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Detective Saburo Jinguji (Jake Hunter): Ghost of the Dusk (3DS)

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The “Detective Adventure Game” series Detective Saburo Jinguji series is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year with the first new release in five years with Ghost of the Dusk on 3DS! This series originally started on the Famicom Disk System and became one of the best known Japanese adventure game series. The series about a hardboiled detective solving crimes has almost miraculously survived until this day (outliving several companies!) with main releases on Famicom, Saturn, PlayStation 1/2, DS and 3DS, as well as a long-running concurrent sub-series on cell phones. The first DS title was released (twice) in the USA as Jake Hunter.

Some big names who have worked on the series are Kazushige Nojima (writer of several Final Fantasies including 7 and 8 ), Katsuya Terada (comic artist) and Kazutaka Kodaka (creator/writer Danganronpa).

The 2012 3DS title was pretty horrible, and I had basically given up on this series, so I was really glad when the seventeenth main entry in the series, Ghost of the Dusk, was announced for 3DS for an August 2017 release. Members of the original Jinguji team are supposed to be working on this game. No English release has been announced yet though, and considering only one (DS) title has been localized up until now, chances don’t look too good for this latest one, but perhaps… The stories are pretty much standalone, so it’s not like it’d be undoable.

http://www.arcsystemworks.jp/jinguji-god/

     

“Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth” - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God

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Music on site made me nostalgic, i use to be in japanese translating community for Kind of Blue

Man its a waste to be on 3ds, after nonory,Steins gate is and DR success they should be on steam/vita/sony etc and now with such staff on this Meh

     
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Why Kind of Blue? That is the one single game of the entire main series that serves as a direct sequel to the previous game (Innocent Black) ~_~ Or was there an IB translation already?

I think one reason why they opted for the 3DS again this time is to make the whole cell phone game series available on the 3DS hardware. Every entry in the DS line (save for Rondo of Revenge, the first 3DS title) also featured five of the cell phone games besides the main (original) storyline. Ghost of the Dusk will feature the last four titles, so that’d make all 24 cell phone games playable on 3DS hardware.

And perhaps they didn’t want to upset the core fanbase AGAIN. I mean, PSP’s Ashes and Diamonds was a great game, but the sudden jump to the PSP after three DS games was kinda unexpected, and I know I wasn’t pleased at the time, as it meant having to buy another handheld (and they jumped back to the DS after that).

 

     

“Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth” - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God

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Tantei KID - 24 May 2017 04:05 AM

Why Kind of Blue? That is the one single game of the entire main series that serves as a direct sequel to the previous game (Innocent Black) ~_~ Or was there an IB translation already?

I think one reason why they opted for the 3DS again this time is to make the whole cell phone game series available on the 3DS hardware. Every entry in the DS line (save for Rondo of Revenge, the first 3DS title) also featured five of the cell phone games besides the main (original) storyline. Ghost of the Dusk will feature the last four titles, so that’d make all 24 cell phone games playable on 3DS hardware.

And perhaps they didn’t want to upset the core fanbase AGAIN. I mean, PSP’s Ashes and Diamonds was a great game, but the sudden jump to the PSP after three DS games was kinda unexpected, and I know I wasn’t pleased at the time, as it meant having to buy another handheld (and they jumped back to the DS after that)

No both were being translated, PS2 releases IIRC…
And since it was on PS2, it can go back to consoles
Ronpa and Nonary were also bind to few platforms, now they are selling good on other platforms

http://steamspy.com/app/413410
Thats around 50% of Prey
http://steamspy.com/app/480490

Its huge, i think any VN based game reaching .5 million total on all platforms is a hit

     
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Yeah, Innocent Black and Kind of Blue were the two PS2 titles, and the first games not developed by Data East, but by WorkJam (as Data East had gone bankrupt earlier). They have fantastic art and music (oh, man the music!!), but I was never a big fan of the stories of those two entries. They were actually also the games that started the more linear approach of this series, even though Data East was pretty experimental back in the Famicom~PSX/Saturn days (a primitive zapping system on the Famicom! A time system that allowed for non-linear story advancement! A meaningful game mechanic behind the detective’ s assistant etc.).

The website for Ghost of the Dusk mentions members of the original Jinguji team are working on it, but I wonder who they mean. Like the original Data East team, or WorkJam’s team…

     

“Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth” - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God

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The opening movie of the game was released by Arc System Works today:

. Look stylish, as always!

They were nice enough to write the names of the scenario writers in the footage, so now we know that one of them worked on the game Inuwashi (a mystery adventure app) that also featured a crossover with the Jinguji series). The other writer has worked on the scenario and script of games like Chunsoft’s grand sound novel Machi (the predecessor of 428 Shibuya Scramble) and Shenmue (character dialogue).

     

“Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth” - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God

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Need PC rel stat

     
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A bit disappointed, as it appears they won’t be borrowing from the more ambitious PSP title (which was super long, with branching and intertwining storylines!), and instead go for the bread-and-butter DS-type of entry of semi-long new story + four cell phone application games, but still looking forward to it. And yay, free 3DS port of the second game in the series!

     

“Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth” - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God

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I wish they would pick a name for the characters i these games. Is it Saburo Jingjitsu? Or Jake Hunter? Make up your mind. Imagine if every book/movie did this - The Shawshank (Tamajitsi) Redemption. The Bourne (Finkmeister) Identity. Forrest (Achochtitlanxi) Gump. Romeo (Sven) and Juliet (Helga).

     
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http://www.siliconera.com/2017/07/01/jake-hunter-detective-story-ghost-dusk-announced-north-america-2018

It’s getting localized!

     

“Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth” - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God

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Tantei KID - 02 July 2017 05:33 AM

http://www.siliconera.com/2017/07/01/jake-hunter-detective-story-ghost-dusk-announced-north-america-2018

It’s getting localized!

Only North America?  Pan

     

NP: A Link Between Worlds, Beneath a Steel Sky and Vampyr

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Finished this game (the Japanese version) yesterday and it was an entertaining experience overall. The previous game, Rondo of Revenge (3DS), tried to be “refreshing” with 3D models for the characters, (bad) escape-the-room segments and a focus on action scenes, but it hardly felt part of the series as a result, so for Ghost of the Dusk, the concept was to go back the series’ roots and that is what it did.

Gameplay-wise, it’s still an incredibly linear experience. While it’s technically an adventure game where you use verb commands like “Talk”, “Look” to interact with the other characters and the enviroment, you’re always extremely limited to what you can actually do and the few segments that feature different gameplay (Search Profile: looking for objects on the screen / Talk Profile: finding the correct ways to goad a witness into talking) are also very linear parts, so the “puzzles” are just figuring out what to do next, and you usually have little to no choice as to what.

This has basically been a characteristic of the series ever since it made the jump to the PS2, but the other side of this is that it forced the series to focus very good on telling an engaging story, and that’s what Ghost of the Dusk does. It presents an interesting hardboiled detective story set in Shinjuku (the part of Tokyo that houses Kabuki-cho, where Yakuza’s Kamuro-cho is based on) and it lets the player/reader enjoy the atmosphere of the story up to its fullest with great artwork and absolutely fantastic music. The story itself is a return to form for the series, and for the long-time fans, there are also some nice cameos of familiar faces. The story starts with the discovery of a dead homeless person in an abanonded mansion in Shinjuku, but soon grows into a much bigger plot.

Ghost of the Dusk also includes one comedic bonus scenario, as well as the final four of the mobile phone games of this series (which is a seperate series; the previous twenty application games were included with the DS games). The main story Ghost of the Dusk is basically a “novel” (7~10 hours to complete, I think?), while the mobile phone games are “short stories”, about two hours each. These games are even more linear than the main story (hey, they were made for cell phones, years before we even heard of smart phones), but are also fairly entertaining stories that help flesh out the world of this series.

The game is slated for an NA release next year. If you liked the concept of the Jake Hunter that was released some years ago, I think you’ll love this one, as story-wise, I think Ghost of the Dusk is much better than the one DS game that made it overseas (it was easily the least interesting of the four DS games, which were hardly the pinnacle of the series anyway). For those who were disappointed with the lack of interactivity of the first Jake Hunter though, I’m afraid that Ghost of the Dusk has little news to offer you. This is a game you really play to enjoy the story and atmosphere, but not one to challenge your puzzle brain.

The current developers of this series(Arc System Works, who took it over from WorkJam earlier this year, who in turn took it over from Data East back in 2002) have indicated that Ghost of the Dusk is supposed to show the players ASW knows what the essence of the series is, but that they also hope they can introduce new gameplay mechanics in future installments to make it more gamey, so I hope they’ll come up with something more reminiscent of the games developed by Data East back on the Famicom and PSX/Saturn, as those actually featured all kinds of interesting ideas (early zapping systems! Gameplay mechanics utilizing the detective’s assistant! Time mechanic that gave you a deadline in which to resolve cases!).

     

“Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth” - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God

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Jake Hunter: Ghost of the Dusk (localized version) will be released on September 28 for the 3DS. Those who liked the Jake Hunter game on the DS will love this: that one was easily one of the least interesting of the whole series to be honest, so if you already liked what you saw there, you’re going to devour this Tongue

I have a review of the Japanese version here. It is a very straightforward, story-driven command-style adventure game like most of the post-PSX games, but the story is really captivating. I don’t know if the US version will retain everything from the Japanese release (“Ghost of the Dusk” story + four ports from the mobile phone series + special 3DS enhanced port of the second Famicom game. The last one seems least likely).

Last month, the latest in this series was released in Japan on Switch and PS4 (Prism of Eyes). I think it wasn’t that interesting, as 75% of the game consisted of HD remakes of the mobile phones we already saw in the DS games, but I guess that it could work for an English release (as of the ten included HD remakes, only “As Times Goes By” is available in English). There is also a spin-off title scheduled for later this year called “Daedalus - Awakening of Golden Jazz” for PS4/Switch/PC, which should make it a more ‘modern’ adventure game: this seems like a likely title to be localized eventually.

     

“Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God’s good earth” - Ellery Queen, The Lamp of God

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My local GameStop got this in, I may have to unretire my 3DS and play this. What very few adventure game s I bought during my 3DS era.

This series on the DS was amazing!

     

I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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