Strike-Out Scare

過ぎ行く春を惜しみながら

僕らの幕開けたあの夏

「心絵」(Road of Major)

While lamenting the passing of Spring

Our curtains were raised in that Summer

"Picture of the Heart" (Road of Major)

Huh, who'd have thought I'd be doing another Tantei Jinguuji Saburou ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou") review this year? The long-running detective adventure videogame series had two releases in 2018: Prism of Eyes was the eighteenth entry in the main series, while Daedalus: The Awakening of Golden Jazz was a new prologue spin-off, about a young Jinguuji as he set his first steps in becoming the hardboiled private detective we know from the main series. Neither game was perfect, but as a fan of the series, I'm always happy to see a new entry, as while the brand name is fairly well-known due being around for over thirty years now, none of the games are tremendous sellers or anything like that, so you never quite know for sure whether the series will continue or not.

The Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series started out on game consoles and handhelds and that's still where the main entries are released, but in 2003, a secondary series was introduced with the mobile applications, games designed for garakei feature phones in Japan.  If one were to call the main entries "novels", these Tantei Jinguuji Saburou mobile apps were definitely the short stories: far smaller in scale and bringing a linear experience that told hardboiled detective story of about two hours in four acts. This mobile application series was fairly popular: they released twenty-four of them between 2003 and 2010, following their own numbering seperate of the main series. While as "games", these applications were quite limited, the stories they told are usually quite entertaining as human drama-based hardboiled detective stories and there are even some big industry names connected to it: Nojima Kazushige of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X fame for example wrote a few scenarios for this series, and Kodaka Kazutaka, who would later create the Danganronpa game series, more or less started out his career as a game scenario writer with the Jinguuji Saburou application series. These mobile applications were also later included with the DS and 3DS entries of the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series, and Prism of Eyes actually consisted mainly out of HD-remakes of these mobile applications. The last of them (Yurameku Hitotose) was released in 2010, so they basically stopped making these games when use of smartphones became widespread.

So I was quite surprised when I learned that the mobile application series would continue on iOS and Android this summer. The new app Tantei Jinguuji Saburou New Order ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou New Order", 2019) was released on the last day of July to provide a main hub in which the new stories are distributed, and of course, the first game was also relased on the same day. It's been nearly ten years since the last Jinguuji Saburou mobile game, but when you play Giwaku no Ace ("The Suspicious Ace", 2019), it's like no time has passed. It follows the familar four-act set-up of the short stories and the development team behind the game also consists of familar names (including a veteran Jinguuji Saburou writer who also wrote Ghost of the Dusk, and character designer Junny). One evening private detective Jinguuji Saburou happens to become acquainted with Hayasaka Masumi on the streets of Shinjuku. Masumi is not only an employee of the baseball club Blue Kicks here in Shinjuku, she's also the (secret) girlfriend of Majima Naotaka, a starter of the team. Majima was praised as an ace two years ago, but since then fallen into a slump. He has been acting suspiciously lately, so Masumi wants Jinguuji to tail Majima to see what is going on. Jinguuji learns that Majima has been seeing Fuwa lately, a former team mate who had to quit baseball after an injury. Fuwa kinda disappeared after his early retirement, so Jinguuji is not only surprised to learn Fuwa is still around, but he also realizes Fuwa has a tie with Katagiri of the Matsuishi Group, a yakuza organization that specializes in illegal gambling. Meanwhile, an anonymous letter has also accused someone in the Blue Kicks of doping, which brings another light on Majima's suspicious activities.

Like I said earlier, these mobile application games are quite limited in scale in terms of story, so there's not very much to write about without spoiling everything. The experience is quite linear and passive compared to the (old) main series entries and the player is mostly just choosing discussion topics or selecting where to go next. The most 'thinking' you'll do is figuring out a PIN code twice. That said, I did enjoy Giwaku no Ace as an accessible, short hardboiled mystery story that uses its four-act set-up in a good manner. New events and clues keep popping up at a steady rate that keep the reader, well not guessing, as the story is fairly simple, but it's definitely enticing. You just wanna know what's really going on at the Blue Kicks, and the story does a good job at keeping your attention for the hour-and-half, two hours you'll be playing this, with each act bringing some new clues and questions. It's certainly nothing more than the old mobile application games brought, but nothing less either. If you're wanting for an old-fashioned Tantei Jinguuji Saburou experience, Giwaku no Ace is exactly what you're looking for.

So no, Tantei Jinguuji Saburou New Order: Giwaku no Ace is nothing special. This is the twenty-fifth entry in the mobile application series and they have always been following the same pattern, so no surprises here. That said, I found the two hours I spent on the game amusing, and it's certainly a worthy entry in this series in terms of storytelling. Giwaku no Ace's baseball setting is a fairly original one for the series (they had one about professional wrestling once) and while the application series has always been more focused on human drama than the main series, I think this entry has one of the more relatable casts of this series. I do hope that in the future, they'll release all of the New Order stories in one package on the Nintendo Switch or something like that, because it's really weird they decided to publish New Order in an episodic format after doing exclusively handheld/console releases since 2012!

Original Japanese title(s): 『探偵神宮寺三郎 New Order』「疑惑のエース」