Nintendo’s recent cryptic teaser that asked who Emio is caused quite a stir in the community. Fans had a wide range of guesses about what this could mean and who the offputting character was. Fans guessed everything from new IPs to a Nintendo Switch 2 launch game. But the company has already revealed what all the hype was about, and it’s a new game in the Famicom Detective Club franchise. The new entry is called The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club and is coming to the Nintendo Switch.
Although the teaser made us think this might be a new IP that we won’t get to see for a long time, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Smiling Man will come out on the Nintendo Switch on August 29, 2024, and is the first addition to the Famicom Detective Club series in the last 35 years.
For the uninitiated, the Famicom Detective Club games focus on murder mysteries and originally came out on the Famicom Disk System way back in the 1980s. The games were mainly released in Japan but found an audience worldwide as well. The series has had two installments so far, both of which got remakes for the Nintendo Switch. The third game in the franchise, The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, follows the first two in terms of story.
Players will fill the shoes of a junior private investigator in the Utsugi Detective Agency who is working with the police to solve the crimes of the eponymous Smiling Man. The game starts off with a student being found dead wearing a paper bag with a creepy smile drawn on top. This is very similar to killings seen 18 years ago when Emio had become something of an urban legend.
The player has to find clues, interrogate people, and find connections and evidence to solve the mystery of who Emio is.
