Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken

The Good
Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken, which I'll call simply Portopia, is a game released in the very early days of the Famicom (NES) console by Enix, the company behind the Dragon Quest series. Because it was released only in japan, I didn't get the chance to play it until recently when an english fan translation came out.

This game is unique, and was even more unique when it came out. In the early 80's all kind of games genres were created, but most games remained action games. Portopia is the very fist japanese non-action video game. It was originally made for some kind of computer with a keyboard, in which you had to type command verbs. When porting it to the NES, Enix had to create "point and click menu" system so that the game would be playable with a controller at a decent pace. They tested this system to see how well it works in this game, before they created the Dragon Quest series which uses a similar system. So this is basically the first game that ever had actions taken from a "menu" instead of directly from the player. It is also one of the first games that have a complex story with some level of development.

Regardless of historical considerations, Portopia is a unique and fun game. Even though it was developed right before Dragon Quest 1 (Enix stuck almost exclusively to the Dragon Quest series after this game), it has nothing in common with that series, aside the point and click menu and the beeping letters. The game takes place in a real world japanese city named Kobe. You play the role of a detective, and you have to solve a murder case with the help of your assistant Yasu.

You'll have to travel to different areas of the city, find clues and ask questions to people to solve the mystery. In addition to this, despite the apparently dark story of the game, there is quite a lot of humor thrown in the game. They also made the game so that even if you do something wrong, there is no game over or unwinable situations possible, which is nice.

The mystery is still REALLY intriguing despite the completely outdated nature of the game. There is several major plot twists too which will give you goosebumps. I never played a game like this before, I know there is probably others but I just discovered a new genre with it (like japanese guys back when this was released...). I'll definitely look into other investigation games.

The Bad
This game has quite poor graphics, despite that they are entirely static pre-rendered screens. You can forgive it because the game was released in the early days of the NES.

This game has absolutely no music, only sound effects. But no music is probably better than bad music.

There is no password or save function so if you are stuck and you want to stop playing, you'll have to restart your investigation from the very start. This isn't as bad as it sounds because it's easy to remember what you have to do, and do it in a few minutes.

Even though the game is apparently very simple and limited (there is only a dozen of actions and dozen of locations), it's still easy to get stuck and have no idea what to do. Toward the end of the investigation to be honest it's almost impossible to guess what you have to do without a walkthrough. You have to use the same command multiple times for it to work, and you have to do commands that apparently fail order to advance the story.

Once you have solved the case and found the murderer, there is no reason for you to ever play this game again.

The Bottom Line
This game, although completely unknown even to veterans of the NES console, is interesting both on the historical plan and as a standalone game. It is unique and interesting to play, and the case is intriguing. It was one of the first game ever made with a click and point menu and a true story with major plot twists (something that ironically the Dragon Quest series lacks badly in my opinion). However be ready to get stuck, and you'll probably only play this game several times before not touching it ever again.