Look at this beauty of 1985 graphics. In 10 years this game will turn half a century old, which is just wild to think about.
I probably heard of the portopia serial murder cases (PSMC) a long time ago. But it only caught my attention yesterday, and I don't even remember how or where... is that part of the mystery?
The game originally only came out in Japan, and was so influential that it led to the development of Dragon Quest (when Enix saw less actiony games were viable on the famicom, as it sold 700,000 copies) and got hideo kojima into making video games. it also features some now-famous names on it.
The picture is from the famicom version. The game originally came out for pre-PC computers and used a parser system where you typed in keywords to do stuff - finding the right combination of words was considered part of the game which just sounds tedious. The computer version had slightly better graphics, honestly, it just looks cute here.
so what's PSMC?
It's a non-linear, open-world murder mystery game where you and your assistant detective solve the death of a loan shark. All you know is he was found dead in a locked room, clutching the bloody knife. The game was specifically praised for its non-linear open-world nature and its plot twists (and you know I love a good plot twist).
It looks downright primitive by today's standards which kinda calls into question the open world nature. I mean, sure, it's open world. But it's also just a menu you open and click a button on.
It was far from being the first adventure game created, but it was possibly the first one made in Japan - the creator cited the influence of US adventure games for developing it.
The famicom version uses a menu of actions instead of the parser, which probably makes for more streamlined gameplay, since you have everything in front of you.
I can't say too much about the game because I'm not far in yet, I'm actually stuck so I decided to distract myself by writing this. As expected from games for the time, they really don't guide you. I have some leads, I have my paper notes, and I still can't seem to progress in any direction lol. It's definitely the kind of game where you have to try every action in every location.
Despite this it plays pretty well, and it pulls you in with minimal graphics - there's not even sound effects or music, just the clickety typewriter sound when someone is talking (which does get grating I have to admit). There's also minimal dialogue but what's there is endearing and it doesn't prevent me from getting a clearer picture in my head of the facts of the case. The english patch is definitely top-notch.
Fun fact: the game didn't have a save system on either the computer or famicom version, so it encouraged you to keep paper notes of what you did so that you could quickly catch up next time you play. I'm going to make the executive decision to pretend I'm leaving my NES running 24/7. Although restarting seems to be a mechanic, as the manual says if you're stuck, you might want to restart and see if you missed something...
The famicom version also added a dungeon-crawling/maze section which was pretty novel at the time, but also kind of useless. I mean, there's only one place to go in it as far as I can tell. But it's alright, it's not so tortuous once you get the hang of it. I guess back in the day it looked impressive.
If you want to play it for yourself you can follow the fan patch instructions here on romhacking: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/764/, realize SnesTool doesn't work on 64-bit OSes, find a random rom patcher on google that works with Javascript (best find of the decade), or if you trust me to upload files I uploaded the patched rom here for lemmygrad: https://gofile.io/d/B5Ye62. You will also need virtuanes to play it, they recommend it as the emulator because the rom has been expanded to fit the english bytes on it.
you should also download the romhacking folder. The rom is ready to play but the folder contains the english-translated manual (read it, it's short), and has some non-spoiler hints in a txt file.
Since virtuanes can run at any resolution but will stretch the image, I recommend you go into the graphics options and select a 4:3 resolution (google the list), then in the options menu select zoom and zoom as many times as you need to make the window fit your screen. That way you preserve the original ratio.
