Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir

Front covers of Disk 1 and 2.
Developer(s)	Nintendo R&D1 TOSE Mages (Nintendo Switch Remake)
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Director(s)	Satoru Okada
Producer(s)	Gunpei Yokoi
Artist(s)	Tetsuji Tanaka
Writer(s)	Toru Osawa Nagihiro Asama Yoshio Sakamoto
Platform(s)	Family Computer Disk System, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo Switch
Release	1988 FDS Disk Card 1 JP: April 27, 1988 Disk Card 2 JP: June 14, 1988 Game Boy Advance JP: August 10, 2004 Nintendo Switch WW: May 14, 2021
Genre(s)	Adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is an adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the Family Computer Disk System, with the first disk released on April 27, 1988, and the second on June 14, 1988. Production was directed by Gunpei Yokoi, and the scenario was written by Yoshio Sakamoto.

The game was ported to the Game Boy Advance in the Famicom Mini series as a single cartridge in 2004, and became available on the Virtual Console in 2007 for the Wii and 2014 for the Wii U. The game was never released outside of Japan. A prequel, Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind, was released in 1989. A third game was released in 1997 for the Satellaview.

Remakes of the game and its prequel are scheduled for release on May 14, 2021 for the Nintendo Switch, including a western localization for the first time.

Plot

The game is a standard command-style adventure set in a secluded mansion with a tense atmosphere like a horror movie. The player chooses from a set of text commands to interrogate, examine, or move. The scenario was written by Toru Osawa and Nagihiro Asama, based on the concept by Yoshio Sakamoto. The story begins with a man named "Amachi" discovering the fallen protagonist on the ground near a cliff. The protagonist discovers that he has lost his memory, and after recuperating, he revisits the cliff and meets a young girl named Ayumi Tachibana. He learns from Ayumi that he is an assistant detective investigating the death of Kiku Ayashiro, and heads over to the nearby Ayashiro estate located in Myoujin village. The Ayashiro family owns a huge plot of land passed down from generation to generation, but there is a strange saying in the village that the dead will return to life to kill anyone who attempts to steal the treasure of the Ayashiro family. As the protagonist investigates the mysterious death of Kiku Ayashiro, he discovers the terrifying connection between this saying and the serial killings which take place.

Voice cast

• Megumi Ogata as the protagonist.
• Yuko Minaguchi as Ayumi Tachibana.
• Akio Otsuka
• Riki Kagami
• Taiten Kusunoki
• Michitaka Kobayashi
• Yū Kobayashi
• Tomokazu Sugita
• Atsuko Tanaka
• Shigeru Chiba
• Ben Hiura
• Shin-ichiro Miki

Reception

Reception

Review scores

Publication	Score
Famitsu	(FDS) 29/40
Yuge	(FDS) Positive

Japanese readers of Famimaga voted to give the game a 19.30 out of 25 score in a poll.

Legacy

A second game in the series, Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind, was released by Nintendo in 1989 for the Family Computer Disk System. It was later ported to Super Famicom and Game Boy Advance.

A third game in the series, BS Tantei Club: Yuki ni Kieta Kako, was released for the Satellaview in 1997 by Nintendo. The game is made up of 3 chapters; the first was broadcast from February 9–14, the second from February 16–21, and the last from February 23–28. The game was later re-broadcast several times. It is currently not possible to obtain and play the game in its intended form, because the Satellaview service was discontinued. Some parts of the game use streamed voice acting, which is not part of the game code, and the game was never ported to other consoles.

In September 2019, remakes of the game and its prequel were announced by Nintendo for a 2020 release on the Nintendo Switch, with Mages developing it. They were later delayed to 2021.

During their February 17, 2021 Nintendo Direct broadcast, Nintendo announced that both remakes would be available for the Nintendo Switch on May 14, 2021 as part of a worldwide release. This marks the first time that the games would be localized internationally under the titles Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind.

External links

• Famicom Tantei Club on the Virtual Console official webpage (in Japanese)
• Famicom Detective Club at NinDB