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This time I played through The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case remake. I played the original PC-88 version last year and it barely made the cut for my top 22ish games I finished for the first time in 2023. I mentioned that the Famicom version was the most well-known as well as having improvements over the PC-88 version, and with this remake being based on the Famicom version, how much did it change my opinion on the game?

(Note: You may have noticed all the images I used are in Simplified Chinese. This game has an English translation, but I played in Simplified Chinese for reading practice, so I can’t speak to the translation quality. For anyone interested in how much I learned, I encountered 315 new words in this game! It probably would’ve been more, but I kind of started relying more on the Japanese voice acting when I was barreling towards the end. So I got some listening practice too!)



It improved my opinion of the game! Not by any massive amount, I mean I still liked the original, but it smoothed out the issues with the original, understandable considering it’s one of the earliest(maybe even earliest depending on how you view it) menu-based adventure games. There’s less hard roadblocks to progress: it tells you when you’re repeating dialogue, the point and click cursor highlights when hovering over important objects, it limits your location choices at various points in the story, and you can get hints by winning at Black Jack, all small but important changes in keeping the player progressing at a good pace. These alone are enough for me to recommend this version over others even if they got translated, but there’s also new story content.

Spoilers for the new story content

There’s essentially a sequel to the original in this game, and it’s about as long as the original game. It’s pretty good, but there’s a bit of nostalgia pandering that’ll probably be lost on most people playing this for the first time in English. It’s also a little more difficult than the remake section, especially as there’s no hints in this section. Got stuck for a bit at one point. There’s one part in this section that surprised me that I loved. Before it, I thought the chances of some kind of rerelease/remake of the third Yuji Horii adventure game were very low. After that, I think those chances are slightly higher. …Or it could just be a nice surprise and not hinting at that at all, still cool either way.

Overall a solid remake that I’m glad exists so more people can experience this adventure game classic. A little funny this was released so close to the newest entry in the Famicom Detective Club series. That game is like the most polished/streamlined/high budget a traditional menu-based adventure game has ever been or may ever be, and this is a spruced up version of the oldest menu-based adventure game.



Oh, and one more thing. Going into this I knew the PC-88 and Famicom versions had a different ending section of the game, and while this is true, I feel like it was oversold to me a bit. They’re definitely different, but not as much as I was expecting I guess? They’re good changes, just not anything that radically altered my view of the original story. An interesting frame to view this remake in as well, a lot of good changes, but nothing that completely changed my mind from what it is: a solid adventure game. Portopia is still my favorite of the three Yuji Horii adventure games, and I’ll always recommend the fan translation of the Famicom version.