With Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club being Nintendo’s big August release for this year, Nintendo has opted to make Emio – The Smiling Man their next covered game, as part of their “Ask the Developer” interview series. Across three chapters, many questions were asked of Producer, Yoshio Sakamoto and Assistant Producer, Kaori Miyachi.
When talking about Emio – The Smiling Man, they revealed why the likes of mobile phones were added, but specifically detail why flip phones were chosen above the typical smartphone we have today:
Emio Devs on Adding Flip Phones to the Logic of Emio – The Smiling Man:
Kaori Miyachi: We wanted to centre the story around the three members of the Utsugi Detective Agency: Shunsuke Utsugi, the protagonist, and Ayumi Tachibana. Since it was hard to imagine what that world would be like decades after the previous game, we decided to set this game in a time that retains the feel of the original games.
Also, as we were discussing how we wanted to add new elements, we started wondering what year cell phones began to be more common in Japan. We decided to go for an era when life was neither too convenient, nor too inconvenient. Do you remember that, Sakamoto-san?
Yoshio Sakamoto: Oh, I remember alright. (Laughs) It was the late ’80s when we made the original Famicom Detective Club games. Back then, life in Japan was steadily becoming more convenient, although we still had our share of frustrations, so we felt that cell phones, rather than smartphones, would best fit the story.
Kaori Miyachi: You can make phone calls during various scenes in this game. In general, you can’t make a phone call when you’re talking to someone face-to-face – that would be rude! But by calling up a character when you don’t really need to, you may get to see an unexpected side of them.
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 12, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club – Chapter 3.
Ask the Developer | Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club (Participating Developers)
- Yoshio Sakamoto | Producer
- Kaori Miyachi | Assistant Producer
