How to Dial a Murder

 「この世に光がある限り、俺はいつでも蘇る」

『仮面ライダーBlack RX』

 "As long as light exists in this world, I will always come back to life"

"Kamen Rider Black RX"

I'm done with Requiem of the Golden Witch, which I means I only have one more episode to go in my Umineko no Naku koro ni playthrough! People who have played this episode already will probably know why I didn't write that much in the Umineko no Naku koro ni playthrough memo this time. Anyway, it's likely I'll be able to finish the main game in April and hopefully I'll write a review soon after that.

Once you're really started diving into mystery stories, you're bound to come across them sooner or later: interesting looking titles that aren't in print in anymore. In some cases you're lucky, and there are still enough used and/or translated copies in circulation, but in other cases, you're expected to pay a very hefty sum to purchase a rare copy or there aren't even any copies in circulation. And I'm just talking books here, a relatively simple medium: in principle, you only need to get hold of a book. Things become a lot more difficult when it comes to out of print mystery video games: you don't only need to find a copy of the game in question, you also need to have the right console and peripherals, and it can take a lot of resources to gather necessary everything to play a certain game.

But when it comes to unavailable mystery fiction, few things are as difficult to get a hold of as feature phone mystery games. Before smartphones and the associated apps and games took over the world, there was an interesting market for Japan-exclusive 3G feature phones (garakei) in the first decade of the twenty-first century, with many games developed exclusively for feature phones. These games however could only be purchased and downloaded on a feature phone via the network provider, and only worked on those models. Smart phones eventually replaced feature phones and these old feature phones and their services aren't supported anymore, meaning that those games have been lost: you can't purchase or re-download them anymore (and there are no physical releases like cartridges) and the phones themselves aren't made anymore. Even if you find an old feature phone with some games on it, it's hard to say if you could actually play them as often the games did need to signal back to the network provider occassionally (I know I had a phone with a game I couldn't play anymore after cancelling my plan and it couldn't catch a signal anymore). Among the many exclusive feature phone games were of course also mystery adventure games, making them one of the hardest types of mystery fiction to find: the games only exist digitally, need a working digital license and haven't been available for purchase for many years, and the hardware (specific feature phone models) haven't been supported for many years either.

I was not alone in thinking that feature phone games were basically a lost treasure cove, covered by the waves made by smartphones and few had hoped to ever see them again, which is why a lot of people were overjoyed when publisher and developer G-Mode started releasing ports of their feature phone games on the Switch under the title G-Mode Archives. Last year, I discussed the mystery merits of the game Herakles no Eikou III - Kamigami no Chinmoku ("Glory of Herakles III - Silence of the Gods, 2008), which is one of the games G-Mode resurrected for the Switch and I've been enjoying more of those games, but unfortunately, it appears G-Mode never made mystery adventure games themselves (though if you like horror novel games, try the three Senbazuru games!). 

And then G-Mode surprised me again last month by announcing that they'd start releasing feature phone games from other publishers too under the title G-Mode Archives + and that they would start with the Tantei Kibukawa Ryousuke Jikendan ("Detective Kibukawa Ryousuke's Case Stories") series, probably the best known mystery series on feature phones and also the series I wanted to try out the most! In this series, you play as Ikurumi Masao, a writer of video games, who is friends with the eccentric private detective Kibukawa Ryousuke and his assistant Izuna. Ikurumi writes his games based on the cases Kibukawa solves, making them a modern kind of Holmes and Watson. The series originally started in 2003 with Kamen Gensou Satsujin Jiken ("The Masked Fantasy Murder Case"), which would be followed by over twenty sequels, one of which on the Nintendo DS. Currently, the first "volume" titled Kamen Gensou Satsujin Jiken ("The Masked Fantasy Murder Case") and the second volume Kairoukan Satsujin Jiken ("The Sea Structure Murder Case"; also named The Structure of Mirage) have been released, and I do hope they'll eventually release all of them, even if the games can be a bit quirky.

As adventure games the Kibukawa Ryousuke games are very simple, playing like most mystery games I discuss here: you use simple commands like "Talk" and "Examine" to speak with everyone and to gather clues, which will drive the plot forwards, and as you approach the climax, you'll be 'tested' a few times with a few questions to see if you got it, though this game does not penalize you for making mistakes, just repeating the question until you pick the right answer (though I think at the end, Kibukawa does say whether you did a good job or not depending on how many guesses you needed). But I do think both games I played have captivating angles and it's pretty interesting to see what kind of mystery games they tried to make, compared to the more human drama mystery-driven feature phone games in the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series (those feature games have been available for ages on Nintendo DS/3DS by the way). The first game, Kamen Gensou Satsujin Jiken ("The Masked Fantasy Murder Case"), for example is about a curious series of mysterious deaths of people while playing the online RPG Criticlimax: the deceased were all discovered dead in their apartments, still holding the controller in their hands with a running game. One of the people who died is a game developer, and Kibukawa is hired to investigate whether his death is just an unfortunate accident, or there's something more sinister behind it. Meanwhile, other rumors surrounding Criticlimax seem to indicate other circumstances behind his death.

And while this first entry takes on a pretty modern approach with a story about online games and game developers, the second entry Kairoukan Satsujin Jiken ("The Sea Structure Murder Case") uses the classic trope of a closed circle in a weird building: the Sea Structure looks like some kind of base built in the sea, and is the result of a whim of the eccentric president of a construction company. The Sea Structure is built partially below sea level and can only be accessed by an artificial island which acts as a pier: a tunnel below sea level connects the island to the only entrance to the Sea Structure. A strange group of people are invited here by the president for a special occassion, but just as the party is supposed to start, they discover the dead body of the president and find out that the entrance to the tunnel won't open anymore, meaning everyone, including the killer, is imprisoned in the Sea Structure.

While this series is titled the Kibukawa Ryousuke series, the titular detective actually barely appears in these first two games. The player takes on the role of writer Ikurumi, who is accompanied by Kibukawa's assistant Izuna, who is a capable detective herself and the two of them have pretty funny banter as they try to solve the case together. Kibukawa himself only appears at the very end to solve the case, though usually Izuna (and Ikurumi) will have solved part of the case already, even if often, Izuna and Ikurumi will also have gone the completely wrong direction regarding certain other parts of the case. The first two stories do provide interesting stories, Kamen Gensou Satsujin Jiken focusing on a varied cast of suspects and the mystery of how the deaths tie in to Criticlimax, while Kairoukan Satsujin Jiken plays out like an Ayatsuji Yukito-esque story with an And Then There Were None-inspired plot and of course strange buildings. To be honest though, often the real solution of Kibukawa is not nearly as interesting as the "slightly" misguided deductions of Izuna: this is especially the case in Kairoukan Satsujin Jiken, where Kibukawa's solution is nowhere as imaginative and memorable as the Izuna solution (which was also the solution I thought the story was working towards to), while in Kamen Gensou Satsujin Jiken, Kibukawa basically cheats by presenting information nobody had heard about until that moment.

But I did have fun with the first two entries in the Tantei Kibukawa Ryousuke Jikendan series, as they have fun characters and interesting plot ideas. There was also noticable improvement going from the first to the second game, as well as a boost in length (though these games are pretty short, somewhere between one or two hours). I'm definitely looking forward to playing more of these games if they'll release them, though I doubt I'll be discussing them regularly here: probably only the ones that truly stand out or perhaps a larger post discussing multiple entries in one turn. But for now, I'm thrilled that these old mystery games are made available again and I hope other feature phone mystery games are released soon too (like the Psycho Mystery series!)

Original Japanese title(s): 探偵・癸生川凌介事件譚 Vol.1「仮面幻想殺人事件」, 探偵・癸生川凌介事件譚 Vol.2「海楼館殺人事件」