Nintendo Solves Mystery Behind Creepy Emio Smiling Man Horror Game Trailer
Nintendo raised some curious eyebrows last week when it dropped a creepy, 15-second age-restricted trailer that appeared to tease a first-party horror game for the Switch. This prompted tongue-in-cheek comments about the direction of Luigi's Mansion 4, though we now know exactly what Nintendo was actually teasing—a new game in the Famicon Detective Club series, the first in the past 35 years.
The family-friendly game maker developed and published two Famicon Detective Club games in the late 1980s, including The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind, both on disk cards (that look similar to 3.5-inch floppy disks) for the Famicon Disk System. More recently (2021), Nintendo released remakes in the form of The Two-Case Collection for the Switch.
Now the series is finally getting a brand new entry called Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicon Detective Club, which will release to the Switch next month on August 29, 2024.
"A student has been found dead! His head was covered with a paper bag with an eerie smiling face drawn on it—much like the victims of Emio, the Smiling Man—a killer of urban legend who is said to place such a bag over his victims’ heads," the game's description reads.
Indeed, as longtime Nintendo veteran Yoshio Sakamoto explains in a follow-up video, the idea to release a new game based on the urban legend that Nintendo created came about while the company was working on the aforementioned remakes for the Switch.
"I thought that we definitely need to continue this series with a brand new game. I was sure it would be good, so we decided to do it. This is the first new Famicom Detective Club game in 30 years, and I was involved in everything, from the foundations of the plot to small details of the script and cutscenes," says Sakamoto, who is best known for directing the Metroid series..
While there are some horror elements, this is more of a mystery series. The new game puts players in the role of an assistant private investigator tasked with helping police solving a crime that's reminiscent of past unsolved murders.
The game is available to preorder at Best Buy in physical form, as well as direct from Nintendo in both physical and digital forms. Likewise, you can snag The Two-Case Collection (digital) from Best Buy (and also Amazon) if you want to get caught up on the series before the new title drops.
