#taro ninteno

[hopeymchope]

Famicom Detective Club: Taro Ninten and the Side Ponytail of Death

FAMICOM DETECTIVE CLUB! I’ve been playing the new Switch remakes of the original two games and really enjoying them. I decided to play them in release order.

The Missing Heir comes first and has our protagonist struck with a case of amnesia. He has no such memory issues in the second game, The Girl Who Stands Behind, which actually takes place two years BEFORE the first title. It’s a prequel, so there is some debate over the proper order to play them in. I feel like there are clear benefits to playing them in release order, though, and the amnesia plotline is just one of them. 

The protagonist is officially named by you, the player, but he does have two semi-canonical names. In promotional materials for the Switch remakes, Nintendo calls him “Taro Ninten.” In a Japanese strategy guide from the ‘80s, he was dubbed “Naoya Takada.“ I opted for the Nintendo-backed option, so I named him Taro Ninten for my own playthrough. And Taro is a GOOD BOY. We’re told he’s had a strong sense of justice ever since he was born, and he’s willing to say just about anything to convince people to talk when he needs information. Need comfort and care to lower your walls? Insincere flattery to butter you up? Spooky stories to make you snap and squeal? Mindless repetition of the same two words until you can’t take it anymore? Taro’s your man for any of it!

The secondary protagonist is your trusty co-investigator, Ayumi Tachibana. (She would go on to take the lead in the obscure THIRD game in the series, but... let’s just ignore that one for now. Until I start campaigning that IT get a remake.) Ayumi is your trusty confidant in the first game (TMH), but she tends to only show up for one scene at the end of each chapter. She later steps up to be a much bigger player in the second title (TGWSB). 

And in a shocking turn of events, Ayumi is rocking the Side Ponytail of Death. But she’s... she’s alive? For three games in a row?!?!

If Nintendo ever resurrects this series for a new entry, Ayumi had better watch her back...

I LOVE the art style and the animations in this remake. You can see some of the simple-yet-lovely animations in The Missing Heir in a post I recently reblogged. Everything is beautiful to look at, and there’s a great Japanese voiceover on top of it all. I confess that the soundtrack is far less appealing to me in The Missing Heir, but I kind of enjoy the music in The Girl Who Stands Behind so far. 

These are adventure games that play out kind of like visual novels at times. TMH is definitely more obtuse; if you opt to try it, you’ll probably need to reference an online guide at a few points. There are parts where you have to keep hammering the same option in the menu like four times just to cause something to change, and there’s one part where you’re supposed to move between locations and do certain actions at each location in a specific order to make the story advance. Yeah, it’s an old-school adventure game in that sense. Sort of like “Deja Vu” or “Shadowgate” with fewer puzzles and no chance of your character dying. No “pixel-hunting” here, at least. When you move your cursor around to look at and interact with objects, you can always clearly see the necessary targets.

TGWSB, on the other hand, isn’t nearly as difficult to step through. It’s typically pretty clear what you need to do to progress. If you can’t figure out what to do next, just trying every menu option at least once will usually get things moving again. It’s much more player-friendly that way. I haven’t finished the second one yet, so I can’t speak to the story really... but it definitely plays faster and better.

TMH’s big mystery is pretty fun, but there are also times when parts of it are obvious. I’d say that Danganronpa and Ace Attorney have much more convoluted murder mysteries in them. I figured out the culprit behind TMH very early on, and they remained my top suspect for the majority of my playthough (though I did get thrown off their trail for a short while). The final puzzle area did at least stump me for a little bit, though. 

And for now, I have just one suspect in TGWSB, but I have to wonder if I’ll be proven correct again...

Oh, and the second game really cemented for me that I ship Taro/Ayumi. Or Ninten/Tachibana. Nintenbana? Taroyumi? Whatever. They’re great kids who go great together and clearly are fond of each other. Like... just fucking kiss already.