Opinions from the world’s #1 JB Harold Murder Club player:
This was maybe my #1 video game “cold case” . . . it’s taken me decades to solve it . . . there were no English language FAQs or walkthroughs or longplays available for it . . . until 2020, when this champion cracked the case, enabling me to finally, finally . . . cheat to win.
I recommend taking a peek at that guide I linked (while also heeding the trigger warning at the top*) so you can see the wild lengths the author went to finally solve this game. They actually had to analyze the save RAM to determine which event triggers are required to beat the game. And there are so many fucking triggers and they can be easily missed and based on my many attempts at beating this game you are very, very likely to find yourself in an unwinnable state without knowing it.
*I do not recall the how the incident mentioned in the trigger warning ties into the main case. I’m pretty sure it had no resolution for me. I have no clue why it is in the game, I really can’t believe it survived localization, maybe they figured this was clearly a game for adults and they were probably right considering the genre and the cost of a TG-CD. But the player will have to engage in some very unfortunate, disgusting questioning thanks to it, it is maybe the biggest strike against the game, and lemme tell ya: that is really saying something considering the bullshit I had to put up with to beat this.
It is so easy to fuck up and this game is so obscure that I am confident no one in America beat this game legit until recently. I will not believe it without proof. Gonna need some Polaroids or camcorder footage. The last time I attempted to solve this I reached what I believed was the end but could not get a confession out of the culprit even though I was 1000% sure they did it. I had the evidence, I had half the town pointing fingers at them, I definitely had my man. Yet I spent hours in my dark room cycling through every interrogation topic available but they never cracked. That was almost…uh…20 years ago. Also there’s a very good chance my memory is faulty and I may have fingered the wrong person back then. But if so that’s not my fault okay this game is very open ended and it also breaks easily, it’s not my fault.
So this is a detective game, right. And when you reach a certain, invisible evidence threshold you can request search and arrest warrants. In the town of Liberty you don’t simply bring people in for questioning: you have to arrest them, and they remain in jail for the remainder of the game, which is very likely to break things, as many of the required event triggers are things like “Ask John about Martha,” but if you arrest Martha too early John will just say something like “Heard she’s a jailbird now!” instead of whatever dialogue triggers the event. And most of the event triggers are not clues, they’re shit like “Oh, I know of him,” just total filler text that you’d never expect to be tied to beating the fuckin’ game.
I learned of what may be the worst trigger from the aforementioned guide: if you arrest the town’s doctor before asking the teen sandwich artist about him you cannot solve the case. The kid doesn’t even know the doctor! The fast food joint is easy to miss! Would you likely be fucked by this? No, you’re never going to play this game. But it definitely would have fucked me…without that guide.
This is Jack Nicholson from Chinatown, right. And that’s Groucho Marx in the “More like Murder Club” screenshot in my previous Murder Club post, right. And this is just Spielberg, right:
Or maybe it’s Freud, I dunno, what do you see? That guy spends the entire game hanging out in the graveyard. If you progress far enough he’ll help you search the cemetery for graves to exhume, kinda feels like maybe he’s spent years waiting for that moment, like it’s his thing. The game itself is deeply flawed but it’s a sterling example of adventure game comedy, stepping back and thinking about what the player and the NPCs are actually doing is the real joy of the game and made all the tedious bullshit worth it, to me. During the case’s incredibly prolonged climax half the town was in jail, I was shuffling them in and out of the interrogation room, showing them the same evidence and asking the same questions over and over and over, occasionally leaving the precinct and heading down to the bank or the seafood restaurant to see if the witnesses would finally, finally give me the required response to BANK EMBEZZLEMENT. I would watch a TV show about that, I think it would be pretty funny, is the golden age of TV over, maybe we could revive it with this pitch, a procedural about nothing.
Biggest road block was getting these contact lenses to spawn. I do not know how I finally triggered their appearance. Probably asking a housekeeper about a quiche for the 70th time or some shit. Took me two attempts to beat this game this week; I didn’t turn to the guide until pretty late in the first attempt and that was a mistake, I could not get the lenses to spawn, I missed some trigger and it took me a shamefully long time before I finally admitted defeat. Came back the next day, this time strictly following the guide, and, well…I still had difficulty getting the lenses to spawn. But they eventually did, yet I had more difficulty after that, it is all so fucking stupid, I am getting all sweaty right now just thinking about it!! Over half my World Record Speedrun was spent cycling through the same interrogation options, hoping this time it would finally trigger a confession, I seriously have no idea what caused that final dude to crack, feel free to study my speedrun, let me know if you can figure it out.
Actually you shouldn’t watch that, you shouldn’t play this game, I’d love if the sequels were translated though, I want more Japanese detective games for adults, I also really want a drink, oh yeah here’s the Bottom Line from Computer Gaming World magazine:
The PC Engine, much like computer, is not for kids. Sometimes.
