Nintendo’s mysterious Emio teaser isn’t a full-blown horror game after all, but the first new Famicom Detective Club game in 35 years

Nintendo’s teaser for a horror game has turned out to be none other than Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, the first new entry in the series in 35 years.

Last week, Nintendo shocked pretty much everyone by dropping a disturbing teaser for what looked like a first-party horror game, something decidedly un-Nintendo. The teaser even had a warning for “disturbing” content, leading many to anticipate a full-blown horror game in an exciting new direction for the developer and publisher. 

Fast forward one week, and the game isn’t quite what we thought it was. Nintendo has now revealed the game, in the tweet below, to be a new Famicom Detective Club game, called Emio – The Smiling Man. This coincides with the initial teaser last week, which posited ‘#WhoIsEmio?’

In Emio, a student has been found dead with a paper bag over his head, with an eerie smiling face drawn over it. This is the mark of a notorious legendary urban killer Emio, and it’s your job, as an assistant to a private investigator, to crack the new murder case, and what links it to a string of unsolved murders from 18 years ago.

A quick history lesson for those not familiar with the Famicom Detective Club series (like me). The first game in the series, Missing Heir, was released in 1988, while a prequel called The Girl Who Stands Behind released one year later. Nintendo has actually remade both games in the decades since, and it was only with the two remakes that both games finally released outside of Japan.

It turns out famed Metroid developer Yoshio Sakamoto, who worked as a scenario writer on the original Famicom Detective Club games, is also returning to produce Emio – The Smiling Man. There’s plenty of reason to be excited about this – not only is Sakamoto a veteran Nintendo developer, but he also helped oversee 2021’s excellent Metroid Dread.

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club launches next month on August 29 for the Nintendo Switch. Even if it isn’t quite the full horror game that many had hoped for, there’s still plenty of reason to be excited about Famicom Detective Club’s return.

Take a look at our upcoming Switch games guide for an overview of all the other first-party games Nintendo has in store for this year.