Nintendo’s mysterious ‘horror’ game is actually a surprise revival

By Tomas Franzese Published July 17, 2024

Key art of The Smiling Man in Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. — Nintendo

Nintendo freaked everyone out earlier this month when it released a mysterious teaser referring to “The Smiling Man.” We’ve now learned that this isn’t quite a horror game. It’s actually called Emio — The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, and it’s the first new entry in the Famicom Detective Club series in 30 years.

The Famicom Detective Club series started on the Famicom Disk System in 1988 and received a sequel just one year later. It remained dormant until those two games were remade on Nintendo Switch in 2021. Now, Nintendo is bringing the series back with an entirely new game. Emio — The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is not a full-on horror game from Nintendo, as some were speculating due to how creepy the teaser trailer was. Instead, Nintendo describes it as a “dark, twisted thriller” in its adventure game series.

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In a developer interview posted to Nintendo’s YouTube channel, Producer Yoshio Sakamoto explains that The Smiling Man is an urban legend, a supernatural being known to “offer crying girls a paper bag with a smile drawn on it, in exchange for their life.” Emio — The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club’s store page reveals that players are assistant private investigators helping the police solve this crime after a student is found dead with a smiling paper bag over their face.

Gameplay from Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. — Nintendo

The protagonist of the previous Famicom Detective Club games returns, as does Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir’s Ayumi Tachibana. Although we don’t know much else about the story right now, Sakamoto believes the story’s ending could be quite divisive because “the script cuts right to the heart of what I had in mind from the start.”

Another surprising aspect of this teaser and reveal is that we won’t have to wait long to play this game. Emio — The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club launches exclusively for Nintendo Switch on August 29.

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A former Gaming Staff Writer at Digital Trends, Tomas Franzese now reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…

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