This is Part One of my series about Famicom Detective Club, where I'll be playing the Switch remasters of "The Missing Heir" and "The Girl Who Stands Behind," as well as 2024's new title, "Emio: The Smiling Man." Sign up for updates to be the first to know when Parts Two and Three are posted!

What's the difference between a "remaster" and a "remake?"

The Famicom Detective Club series was first published before I was even conceived. "The Missing Heir" saw original release on the Family Computer Disk System back in 1988. Suffice to say, the 2021 Switch release of the Famicom Detective Club duology was probably the first time in decades either of these games saw new players.

The original is old--not in the sense that old games can't be good, but in the sense that old games are hard to play. I don't personally know anyone who has a Famicom or where I might play the game as originally intended on its release console. And even if I did, I wouldn't get very far: the games were never released in English, and I can't read Japanese. Per the Nintendo store page for the Famicom Detective Club Two-Case Collection:

Originally released in Japan only, the Famicom Detective Club series has been localized with English text and modernized for the Nintendo Switch system. While the graphics, music, and sound effects have been recreated, players can also choose the original 8-bit soundtrack. Discover a piece of Nintendo history with the Famicom Detective Club series of games.

So, are these games "remakes" or "remasters?"

Generally speaking, when we talk about films, a "remaster" is the same film, touched up or refined with better technology, skills, etc. Remasters don't always include new content, but if they do, it's within the bounds of the original product. Think Star Wars trilogy rereleases that replaces Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen as Anakin's Force ghost.

A "remake," however, is a completely new product made from the ground up. Some remakes introduce major changes, while others go "shot for shot" to remain as close and faithful as possible to the source material. 2019's"live-action" remake of The Lion King isn't quite a shot-for-shot remake, but anyone who's seen the original 2D animated film will already be intimately familiar with the story.

As someone who's never played the original and likely will never be able to, my thought is that Famicom Detective Club sits in a midpoint between remaster and remake. The characters and plot appear to have been carried over completely faithfully, with little to no deviation in plot at all. The original music survives alongside a rearranged soundtrack for modern ears, plus a complete graphics overhaul that looks completely at home with contemporary visual novels. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the dialogue is copy/pasted directly from the originals. There are a bunch of side-by-side comparisons of screens from the originals and their counterparts in the Switch releases that I think further demonstrate how closely the remakes hewed to the source material.

Here's my biggest sign that these games are as faithful to the source as it gets: The story is the strongest thing about it because the gameplay holds it back. To be specific, the gameplay is a specific kind of slog that can be best attributed to Famicom Detective Club's role as a pioneer of the detective game genre. These were some of the first games to put players in an investigative role and follow the beats of a real (well, a "real") mystery investigation: go to a location, talk to a person about a specific topic, gather more information, repeat. In my opinion, the Famicom Detective Club games succeed more in atmosphere and narrative than in mechanics, and I can't fault a genre founder for not already knowing the control expectations that would solidify in the decades following its publication.

Well... okay. I have some story gripes later down the line. But let's take it one game a time. We'll start with "The Missing Heir."

Content warnings

Narrative hardware

Setting

It's important to remember that these games take place in Japan. Sounds silly to point out, given the distinctly Japanese names for people and places, but I want to be obvious and state it directly. There are a few specific cultural touchpoints in "The Missing Heir" that are worth noting, namely the emphasis on cremation vs. burial. Japan being an island, burial space is extremely limited, while the number of dead people increases every single day. Cremation is a Buddhist practice as well as a logistical precaution against running out of real estate for coffins. Although cremation has never been 100% universal and there have been pro- and anti-cremation movements throughout Japan's history, cremation was common across all of Japan by the 1980s, when "The Missing Heir" takes place.

Also worth noting is that the Switch releases use Western name order in the English translations. For example, your coworker is named "Ayumi Tachibana," meaning her given name is "Ayumi" and her family name is "Tachibana."

Anyway. On with the discourse.

The first ten

The protagonist and player character, identified by the dialogue box only as "You," is awoken by a stranger. To hear this man tell it, he found you while walking on a little-traveled street near Unakami Cliff and saw you there, unconscious. Worsening things is that you don't have any memory of how you got there, what might have happened to you, or who you even are.

The stranger introduces himself as Amachi and tells you that you're in Osato City, which doesn't ring a bell for our poor protagonist. But talking with Amachi via the menu options prompts a course of action: Maybe if you TRAVEL back to the site of the accident, something will jog your memory.

These menus are Famicom Detective Club's bread and butter. This is how you tell the protagonist what to do, where to go, what to look at, whether to grab something or just look at it. The menu options change depending on the current situation.

Seeing the cliff up close, my first thought was that if we did indeed fall from that height, we're lucky to be alive. The menu options open a little more with the LOOK mechanic: in some areas like the cliff, you can move the cursor around the screen to freely examine anything you can click on. There are no indicators of things you've already examined, nor are there icons to draw your eye to important points of interest. But once you've tried everything, something animated on the screen will prompt you to continue the scene: a girl appears at the top of the cliff and waves at you. Does she know you?

The first hour/on-ramping

She does! Meet Ayumi Tachibana, who claims to be your coworker at the Utsugi Detective Agency. She brings you back to the office as you bring her as up to speed as you can, on account of the amnesia. Once there, she trades you some tidbits about yourself: you met head detective Mr. Utsugi while on a search for your long-lost parents. By the sound of it, this case remains unsolved. She adds that you called to tell her you were meeting someone by the cliffside, but never called again or gave her an update, so she went to look for you based on information you left behind in a note: "Myoujin Village" and "Ayashiro."

Ayumi prompts you to remember. You're given the option to check for save data from "The Girl Who Stands Behind," or just start it fresh. If you're coming at this game from scratch, put in whatever name you like for your player character, and enjoy the vibey opening credits sequence, which takes you into Chapter One of the game proper.

The note names Myoujin Village. The protagonist notes that the cliff he fell from is equidistant between Myoujin Village and Amachi's apartment in Osato City. The station clerk directs you toward the Ayashiro Mansion, where you meet a man dressed like a butler. After some rigmarole about explaining your amnesia, you learn that you recently took a case from this man to investigate the death of Ayashiro family head and Ayashiro Corporation chairwoman, Kiku Ayashiro, age 78. Although the cause of death is reportedly heart failure, the butler suspects foul play, given that the very night she shared her will with her family, she suddenly passed away in her bedroom. Mr. Zenzou, the butler, doesn't know what was in the will because the only people present during the reading were Kiku's family members: two nephews and a niece.

It's around here that the remake starts showing its age. You may have noticed the yellow highlight on new, important topics of conversation. As a result, you may have come to believe that topics not in yellow are not important or have been exhausted. This is not true. You will have to repeat discussion topics with characters to get all the information you'll need to make progress, and it is not always clear which topics have opened more discussion. The yellow highlight is nice, but it's not foolproof.

Clicking on that yellow highlight prompts the protagonist to ask about the relatives. Zenzou gives up a bit more, but you'll have to keep pressing about the relatives to get anything detailed about them. But since the yellow highlight disappears, you might not think to do this if you're coming at this game from a modern control sense. For what it's worth, I think the game encourages you to pay closer attention to conversations in order to pick up on what someone might have more to tell you about.

Zenzou gives the protagonist the opportunity to examine Kiku's bedroom before speaking with the niece, Azusa. Seems Kiku lived a very, very nice life: her bedroom is a large, multi-mat room that looks straight out onto a gorgeous green yard with stone lanterns and a koi pond. Zenzou tells you about Akane, the housekeeper who found Kiku's body, and Dr. Kumada, who pronounced Kiku's cause of death. Since Akane and Azusa are both out right now, the protagonist decides to chat with Dr. Kumada. You can travel to Kumada's clinic with the TRAVEL command, which is frequently unlocked by exhausting the dialogue in a scene and serves as a low-key confirmation that you're ready to move on. To my knowledge, it isn't possible to fail an investigation in this game: the game is very strictly on rails and simply won't let you progress without gathering all the information you need.

At the clinic, the protagonist speaks with the doctor, who admits that he's also surprised by Kiku's apparent heart failure: she was old, sure, but she wasn't in so bad a shape that he worried she'd drop dead so suddenly. He's not surprised Zenzou is suspicious, but is convinced the old man is overreacting. Since it turns out Azusa Ayashiro is here with a sore throat, the protagonist jumps on the opportunity to ask her a few questions, too. But in the end, all this gets you is a direction to the temple where Kiku has been buried.

Trying to examine Kiku's gravesite brings you a dead ringer for Ace Attorney's beloved Judge--but this man is a monk, just trying to drive off "kids" who are interested in "the legend." He introduces himself as Genshin, the local priest, and relays the legend: the very thing the title credits warned us about. "It's said that when the head of the Ayashiro family dies in vain, they will resurrect from the grave and murder anyone they have a grudge against," Genshin tells you.

He attributes the legend to the local custom of burial rather than cremation, which is a cultural outlier in Japan. With a little prodding, Genshin cites a Sengoku-era story that may have been the legend's origin: Back in the feudal days, after the Ayashiro clan lost a major battle and were driven into a fort, the enemy warlord dug up the entire Ayashiro family ancestral gravesite. When the Ayashiro patriarch finally, decisively lost the final battle, he left behind this curse before being executed. When the enemy warlord returned home after the war, he suddenly and mysteriously died. Some say he went mad, while others say it was Ayashiro's ghost that came for him. The Ayashiro family certainly has all the makings of a J-horror ghost story.

But, Genshin says, it's all just folklore. Kiku Ayashiro is dead and buried, and there's nothing off or supernatural about any of it. Right?

Visuals

Right away, it must be said: These remakes are gorgeous. The environment art has this lovely soft-brush affect to it that I just adore. The sprites have been redone in a similar animesque style, lifting the series out of its 1980s origins and into the modern era of visual novel style.

The sprites are, like, halfway animated. Here, there's a breeze in Ayumi's hair and she blinks, but she doesn't have fullly animated motion--a deluxe version of a talksprite, if you will, but still very much a sprite. The whole remake has these lightly animated touches that breathe some life and visual interest into the game. A fish will jump from a pond in the background of Kiku's room. Foreground grass sways in the breeze at the cliff. Just little bits of calm animation that add to the ambiance without distracting from the experience.

Further mixing up the dialogue-heavy, textbox-over-sprite-over-background VN formula are the occasional comic-style cut-in and the more-than-occasional staged conversation: the protagonist is sometimes shown in scene with his conversation partner, or other characters will appear in the scene together while talking with you. Instead of another character looking at the screen and melding player/player character, the protagonist is given an extra degree of separation from the player to further reinforce that he is his own person independent of the player's thoughts and actions. We are experiencing his story, not writing it for him.

Gameplay

Controls, accessibility, saving

As a straightforward visual novel, "The Missing Heir" won't ask a lot of you controls-wise. There are options in the settings menu to turn voice playback on or off--I kept it off for my run, since the only voice track is in Japanese. If you'd like to hear the voices when you play, you can! You also have the option to turn just the protagonist's voice off.

There are also two versions of the soundtrack: the chiptune score that came with the original game, and a rearranged version just for the Switch release. I loved the arranged music and thought it all felt beautifully in line with the mood of each scene and event.

My favorite VN mechanic, the Text Log, can be accessed with the X button. If you want to refresh your memory about a conversation, just pull it up and read the conversation history back.

Saving, however, is more oblique. There's no "save" button in the menu, but saving is instead accessed through the "Quit Investigation" button in main gameplay. It's not terribly intuitive, and I wonder how much of this can be attributed to the original Japanese wording of this button vs. the translation vs. other factors. Actually quitting the game involves the "Return to Title Screen" button in the + button menu, which does helpfully prompt you that returning to the menu will cause you to lose unsaved data. It's annoying that the save mechanic is so oddly hidden, but rest assured that it does exist. I think it may really only be worded this way for a notable moment late in the game when the only way to get a character to snap out of their depressive state is actually to try to drop the investigation. A sneaky narrative trick, but one that frustrated me until I realized that's what I needed to do.

On loading the game, you are offered the option to recap the story so far. You'll then get a few paragraphs about what you've recently uncovered. I love this feature and wish more games would include something like it, though I get why it would be difficult to implement more broadly.

The Notepad

Around the time the protagonist finishes up with Zenzou, he remembers about his notes. The Notepad in the + button menu is where all your important information lives. Over the course of your investigation, you'll gather tidbits about people, places, and more. They're gathered under headings, normally of characters. The protagonist even has his own entry, where he collects information about his identity and his past movements.

One thing I particularly like about the notepad is that scrolling to a particular tidbit about one person will highlight the names of other people relevant to that tidbit. In this screenshot of a note in Kiku's file about her nephews and niece being present for the reading of her will, the names of these relatives are highlighted. It's a handy way to keep names straight and to guide your reading further, if you as the player are chasing down a particular lead and trying to get all your ducks in a row.

Remember

You'll also need to use the "Remember" mechanic from time to time as the protagonist recalls more and more of what he was doing prior to his accident. There are sometimes prompts for this--as in Ayumi telling you to try to remember what you were doing while back in the office--but I find it's never a bad idea to just check in with the remembering every so often. Beyond the protagonist reclaiming his lost memories, "Remember" also occasionally functions like a pseudo-hint mechanic. You might have to have your protagonist "remember" what time it is, or that you were supposed to talk to a certain character after running off on a separate tangent for a while.

Here, you can see my protagonist "remembering" that Akane isn't around at the house. Using this mechanic while in conversation with this train station clerk will open up a dialogue option to ask him if he's seen her.

Chasing down all the evidence in "The Missing Heir" is sometimes less of a narrative challenge than it is a logistical one. Especially for someone who considers themself a big fan of visual novels, navigating this flow of movement and conversation definitely felt annoyingly outdated at times. There's a lot of menuing in this game, and it doesn't all feel necessary. Because continuing a line of discussion sometimes meant diving back into previously covered topics (which aren't always newly highlighted when there's something new to talk about!), conversations sometimes felt stilted. Instead of sinking into the story, I had to be a bit more active in moving discussions along, which verged on annoying because of the often-obtuse menuing.

Speculate

At the end of each chapter, the protagonist will "Speculate" about the mystery back at the office with Ayumi. This is a review segment in which the protagonist will plainly state the facts of the case and make conjectures, draw conclusions, and plan next steps.

I think the Speculate feature improves in quality and usefulness over the game, but one thing I like about it right away is that it showcases Ayumi and the protagonist's teamwork. Ayumi takes on tasks the protagonist can't due to his other investigative obligations. In the earliest stages of the case, the protagonist is so busy unraveling things at the Ayashiro mansion that Ayumi takes on the task of investigating the Ayashiro Corporation, which is another important part of the mystery.

On a narrative level, I like that this frees the protagonist (and his notes) up to focus on things that immediately concern the mansion, especially once the bodies start piling up at an alarming rate. Ayumi is dealing with her side of the investigation completely independently of the protagonist--you don't have to micromanage her or tell her what to do. Even better, she will occasionally call at key points in your investigation to relay a key piece of information you couldn't have gotten on your own. I love and adore that Ayumi's independence comes through in both her characterization and how she augments your gameplay.

Mystery solving

Famicom Detective Club's mystery mechanics might confound players who are used to a modern approach to foreshadowing and clue-gathering. Pixel-hunters and flavor-text enjoyers may be disappointed: while you can examine almost anything in a scene, the protagonist rarely has more than a line or two to say about it. It's in these moments when I really felt the lingering vestiges of resource limitation on these titles.

When examining inconsequential things, the protagonist will often revert to a bland, "What a blue sky I can see from this window!" style of observation that doesn't add much to the investigation or the gaming experience. Even worse, where an Ace-Attorney-like would almost certainly take the opportunity to build character or intrigue by giving some details, however unimportant, about a potential clue, we are left to wonder. I chalk this up to resource limitations of the original Famicom: when space is at a premium, I bet flavor and fluff are the first to the chopping block.

Which is not to say that Famicom Detective Club has nothing resembling modern VN mystery solving. The game still uses the medium to its benefit: a notable moment in the first two hours conceals a clue from you until Zenzou moves out of the way, revealing a burn spot on the tatami mat in Kiku's room that had been previously obscured by character sprites. There are also key moments when the game tests your detective abilities by making you input a word to answer a question. If you're not keeping up, you'll be in the weeds guessing.

Endgame controls

At the end of the game, there is a surprise first-person Doom-style section where you must guide the protagonist through a pitch-black maze with little more than your wits and a flashlight. There's creepy music and everything. This section serves as a sort of Final Exam Boss to test your recall about key pieces of evidence--namely, the hand mirror and the cryptic note from Kiku's tobacco case. You're thrown into a new location with a puzzle to solve. To my knowledge, it's not time-sensitive, but the spooky music and sudden control shift may catch you off guard.

I did not love this section. It's not bad, but it's not good. The puzzle is fine. The experience of solving the puzzle is also fine. What I don't like is how it slows down the building action of the climactic buildup, even more so if you're not great with directions and/or rotating shapes. Luckily for me, I've always preferred fixed minimap orientations, so this puzzle was less painful than it could have been.

Narrative software

Story

There's plenty to dig into with this first installment of Famicom Detective Club. The mystery revolves around Kiku and her potentially mysterious death. Subplots shoot out from this central event: Will Kiku rise from the grave like the legend says? Did she really die of a cardiac event? And if not, who could be responsible? There are plenty of leads, both small and large, to track down more information about. In terms of classical vs. modern mystery, "The Missing Heir" hews very classical. All the clues and information exists within your grasp, and the final reveals are a matter of putting them together in the right configuration with a key piece of info or two.

And there is a lot of information to get through. Because the notebook organizes under the names of characters, it's sometimes hard to review information about a specific item that the protagonist isn't currently looking at or discussing with someone. This doesn't come up often, but there were a few moments when I wished I could check my own idea against something I'd seen a few scenes ago.

As far as whether the legend is true? Short answer: It's not true. Long answer: There is no ghost. Kiku is not rising from her grave. In fact, there are no supernatural elements in this mystery at all. Everything in the mystery is full explainable via purely mundane facts and a hefty dose of decades-long vengeance. Famicom Detective Club takes place in a realistic world with realistic science and explanations, like many fair-play Japanese mysteries.

Pacing

The pacing may strike modern audiences as a little odd. As I mentioned, Famicom Detective Club takes a different approach to finding clues than your average Ace-Attorney-like. Instead of seeding important context early on in the game--think "My Cousin Vinny" and learning about grits--the mystery unfolds more organically by way of talking to people who don't have immediate ulterior motives or agendas. People in this game come across relatively realistic: there are no outlandishly colorful personalities or gimmicks here.

The realism of Famicom Detective Club's people contributes to game feeling closer to "doing legwork" than "solving a mystery." The protagonist and Ayumi are chasing down leads, verifying alibis, and checking everyone's stories against each other. It's not always glamorous, but it's necessary work to get down to the truth. And there's no shortage of fun twists and turns along the way! I love that some conversations are both revelatory and steeped in family drama. Give me all the hot gossip about how your family members can't stand each other!

That said, the freeform nature of the investigation also holds the gameplay back, in my opinion. The loop of needing to Talk about things multiple times as they come up to the protagonist feels a lot like the writers presupposing that you are following their logic as opposed to discovering it, which can make for a frustrating experience if you aren't following. Some Travel triggers are hidden behind talking to a specific character after an invisible flag is raised elsewhere: for example, learning from the doctor that someone you want to talk to has just gone back home. Dr. Kumada won't mention this unless you've already discovered everything you need from other conversations.

If you hit a wall like this, you might feel like you don't know what to do because the game has no way to indicate what it is you're missing, OR what you need to do to continue once you find it. And god help you if you need to repeat an action or topic more than once to get everything you need. As a result, the game doesn't so much "drag" as it does "get muddled" in its own mechanics. I found just clicking on every dialogue option again in every conversation to be a best practice, just to maximize my chances of hitting everything I needed to progress... but that slowed me down so much that I sometimes forgot what it was I was looking for in the first place.

Fair-play mystery reveals

We're entering Big Spoilers territory here. I'm keeping spoiler tags on, but if you're sufficiently intrigued, I'd recommend stopping here for safety to play the game without getting mega-spoiled.

I think it may be helpful here to identify what I mean by "fair-play mystery." Per TvTropes, in a Fair-Play Whodunnit,

the puzzle of the story is entirely solvable before The Reveal or The Summation, if you've spotted the clues, and not just by various methods as a reader/viewer. The trick, of course, is having it solvable by the reader/viewer, but still difficult enough that they don't all figure it out long before the actual reveal.

Japanese mystery literature diverged from Western mysteries around the time we started hard-boiling detectives. A lot of Japan's mysteries stay within the fair-play bounds as a genre standard, and "The Missing Heir" is no exception: the puzzle itself is completely solvable, but requires you to think extra hard about what you're seeing, who's giving it to you (or who isn't giving it to you), etc. I would not characterize the reveals of "The Missing Heir" to be overly convoluted or obtuse for the sake of obscuring the final reveal. I will freely admit that I definitely didn't see it coming. This is in line with me reading Japanese mystery literature. I am never gonna get one of those suckers right on my first try.

In terms of character: A secret mission threaded through this game is the question of the protagonist's identity and missing memories. Given that the title is "The Missing Heir," you may already be putting two and two together...but you might also be surprised by the swerves the ending throws at you. But even if you're quicker on the uptake than I was/am/ever will be, guiding the protagonist himself to the ultimate realization is a game-long endeavor. Finding all the pieces necessary to draw the complete conclusion takes a long time, not the least of which is because you're nominally only at the Ayashiro mansion to help unravel the mystery of Kiku's death.

It's only once the murders pile on and your list of suspects starts to thin that the mystery broadens to include something beyond what you were originally hired on for. I really enjoyed this aspect of the mystery! I love an early question that runs parallel to the rest of the story, even if it fades into the background a lot of the time. When the payoff about the protagonist's parents finally comes around, I feel rewarded both for remembering this was a long-running question as well as for paying attention to the main story, since they end up being more closely related than anyone initially thought.

In terms of the mystery itself: Thinking of this case as "The Tobacco Murders" is the most elegant and spoileriffic way to consider the simplicity of the reveal. When a murder mystery revolves around a single family--and not just any family, but a very powerful one with preexisting lore about dead members rising from the grave to solve any remaining grudges Terminator-style--it's easy to get distracted by the people and their drama. That's what I think "The Missing Heir" does so well: the drama is a huge focal point in the investigation's early chapters. Who stands to benefit the most? Who's in charge of the company now? Which sibling was overshadowing the others the most? Would any of them kill over it? And when they all start dying, too, who does that leave on your dwindling suspect list?

The forensic facts of the murders don't really come into play until very near the final act, and the solution is mind-bogglingly simple: All the Ayashiro family were smokers. The protagonist learns about "hydrogen cyanide" from a library visit. These two facts are related. The reason autopsy reports were coming back with odd conclusions like "victim was dead before being stabbed, but we're not sure how" is because hydrogen cyanide leaves practically no trace. Lacing their tobacco with a poisonous gas that activates when heated is as devious as it gets--and also handily explains why Kiku's niece Azusa, the lone family member who was trying to quit, had to be outright strangled.

Another big reveal has to do with the true whereabouts of Akira, Kiku's great-nephew (for clarity: Akira is Kanji's son, and Kanji is Kiku's nephew). Fairly late in the game, you and Doctor Kumada end up exhuming Kiku's grave and finding Akira there instead. This feels like a huge reveal, especially given the aforementioned lore about the Ayashiro curse: did Kiku really rise from her grave and put Akira in it? Not only does this reveal more or less absolve Akira of blame in the other murders, it also prompts some of the first real remembering the protagonist does: Akira was the person the protagonist was going to meet, and his fall from the cliff was due to Akira attacking him. However... this doesn't answer any major question in the investigation. All it does it prompt new ones: What is Akira's body doing here? How did he end up in his great-aunt's grave? Where is Kiku's body now? Why was the protagonist going to meet Akira? Why did Akira attack him? And, as Ayumi points out when you run all this by her: If Akira really wanted to kill the protagonist, why not just throw him into the sea since Unakami Cliff is a well-known suicide spot?

"The Missing Heir" is excellent at prompting more questions than it answers throughout the course of the mystery. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, and a lot of leads to track down on top that. But with that said, I never felt like I was overwhelmed with detail. Sure, at times I felt like I was treading water at best given the sheer number of people who died on my watch, but I think that adds to the mystery's mysteriousness. You have such a hard time explaining anything in the beginning that in the rush to get information, you as the player are likely to read past critical details that only make sense in retrospect or on a replay.

Character

Mechanically, I think an amnesiac protagonist works really well in this game. We're introduced to facts and new people at the same rate as the protagonist, reducing the As You Know potential of the early game. Ayumi never dumbs things down or tutorializes in a story-detracting way. The protagonist never asks her to. The protagonist, while persistent and definitely quite smart, also strikes me as a person whose teenage brashness and/or inexperience lead to some pretty startling blunders. I'm thinking specifically of how he doesn't even blink at potentially alerting the murderer to the hunt by simply telling a character that someone is a serial killer (click for a mild spoiler image).

It's true that the protagonist is only the central figure of this narrative insofar as he is the player character. Make no mistake that this story revolves primarily around the Ayashiro family and their internal drama. Ayumi and the protagonist are only involved to help unravel it. I love that their teamwork is solid enough never to detract from the mystery, nor does it fade completely into the background. Ayumi is an indispensable member of this team of two and axing her from the roster in Smash Melee is a travesty.

Theme: Truth and lies

It becomes especially apparent in the last chapter of the game that "The Missing Heir" is interested in the idea that every piece of information contributes to make up "a" truth. When Motoko comes clean to the protagonist about his past, she brings up torrential bias in news media as a contributing factor to why her mother Grandma Sawako never told the protagonist the truth about his past. In a mystery VN, lies are nothing new. People embroiled in conflict, especially in fiction, will often lie to protect themselves or others. It's your job as the protagonist/reader of mystery fiction to sift through it and figure out what can be objectively verified. But objectivity only has so much to do with how "a" truth as written can ruin lives--after all, the protagonist's parents' lives are ruined by malicious misinformation that becomes the dominant narrative despite being untrue.

This is a theme that I think continues through the bulk of Famicom Detective Club. What I like about this series is that it takes the story beyond a reporting of facts and involves the messiness of human characters and life in the real world. For example, you learn relatively early on that Azusa is deeply in debt, and her extortion of the culprit leads to her ultimate downfall. Same with Akira in another direction. This character's trust in Kanda gives him enough misguided confidence to take out loans from the yakuza, which sets the stage for a very unfortunate turn of events.

Ending

I've already said I'm never guessing a fair-play mystery right on the first go. In keeping with that, I was surprised by this ending. In my defense, I was fully on board with Kanda being the murderer, but it never occurred to me that Kanda and Amachi could be the same person! It never ceases to amaze me how swiftly my critical thinking skills leave me when I'm playing visual novels or reading mysteries. I guess I just like experiencing the story more than I did trying to solve it? Or maybe I'm loath to distrust people, especially when they introduce themself as an ally.

This isn't to say that accurately guessing the murderer is a necessary step in either beating or enjoying the game. If you're like me, it's completely possible to just enjoy being swept along by an experience that you don't so much run as you do point in a general direction. "The Missing Heir" contains no dialogue options to shape your protagonist's personality--all you do is guide the conversation with topics, and his personality just is what it has always been. If you prefer a more active role in deduction, I'd very much like you to let me know how long it took you to pin the culprit and what gave it away to you. My hope is that it's not too far into the game that it renders the experience moot, but just far enough that it still felt satisfying to figure out.

Game taxonomy

Star Points

Narrative: 8.5/10. The structure of this mystery is excellent. Every reveal led into another question, and every lead brought me to a new topic for conversation or investigation. I love the nested layers of character, deception, and motive that underpin almost every aspect of the mystery, even (and sometimes especially) because a lot of them are really fucking petty. Rich people gonna rich, I guess.

Gameplay: 3/10. I have to be honest. The outdated and poorly telegraphed methods of remembering a lead, finding the person it's about, asking them about the lead, and repeatedly menuing to the same topic of conversation wore on my nerves. It's my least favorite part of Famicom Detective Club. The maze at the end is a sudden departure from this and it's a fine bit, even though it's not very hard, but I can't really recommend the game solely for that one puzzle.

Style: 8/10, specifically for the remake. I can't speak to the originals since they were never released in the West and I can't read Japanese, but I CAN tell you that these remakes are beautiful to look at. The restyled music is excellent, the mini-animations breathe life into an otherwise static medium... it's wonderful.

Innovation: 7/10. I will give this game points for pushing the boundaries of mystery games at the time it was originally made. It's not the game's fault that mechanics and optimization have marched on, after all. I don't know if I'd call Famicom Detective Club as a series a must play for fans of the genre, but I'd definitely recommend mystery/detective fans check out one or two just for the experience of early mystery VN gaming.

Satisfaction: 8/10. I felt like everything in "The Missing Heir" wraps up nicely, not the least of which is because most of the potential suspects get serial murdered over the course of the game. The main questions are all answered, the big reveals all make sense, and there is justice to be had in putting it all together. A perfectly good mystery.

Tetris-Higurashi Rating Scale

I give this game a +8. Most of the game is straightforwardly reading text. It's navigating to the correct menu to unlock all the text that gets to be tricky.

Fave five

Favorite character: In this title, it's Zenzou. It's so transparently clear that he loves the Ayashiro family, warts and all, and his caring nature prompts him to not only hire a detective, but fully cooperate with him all the way through. Should the Wrightverse attorneys get their hands on the Ayashiro case once the inevitable suit against the culprit is finally filed, Zenzou will be the defense's dream witness.

Favorite location: Unakami Cliff! It's so beautiful and dangerous, just how I like them. The sunset variant is particularly lovely, though I do like how each environment background has different versions for day, dusk, and night.

Favorite piece of evidence: The talisman case the protagonist inherits from his mother, which protects him from getting sliced by the culprit in the final confrontation. I live for that kind of poetic shit.

Favorite song on the soundtrack: I'm a big fan of the track "Deepening Mystery." I love the calm but thought-provoking vibes. Feels like downtime, but not rest.

Favorite joke: Japanese detective fiction and/or film fans! Can anyone confirm who Doctor Kumada is impersonating for this joke? My best guess is that he's referencing the 1986 film Atami Murder Case, which features an actual Detective Kumada and was released just before "The Missing Heir" originally came out. I've never seen this film though, so let me know what you think.

Flinn first played Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir on Nintendo Switch as part of the Two-Case Collection remake bundle. The games are also playable on Nintendo Switch 2.

Famicom Detective Club™: The Two-Case Collection for Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Official Site

Buy Famicom Detective Club™: The Two-Case Collection and shop other great Nintendo products online at the official My Nintendo Store.

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