Emio: The Smiling Man is faithful to the ’80s Famicom Detective Club games, to a fault

Of all the surprises Nintendo has delivered over the course of the Switch’s life, it’s fair to say the resurrection of the Famicom Detective Club was among the least expected.

The decision to remake the first two games may not have been the most seismic announcement in terms of its impact on the gaming community, but the fact that Nintendo took two Japan-only visual novels from 1988 and 1989, localised them and re-released them in 2021 was a huge deal as far as gestures go.

Not content to simply give two vintage Famicom Disk System text adventures a new lease of life, Nintendo has actually now decided to continue the Famicom Detective Club series with a brand new third game.

Produced by Yoshio Sakamoto (the director of Metroid and Kid Icarus), Emio: The Smiling Man is clearly no throwaway project. It’s also tonally quite different from most of Nintendo’s fare, with its trailer being one of the only first-party videos on Nintendo of America’s YouTube channel to have an age restriction.

Its presence, then, is an unusual one but a welcome one, and although it’s a brand new title it does attempt to mimic the gameplay mechanics of the first two Famicom Detective Club games. This is both to the game’s credit and its detriment, however.

The game initially revolves around the murder of Eisuke Sasaki, a high school boy whose body is found in a quiet part of the countryside. Eisuke has been strangled to death, and a paper bag with a smiley face has been placed over his head.

That isn’t the unusual thing. Well, it is, but not the most unusual. It soon emerges that Eisuke’s death is similar in many ways to that of some teenage girls who were found dead decades earlier, also with bags over their heads.

All the murders also seem to be making reference to Emio, an urban legend about a mysterious man who confronts crying girls, offers to help them then kills them before popping a paper bag onto their heads.

Who’s behind the murder of Eisuke? Is the same killer as before, or someone