In 1988 and 1989, Nintendo released two murder mystery visual novels in the form of the Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind. A very notable deviation from the usual bright and cheerful Nintendo that we know, these games followed the path of a young man as he became embroiled in the investigation of various murders. These were some of the very early examples of visual novels and some of a few directly handled by Nintendo itself. A little more than three decades later, Nintendo not only decided to unearth these games and remake them, but offer them worldwide, and having looked at where they came from, the new Famicom Detective Club games might be one of the more interesting and feature-rich visual novels I’ve seen, especially if you’re down for a good mystery.
Review: Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir Reopens a Cold Case
Thirty-three years! That’s how long the
Famicom Detective Club games have been around, and also how long they have been totally inaccessible to Western audiences. A Nintendo franchise with two (and a half) entries, a remake and ten re-releases? Unreleased outside Japan? Yeah, for three decades.
That all changes now.
Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir, the first game in the franchise, joins its prequel in a worldwide release on Nintendo Switch. How does it hold up all these years later? Is it an effective remake? And are Western players going to enjoy it without that extra pull of nostalgia?