With Thanksgiving coming tomorrow what better a subject to discuss than a game that I am truly thankful for in 2018. Honestly this year has been packed solid with fantastic releases for
both mainstream and niche games alike. It’s been a spectacular year for me especially--with titles I've been crazy about like 428: Shibuya Scramble, Dragon Quest XI, and even a new Metal Max! (Haven’t had
one of those localized since 2006) But today I want to talk about the little detective game series that could.
Jake Hunter, or Jinguji Saburo as it it known in Japan, is one of the longest actively running adventure game series that you have probably never heard of. Jinguji Saburo started life on
the Famicom Disk System all the way back in 1987, and has consistently produced games for almost every major video game platform since for over 30 years--Famicom, Playstation, PS2, GBA, PSP, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo
Switch, PS4, mobile phones, you name it and good chance Jinguji Saburo probably has a game on it. Despite that longevity however, the series has never had a fair shake in markets outside of Asia. It wasn't until 2008,
a whole twenty-one years after the series started, that it would get an English market release on the Nintendo DS, and it was ... less than spectacular.
The first US release of Jinguji Saburo was the Nintendo DS game Tantei Jinguji Saburo: Inishie no Kioku, or roughly Detective Jinguji Saburo: Ancient Memories. This game was a compilation
of past titles, featuring remakes of first 5 Famicom games with the third and fourth game on the Famicom, Kiken na Futari Zenpen and Kiken na Futari Kohen combined into one game since they were originally one story split across two Famicom disk games. Included on top of the Famicom remakes
is a remake to the 2004 mobile phone game Tantei Jinguji Saburo Akai Me no Tora, as well as a brand new game for this compilation, the titular Inishie no Kioku, which ties together the other games into
one grander story. When it came time for Aksys Games to release Tantei Jinguji Saburo: Inishie no Kioku it was given the Americanized name Jake Hunter: Detective Chronicles and all the characters within
it followed suit, with the real life setting of Shinjuku being altered into a vague, nondescript, “every city” named Aspicio to boot.
Now Americanizing names has always been a pretty hot debate online in anime and video game communities--there are people that feel very strongly about this, so while I have traditionally
been pretty lenient about the practice (I still don’t like it much either but can live with it) I understand others whom can’t stand it. With all that said however, Jake Hunter Detective Chronicles sucks, and I
honestly can’t defend it. A lot of weird decisions were made when bringing Inishie no Kioku over to the US--and when the Americanization is the least of your worries it’s a pretty bad sign. The biggest issue of this release
is all the cut content: the game skips the fun little omake, or gag stories, that were in the original, as well as cutting out 3 games from the compilation entirely for no real reason. And of course the real kicker was that
the translation was just plain bad! Typos and grammatical errors littered a wooden, uninteresting script that was a slog to read. I have no idea how Aksys botched this release so much, but oh boy did they make sure the first
localized Jinguji Saburo game would be the worst localized Jinguji Saburo game.
Things did not go so smoothly for the franchise in its first English outing, but if you fast forward to just a year later it starts to finally turn around for ol’ Jake. In 2009
Aksys Games released a title by the name of Jake Hunter Detective Story: Memories of the Past, and if that title sounds somewhat familiar, that is because it is. Memories of the Past is a faithful release of Inishie no Kioku
(Ancient Memories) with zero cut content this time and an entirely new localization from the ground up that still Americanizes the script but actually reads wonderfully and is a huge improvement over the original Detective
Chronicles release. This whole situation is honestly quite fascinating to me, as I really can’t think of many examples where a company completely botches a localization, then releases the same game with an entirely different
name that fixes the localization. Aksys Games is pretty wild.
Moving ahead to the year 2012 and the Nintendo 3DS, the next Jinguji Saburo game; Tantei Jinguji Saburo: Fukushuu no Rondo, or roughly Detective Jinguji Saburo: Rondo of Revenge was a no show in English, and even in Japan a long drought started, with only mobile phone releases of the Famicom
remakes coming out. It wasn't until 2017 when our boy Jinguji “Jake Hunter” Saburo returned, again on the Nintendo 3DS with Tantei Jinguji Saburo: GHOST OF THE DUSK. And as if to make up for the five years it was asleep, Tantei Jinguji Saburo: PRISM OF EYES followed right after in 2018 for the PS4 and Nintendo Switch--marking the series’
first leap to HD. A new game is set to follow for the PS4, Switch, and PC in 2019; Daedalus: The Awakening of Golden Jazz, a prequel to the entire franchise feating a younger (and now ikeman) Jinguji Saburo in New York City
investigating the death of his grandfather.
The Jinguji Saburo series is back in full swing again, and the future so far looks bright, but what about the “Jake Hunter” series? Well back in September Aksys Games localized Tantei Jinguji
Saburo: GHOST OF THE DUSK as Jake Hunter: Ghost of the Dusk for the Nintendo 3DS, even giving it a physical print run. Given the declining health of the Nintendo 3DS in the US at this point, and how awkward a release the only
prior game localized ever got, Ghost of the Dusk coming out in English came as quite a surprise to even me. Unfortunately with Dragon Quest XI in September and my focus in October being on Zero Frights I never had a chance to talk
much about this game. Untimely that is what I wished to express today, my gratitude that the Jinguji Saburo series still has a chance in the North American market.
Jake Hunter Detective Story: Memories of the Past is one of my personal favorite games on the Nintendo DS, a system that is very near-and-dear to my heart and jam
packed with many games I consider some of my favorites. That game filled a detective itch in me like no other I could find on any video game console. It brought back really great memories of old school point-n-click detective
games on PC, and the hardboiled atmosphere and characters felt so refreshingly familiar. I can’t recommend Memories of the Past enough, and now that there is Ghost of the Dusk I really want to urge anyone that loves
point-n-clicks, visual novels, or just any plain detective story to try it out! It’s in stores now and may be one of the last chances you have to experience the series.
So if you asked me what I am thankful for in 2018, here it is. Jake Hunter coming back to North America is something I never expected to even be possible and can’t stop being giddy about. The hope that Prisim of Eyes and Daealus can come out in English warms my heart. I want this series to have a fighting chance in the North American market, hell in any English speaking market even. The world needs more Japanese styled adventure games--even with the sheer amount of visual novels being localized into English and created by English fans, there really is a sever lack of games quite like Jinguji Saburo, aka your boy, Jake Hunter.
