Given the current craze for relitigating murdersof yesteryear, the decision to dust off cold cases from the Nintendo archives makes perfect sense. Admittedly, these are not the salacious didtheydoits of Serial or Making A Murderer, but the cut-and-dried events of two Famicom visual novels previously untranslated in the west. Released in 1988 and 1989, the duology contributed to a wave of digital detectives (begun by Yuji Hori’s The Portopia Serial Murder Case in 1983) and pushed Nintendo down an uncharacteristically murky path. A world of stabbings, suicides and – gasp – smoking is far removed from the Mushroom Kingdom; it’s telling that Famicom Detective Club was the work of Nintendo R&D1, the home of the haunting Metroid and the chaotic evil of Wario. (If any mascot will go full Joe Exotic, it’s surely him.)