the area, or Think/Remember something they’ve learned already. Sometimes asking people’s questions in that scene leads to new locations to travel to or new conversation topics being unlocked. Other times, you’ll need to ask the same question or take the same action multiple times in a row to get everything you can out of it. This often leads to a trial & error situation since the game does not highlight which options you have to pick to progress (challenge accepted).
That said, slight warning; since both titles are visual novels, both entries in the Famicom Detective Club can’t move on to the next scene unless you trigger the correct combination of decisions to do so. There are times when the choices you need to take are not intuitive at all, which leaves you feeling stuck when you’ve already determined where you need to go next. As such, you’ll end up mashing buttons to make the right decisions instead of making intelligent decisions. But hey, that’s how I finished most of my Phoenix Wright playthroughs as well!
Conclusion
So, should you play these games? Yes, you should. If you enjoy visual novels or like the Ace Attorney series, this game must be in your library. Yes, the Nintendo Switch has many visuals novels already, but only a few stand out like this title. If you like anime, manga, and murder mysteries, these games will be right up your alley. The artwork makes it almost if you’re playing through some interactive manga/anime crossover (hey, that’s the base of a visual novel!) The mysteries themselves play out in interesting ways, and there’s a decent amount of humor thrown in with the mild horror to balance everything out for a good time. Be warned, though; the upgraded visuals can make the murder scenes look a bit graphic over time, so don’t play this with children in the vicinity. Oh, and if you only tend to play one of the two, I encourage you to pick the prequel (The Missing Heir); it’s a little more streamlined in terms of gameplay.
9/10
Tested on Nintendo Switch
