This Famicom Detective Club game differs from the others in a number of ways. Firstly, for some reason, “Famicom Detective Club” is now the subtitle rather than the title. Secondly, there are a few tweaks to the dialogue system (which I’ll explain in a bit), but the big one is that this isn’t a remake of a 40 year old Famicom title – it’s a completely new game in the series, with the murder mystery story written by the same person as those games were all that time ago.

This time round, you’re needed to investigate the creepy case of a child has seemingly been murdered by a man wearing a paper bag with a face drawn on it, and is actually quite scary. As you uncover more, you find that it would appear to be linked to a series of murders from about 18 years prior (which, coincidentally, your boss investigated at the time) as well as the disappearance of two people, one of whom is the brother of the police officer assigned to the current case. It’s all a bit twisty and it’s really good.

Although it obviously uses the same game engine as the other two games, this one is improved a bit. The biggest change is the (optional) highlighting of words in your conversations that may link to questions or actions you can choose from the menu, and provide new information. This gets rid of most of the press-everything-until-the-right-thing-happens issue from the other games, although it isn’t a complete fix. Still, a massive improvement.

I can’t say much more about the game as it’ll ruin it for anyone who is going to play it, but it is much darker in tone than the first two titles, which weren’t exactly light to start with. If you like murder mysteries, this is an essential play.

This is actually half of a double pack along with The Missing Heir, as they were released together but are actually separate downloads. It’s obviously very similar to the other Detective Club game, and has some of the same characters. This one is set a few years before the other, however, at the start of your private detective career, and centres around investigating a murder in a high school (where you meet the girl who will become your partner in the other game).

The Girl Who Stands Behind of the title is one of those Japanese High School “7 wonders” things (a common Japanese trope), referencing a girl who some of the students swear they’ve seen or heard muttering behind them and are saying they’re the murderer. As with the previous game, there’s nothing supernatural here – it just seems like it might be. Also as before (or after, if you’re chronologicaling it) the plot hooks you, the art and acting are both great, and the slightly annoying choose-every-option story progression exists. Still well worth a play, though.

This is actually half of a double pack along with The Missing Heir, as they were released together but are actually separate downloads. It’s obviously very similar to the other Detective Club game, and has some of the same characters. This one is set a few years before the other, however, at the start of your private detective career, and centres around investigating a murder in a high school (where you meet the girl who will become your partner in the other game).

The Girl Who Stands Behind of the title is one of those Japanese High School “7 wonders” things (a common Japanese trope), referencing a girl who some of the students swear they’ve seen or heard muttering behind them and are saying they’re the murderer. As with the previous game, there’s nothing supernatural here – it just seems like it might be. Also as before (or after, if you’re chronologicaling it) the plot hooks you, the art and acting are both great, and the slightly annoying choose-every-option story progression exists. Still well worth a play, though.

I’d seen a number of reviews comparing this series of games to the Phoenix Wright games and let me tell you this – they’re not really much alike at all. Phoenix Wright has humour and puzzles and magic and stupidity and nonsense, whereas Famicom Detective Club is (despite appearances) rooted in reality with no magic or ghosts or stuff like that. And there’s no trial – just investigations. Which play out mostly like a visual novel.

The Missing Heir is one of two updated Switch versions of the very old series on the Famicom, and so previously only appeared in Japan in impenetrable Japanese. This game is about you – a young private detective who is suffering from amnesia following an attack – trying to figure out who he is, why he was attacked, and continuing the murder investigation that he was in the middle of when he lost his memory.

Although the game wasn’t quite what I was expecting, I did really enjoy the story, The plot really makes you want to find the killer, so it works as a proper murder mystery. The artwork and voice acting (Japanese only) were both great too. The “gameplay”, such as it is, was a bit frustrating however: Progression is mostly just making sure you say the right things to the right people in the right orders, and it’s here the game fall down a bit – you have to pretty much exhaust all your dialogue and action options, sometimes multiple times, in order to trigger the next action or event. It isn’t always clear which thing you need to say or do as often the reaction to what you do is unexpected. Thankfully, it’s worth it.