Nintendo Reveals Its Mysterious Horror Game And It’s Not What Fans Expected

A week after releasing a teaser for a new horror game seemingly called Emio, Nintendo has pulled back the curtain on the mysterious project with a full reveal. Turns out, it isn’t exactly what the creepy first trailer made it out to be, and is instead a new entry in the long-dormant Famicom Detective Club series. The game is officially titled Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club and is coming next month, on August 29.

When the first teaser for Emio dropped on July 10, gamers didn’t know what to think. The sparse fifteen seconds of footage showed a creepy man in a trenchcoat, wearing a paper bag over his head, scrawled with a smiling face. The vibe of the trailer immediately screamed horror, as did the unexpected age-restriction to watch it. Initially, fans theorized this would be horror developer Bloober Team’s mysterious project M, but now that seems not to be the case.

For those not familiar with the Famicom Detective Club series, I can’t blame you. The original games, The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind, were released in 1988 and 1989 respectively, and only in Japan. The series blends visual novel and adventure game mechanics in its stories of mystery and murder, and while they have a cult status, neither game was easily playable on modern hardware—until Nintendo released remakes of both for the Nintendo Switch in 2021, and released them worldwide for the first time. I suppose that should have been a sign the franchise could make a comeback.

Considering the cult status of the series, the first teaser for the game was a smart marketing move. Nintendo spent a week getting people curious about what Emio was, and now there are more eyes on the game than if the first trailer outright said this was a new Famicom Detective Club entry. Fans of the franchise are expressing their excitement in the reveal post on Nintendo’s X (formerly Twitter), but there are also those disappointed that Emio isn’t the more modern horror title they built up in their heads. If you want to get a taste of what Emio – The Smiling Man will be like, you can pick up the remake duology for $60 on Switch.

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