Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind (SNES) Playthrough [English] - NintendoComplete
494A playthrough of Nintendo's 1998 mystery adventure game for the Super Famicom, Famicom Detective Club Part II (ファミコン探偵倶楽部Part II うしろに立つ少女).
This game was a Japanese-exclusive release. I am playing the game with a translation patch made by Tomato and Demiforce. If you would like to play it for yourself, you can find the patch at https://www.romhacking.net/translations/850/
This late-gen SNES title is a complete remake of the original FC Tantei Club 2, originally released in 1989 for the Famicom Disk System as one of its few games that came on two floppy disks, though you had to buy the disks separately.
If you don't recognize that start-up scene, the intro with Mario and Luigi is actually a recreation of the FDS's boot screen. Such a cool nod to the game's roots that little extra bit is, along with the transition on the title screen. I mean, they even sampled the noise of the drive heads reading the disk. How neat is that?!
The game is a detective mystery-themed adventure, poured from the same mold as games like Snatcher, Princess Tomato, Portopia, Metal Slader Glory, Jinguuji Saburo and the like. If I didn't already know better, I would've sworn that it was a port of a PC-88 game.
You play as a high school student who has recently been taken under the wing of private investigator Shunsuke Utsugi. You join Utsugi at a crime scene where the body of a girl from the local high school has washed up on a riverbank. After investigating the area, you decide to investigate at the local high school. There you learn of a popular urban legend, the story of "the girl standing in the back," and since this is a murder mystery, the tale is of course relevant.
Since the gameplay relies entirely on its story, I don't want to discuss it any further than that, but I will say that it's well written and translated, and it kept me playing nonstop until I had solved it. If you like a good mystery game, this one is an essential pick on the SNES.
You wade your way through several scenes searching for clues and invading everybody's personal business in your quest for answers. The gameplay isn't novel, but it doesn't have to be thanks to its plot. There's a good reason why this is still such a highly regarded game in Japan thirty years later.
And clearly, Nintendo feels the same way since a brand new remake of both parts 1 and 2 is slated for release on the Switch sometime next year.
For as faithful as the SNES version remains to the 8-bit original, it's impressive how much work seems to have gone into making this a worthwhile upgrade. In many instances the graphics could pass for an early 32-bit game thanks to the quality of the art and the special effects used for the cutscenes, and the NES music has been heavily reworked and sounds great here. (Take that, Ninja Gaiden Trilogy!) These improvements make the game really engaging to play. It's all so much more cinematic now, far more than you'd expect from a Super Nintendo game.
If you are the sort that enjoys a game with a good story to tell, you'll have a good time with Famicom Detective Club 2. I did.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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