Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir

Famicom Detective Club holds your attention from first the first frames and to the credits, even if you know the genre like the back of your hand. Every piece of the story works in a tandem, creating a dark and twisted adventure with believable characters. Every session with Detective Club is an adventure of its own, and when you put the game down, it's hard to not delve on what will happen next.

The fact that Nintendo would remake Famicom Detective Club at all might be one of the most welcome and unexpected surprises of this year, and they’ve turned out remarkably well—dated puzzle design notwithstanding. An art style that combines the best parts of visual novel stills and fluid animation helps to lay the groundwork for a pair of truly engrossing detective stories. The way each mystery unfolds as you piece together the clues is nothing short of masterful, with the atmosphere, nuanced storytelling, and emotional underpinnings to tie it all together beautifully.

The Famicom Detective Club games are excellent, highly traditional detective mystery stories. Some might see that as "quaint", "old", "antiquated" or even "simple." That's simply our cultural experience talking. The reality is that these games are highly relevant to the Japanese understanding and interest in the genre, entirely modern, and the core storytelling experience is so modern it's easy to forget that they're remakes of NES-era classics. Throw in some of the most stunning VN art from the very masters of the genre, and this little collection of two titles has every chance of becoming one of the sleeper hits of the year. And, who knows? If it finds the audience it deserves, it might just inspire Nintendo and Mages to make a new one. I'd be up for more Famicom Detective Club.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir & Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind provide us with two remarkable stories. Furthermore, artistically the game is impeccable, which is due to its polished anime-like graphics as well as its tracks and voice acting.

Mystery fans and visual novel fans alike would be remiss not to check out this brilliant revival of a classic title, but they must be prepared with an extra set of thinking caps that otherwise shouldn’t be necessary.

By today's standards, there's nothing revolutionary about Famicom Detective Club, but that doesn't stop both games from being really solid experiences. Despite a bit of predictability in the plots, both stories were incredibly engaging and nothing short of a complete joy to play through. It's easy to see that Mages really took a lot of pride in crafting a quality remake here, since every little detail shines through. If you're at all curious to see what these games are about, you owe it to yourself to give at least one of them a look.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir succeeds at being a modern remake of what once was a lost piece of Nintendo history. Alongside its prequel, it’s a memorable revival of a true trailblazer in console adventure games. The storyline is well written, featuring layers of mystery and speculation that are worth investigating, and the polished visual style makes the classic adventure relevant to modern genre fans.

While it sometimes feels its age in terms of gameplay, Famicom Detective Club is nonetheless an excellent Visual Novel. The two proposed surveys are pleasant to follow while the visual rendering impresses. Its sublime artistic direction, mixing the new and the old, is practically worth the detour on its own. And too bad if the whole thing sometimes lacks interactivity, because the essential is there. We take pleasure in following these budding detectives in their discoveries. Too bad these very successful remakes do not benefit from a French translation despite their prohibitive price.

And it would be a shame that after reopening the Famicom Detective Club "case", Nintendo does not follow up on the saga, because here is the material and there are the characters to give life to a long and beautiful series of detective stories.

With an amazing story full of murder and mystery, Famicom Detective Club is a remake worth investigating.

Despite a few now-outdated design decisions, we were positively surprised how well these games hold up after over 3 decades. The effort that was put into the updated presentation together with the well-written stories and characters make this a package well worth your time.

This classic piece of Nintendo history lives up to its promise of an engaging and thrilling mystery, but the gameplay can sometimes feel too dated. [Issue #4, p.54]

If you're a fan of visual novels, adventure games and/or mysteries, I think you'll enjoy what Famicom Detective Club has to offer. Just be prepared for the gameplay to test your patience! [Issue #53 – July/August 2021, p. 19]

Famicom Detective Club: The Two-Case Collection is a masterful remake of two original games that are over thirty years old and which now become accessible to many more players around the world. If the original gameplay formula is largely left untouched, the audiovisual presentation is given a thorough renovation that brings it closer to a contemporary experience. This detective adventure is now fit for a modern audience and it's well worth the hours spent on it.

Until now, Famicom Detective Club duology had never been officially released to the western market. Now these adventure games from late 80’s are here with new graphics and full localization, and they’re well worth your time. [Issue#253, p.68]

Many outside of Japan didn't experience Famicom Detective Club before, which is a true shame considering just how good these visual novels are. Each has a compelling story and is well worth playing, especially now that they both have been remade with such care and attention. Anyone who enjoys adventure games or mysteries should definitely give these a try, as they easily rank among the best of the hidden gems on the Switch.

Famicom Detective Club has a wonderful art style, intriguing characters, and compelling mysteries to solve. However, the one aspect that lets the game down is its repetitive gameplay aspects.

The Famicom Detective Club duology is, at its core, a beautiful set of remakes that will please players that can look past some of the dated mechanics.

The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind, while mechanically similar, offer pretty different takes on the detective game. Do you want to slowly unravel the conspiracy behind a powerful woman's death in a quiet village? Or, would you rather chase down a murderer in a high-octane, spooky thrill ride? The former is better executed, but both are worthwhile opportunities to dust off your magnifying glass.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is impressive if only for the fact that a new lick of paint and a few tweaks here and there leave it feeling so close to a modern game in so many ways. It will at times betray that illusion with some frustrating progress-blockers, but for the most part this is a great choice for fans of adventure games or even just a good mystery story. Mages has done a fantastic job of updating the game’s presentation, too. This isn’t the kind of game we’re used to seeing from Nintendo, particularly when it’s reaching into its classic library, but I’m glad it’s finally available to a wider audience.

Despite some progression issues in the first half, Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is a gorgeous adventure that is well worth experiencing on Nintendo Switch.

The Famicom Detective Club games are gorgeous to look at and provide interesting supernatural mysteries for you to uncover. If you like manga, anime, or murder mysteries, these interactive visual novels will be right up your alley.

Nintendo and Mages does an excellent job taking one of the first visual novels and one of the rarest Nintendo games and bringing it to a modern audience with fully revamped art, an orchestrated soundtrack, and fully recorded voicing. The mystery is a blast to solve and the characters are delightfully terrible at hiding things which gives the whole thing a classic Murder She Wrote vibe. Lack of replayability may make the price point hard to justify for a 30-plus-year-old game, but the experience is excellent, especially for people like me who have always wanted to play this but never had the ability to.

Frustrations aside, Famicom Detective Club still manages to captivate all the same. It’s a miracle that these two Nintendo classics were ever localized, let alone as a global simultaneous release with these remakes. It was a blast to join the Detective Club after so many years, and I can only hope one day we can see a similar remake for the series’ 3rd game, sales permitting. If you’re at all a fan of either the Visual Novel or Japanese Adventure game genres, you owe it to yourself to experience this vital part of their history.

Famicom Detective Club is not terribly complicated by modern standards. The games show their ages in spots, and can be frustrating to figure out, but this is absolutely the kind of murder mystery stories I’ve been looking for. The true strength of these remakes is how they made me feel nostalgic for an era of video games I wasn’t even alive during. They recapture the feeling of classic ADV titles while modernizing just enough of the experience to keep the games accessible. The mysteries offered are both fresh, yet comfortably late ’80s. Bigger budgeted “Visual Novels” are always welcome, and a push for them to be played worldwide is even better. I think Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind is the stronger of the two, but this is a great package all the same. If you’re fine with some tedium here and there, this is a glowing recommendation from me.

Despite an arcachic trial and error gameplay, Famicom Detective Club is your best chance to know two Nintendo classics.

Despite the not-so-popular price and the game mechanics of their time, the Famicom Detective Club series is an interesting work and a video game restoration operation that could open the door to other similar episodes. Rebuilt from scratch, with beautiful two-dimensional graphics and enriched by the dubbing of all dialogues, the two games retain intact their charm and are proposed to new generations in a truly sumptuous. The genre of belonging, however, is to be taken into account, since the developers have done very little to modernize the playability of the work, which is - in the long run - slightly cumbersome. Although the interactivity is not comparable to the most modern investigative games, Famicom Detective Club has an undeniable vintage charm. Despite a few too many stereotypes, The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind are two stories that deserve to be experienced.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is a captivating window not only into Nintendo’s past, but also into the past of adventure games as a whole. While it retains some of the gameplay frustrations that plagued the genre back in its earlier days, The Missing Heir offers a gripping murder mystery at its core, wrapped in video and audio upgrades that freshen up the experience for a whole new generation of would-be detectives.

The Famicom Detective Club remakes are living history, and a chance to catch up on what you missed out on, either by being too young, or not being able to speak Japanese. Though The Missing Heir has its faults, those faults are largely down to "that's just how games used to be", and it's held up remarkably well all the same.

If you want a high-quality visual novel, a good mystery story to follow, and a time capsule of game design all in one, the Famicom Detective Club remakes feel like a solid call.

Famicom Detective Club is a blast from Nintendo's forgotten past, a package made with love and respect to the original material. These are nice mystery novels, somehow bogged down by old game design and an archaic UI. Still, we recommend them to all the fans of the genre.

Famicom Detective Club is not the new Ace Attorney that many were hoping for, that much is clear. The new graphic design makes a huge (and obvious) step forward compared to the original, but the investigation mechanics really feel the weight of the years and might not meet the favour of less patient players. Two good stories, but condemned to a lethargic narration despite their objective merits. Recommended for visual novel lovers and hardcore Nintendo fans.

In this type of game where 95% of the time we are reading, knowing the language is important in order to fully enjoy the adventure. If you can read in English, Famicom Detective Club brings you two games for the price of one and two interesting stories on Nintendo Switch.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir really shines on its art, sound and, more than anything else, the story. In what should've been most important though, gameplay, even with several improvements, it still shows its age. It falls short of being a masterpiece but it is still a solid addition to anyone's Visual Novels library.

For the most part, you’re in for a few solid crime-solving sessions in the shoes of an absolutely unqualified amateur detective – a role most of us are pretty familiar with playing (in life, and in games). There are mysteries to be found in these solid remakes of the old Famicom Detective Club series, and they are well worth solving.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind are two very important works for the visual novel genre in general and for Nintendo in particular. We want more daring exercises like these, because the extravagance and sophistication of its proposal help us to interpret the current context. Know our past to understand the present and glimpse the future. Probably not the best visual novels on the market, but they are two methodological examples whose story now boasts a merit that is difficult to calculate. Something very difficult was achieved with so little: creating an atmosphere of mystery surrounded by two gripping stories, well-written characters and a suspense that is not resolved until the very end. The shadow of the detective club is very long.

As the first entry in the Famicom Detective Club series, The Missing Heir gives you a chance to experience a key point in visual novel history. Piecing together this mystery and seeing where it leads has this undeniable appeal. However, while the new graphics offer a beautiful leap in quality, this remake doesn’t alter some of the more archaic aspects of the experience, or even attempt to make the characters or story more interesting to keep with modern times. If anything, it’s an enticing way to look back at the history of this franchise, which I’m glad to have as it satiates my curiosity about this classic series. Unfortunately, it doesn't make more of an impact than that.

The two games released under the name of Famicom Detective Club are successfully delivered outside of Japan 33 years later. The prices are a bit higher than I prefer, I recommend it to anyone who likes Visual Novels.

I don’t think anything is gained by playing either Famicom Detective Club that can’t be gained by watching a playthrough because the puzzles are at best throwaway and at worst barely present. These are inherently flawed games, but if somehow the idea of slogging through menus isn’t a turn off there are absolutely two great, down to Earth murder mysteries to be experienced here.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir feels like a top-notch mystery novel at its best moments. However, its limited mechanics can cause a bit of frustration, but if you stick with it, it’ll be worth your time.

It's wonderful to have the classic Famicom Detective Club games remade with modern artwork and with full Western localisations, but the flow of these visual novel detective stories is distinctly lacking and infuriatingly obtuse at times. Still, we can hope this is a sign that Nintendo is considering a truly modern revival of the Detective Club series in future.

Overall, Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is a rather dated game both in terms of mechanics and story, but it somehow manages to use both of these largely to its advantage to create a rather charming, if cheesy, experience.

Famicom Detective Club bundles two games for 60 euros. The fact that these are old games meant only for the Asian market is clearly visible. The dialogues are in Japanese and the games are clearly polished in various aspects. Still, if you like a good story or two and feel the connection with your inner detective (and have a lot of time on your hands) these games scream for you. The writing of Metroid creator Yoshio Sakamoto only justifies the price even more.

The Famicom Detective Club titles are a piece of Japanese gaming history that has finally graced the western markets. They can be a milestone in the visual representation, a great example of what future visual novel titles can become. They can also be a great nuisance to players, due to their archaic investigation and progression mechanisms that shout their age loud.

The Famicom Detective Club series is a good introduction to graphic novels. However, the scope that these remakes could have is limited, due to the absence of several important localization elements.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir does show its age at times, but that’s part of the game’s history and charm. The updated art style and great voice acting only help to make the experience better. The game, as well as its prequel, is an acquired taste, but fans who come into the game with proper expectations will find themselves a fun adventure.

Overall, the Famicom Detective Club games are interesting gaming curiosities from an older era of gaming. If you are more of a Nintendo historian, then you will find these games fascinating. For everyone else though, they are an acquired taste.

Quotation forthcoming.

Being a detective was tough business. I was subjected to some uncomfortable murder scenes, countless awkward encounters, and my skills needed to pin down the culprit were stretched. But I had a lot of fun along the way, just more so with the prequel, The Girl Who Stands Behind. And taking a trip down memory lane with games that are deep within Nintendo’s provocative history was fascinating. I implore fans of visual novels to sit tight and sink your teeth into both stories – just be careful of who might be standing behind you watching your every move.

Both Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind are fascinating remaster projects. They both tell deep, interesting stories and they both look and sound like state-of-the-art visual novels, but both games play like a clunky edutainment adventure game you might find on a primary school computer. Despite the ceaseless issues that I have with the clunky gameplay, I enjoyed my time with both The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind. The narratives are compelling enough for me to brush aside some archaic gameplay flaws, and both games have a tremendous aesthetic that hooked me from the start.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind are both well written adventure games with engaging stories. A striking visual overhaul does a great job of bringing both games into the twenty first century, without a doubt. Though this isn’t enough to do the same for the gameplay, which could have used a bit more streamlining.

While this remake is a welcome look into Nintendo's diverse game productions and provides a story that'll satisfy most thriller buffs, some aspects hold it back from being a must-buy.

Thankfully, both Famicom Detective Club games stand on their own even thirty years after their initial release.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind are well-told and compelling mystery games presented in a loving remake that improves on the original titles while sometimes remaining a little too faithful to outdated designs.

It’s both an astonishing and exciting time in gaming to see Nintendo willing to dig into their archives and bring back a retro adventure title. It’s even more exciting that they took the time to release a full-on remake. With that said, there are still elements of the game such as the menu control that feel antiquated today. So much so that it will likely turn off players who weren’t expecting it or have no familiarity with this era of gameplay. Those interested in playing an older style adventure game will be pleased with Famicom Detective Club’s twists and turns.

I enjoyed my time with Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir. It tells an interesting story that puts interesting twists on some expected tropes. While there were elements of the UI that showed their age, once I got used to them and played the game on its terms, I was able to work through it without much issue. With the story taking its time to get interesting, though and being fairly short at that, it is hard to call this a must-play. Still, for fans who have been interested for many years, finally getting to play this in English is a treat.

Those with an interest in Nintendo's history should undoubtedly pick up Famicom Detective Club, and those simply looking for a couple of good mystery yarns will have a fun time with it too. Just be aware that it’s a very linear adventure, and once you’re done there’s very little replay value.

There's a good game here - two, indeed - with fascinating stories and enough things to enjoy overall, but only if you're a patient, analytical soul with the perseverance of a merry Sherlock Holmes. Otherwise, Famicom Detective Club is up there with the most frustrating things I've ever done, and I worked in the Civil Service.

You also need to feel invested in the mystery. This is a narrative, through and through. You’re not going to be able to ride out the campaign with gameplay fun or cute character moments. If you’re so wrapped up in the story that you’re okay with just trying a bunch of menu items for a while? Or when you’re stuck because the language quirks aren’t so easily fixed with localization? You’ll be fine.

Anyone that has been dying to play the series or doesn’t mind a standard graphic novel will probably enjoy playing The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind. New players may also enjoy it, but don’t be too surprised if you find its guessing game gameplay to be too frustrating to enjoy things.

A beautiful-looking game, which is perfect for those with a lot of patience and a natural desire to uncover the truth. I just wish it was more interactive and allowed to do more than just ask questions.

An interesting historical curio that has its charms, and some surprisingly good storytelling, but the old school gameplay and very modern pricing are not a good combination.

I hope that this remake/revamp is the precursor to a new follow-up sequel being announced. There is still a place for the Famicom Detective Club. The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind look and sound great thanks to the remake, but unfortunately, the game portion is an unintuitive, obtuse slogfest. Both games work well as murder mysteries; the story and characters are a highlight. Players who want to play the games as close to the originals as possible will get a kick out of this piece of Nintendo history, while it might frustrate everyone else. Regardless, it is nice to see Nintendo give a classic game such a lavish update.