Nintendo’s Marketing for Emio – The Smiling Man Is Kind

Playing the demo, it is more sophisticated than Ace Attorney, and I would be hooked on the characters more if I played the previous game, but I’m afraid I’ll end but buying the whole game because I can’t start a mystery and not know who the killer is! Even when Katamari Damacy was available under the game trials and beat it before time was up, I bought it knowing I liked the game and wanted to keep my hard work

Even though this is my first time playing a visual novel game; I really enjoyed playing the quarry and mystery stories in general. I picked up the famicom detective club bundle on my switch and I look forward to diving into these games. 😊

I still hope to see Famicon detective club remakes get a good discount. 😔

I'm really happy for fans of the series that got to see it return, but based on the teaser I was expecting a brand new horror IP. It's an anime detective visual novel, but the teaser had a completely different realistic artstyle.

I think the teaser needed to be way more transparent with what the contents of the game would actually be like. I feel like it was almost false advertising to present a realistic teaser for an anime-styled game.

This big push for Famicom Detective Club, is something I never thought I'd see.

The $50 rant is extremely bizzare. Games are $70 now but, $50 for this is just too much, huh? You keep trying to beat into your audience's head to not support niche Nintendo games. It's so weird.

i never know how serious youre being about the smiling man concept. like, you seem actually interested about the game and all but in the two videos you made about this game your tone at the end talking about "he smiles but oooh false sense of security, spoooky!!" seems like youre making fun of it a bit lol
not angry or anything, just find it kinda funny ^^u

The demo wasn't really all that good. I"ll be waiting for the next chapter, but this marketing ploy is clearly meant to let people talk about the game because they know it would get zero traction otherwise. The demo was very short and the same story was repeated over and over. I really disliked the fact they ask you a straightforward question at the end of each section, and that at the end of chapter one, if you provide the intelligent, rational answer, the game contradicts you : you had to pick the dumb answer so that the girl would come to the SAME EXACT conclusion of the "wrong answer" you just picked. Why ask me, then ?

It made me think of Another Code where the game is asking you dumb questions just to see whether you were paying attention… Which serves no purpose. Also, there is no penalty for wrong answers that I know of, so I guess you can make a dumb run like FF13-2 where you make out Serah to be a pinked-hair moron. But since you're not even roasted for being so dumb, and the attempt at being cheeky isn't rewarded by a roast and doesn't add anything to the experience, what's the point ?

Other games like Ace Attorney have already perfected the formula, by introducing the "rush" of logic to finish a case in AA5 and AA6, or the Logic Chess / Sholmes dance, and connecting actual dots together instead of picking obvious answers.

There were also idiotic hurdles in this short demo, like you absolutely MUST to drink the tea, or you have to exhaust all topics, then select each of them in order to get a grunt as a response, then the character says it's awkward, then somehow you have to poke the character to drive the story forward. But the game has been teaching you so far that when you are hitting a dead end, you needed to hit the other actions to shake things up and move forward (the teacup). Here, you have to actually press on every topic although you've already been told they were exhausted. This is bad design.

I also though that I would have rather gone see the family of the victim instead of hanging at the police station doing nothing and learning nothing but talking to a sexual harassment creep. Then, the moment the thought crossed my mind, the games tells us the next chapter will be more of the same at the police station, again. And the sidekick add that she'll visit the school, which I would also rather have done.

I don't know why the devs thought I had to pick my own name in a dubbed game. Just name the protagonist and call them that. I thought the passage where you have to remember about a character you've never met intra or extra diegesis my randomly poking her face was STUPID. And thank God I found how right away.

The game doesn't seem secure in giving its characters the right to a backstory, while expecting you to fill in the gaps with random actions. That's unsettling.

The demo was a lot of fluff, and I felt like it was made to waste my time. I understood that I had to familiarize with the game's mechanics, and yet there is no good reason for a tutorial to be boring. Take a page from any Ace attorney game.

The dialogues were very clichéed and japanese, although the English translation made them bearable, but my FIRST instinct was to try and find the English dub — which doesn't exist. The most interesting aspect was that they went for a mature tone, and yet it was very mild (save for the fact that it's a literal child who dies).

I'm guessing the production value of the dubbing adds… value to an old format that's been supplanted since by better formulas. But that will only work for Japanese speaking audiences. English subtitles are better than nothing, but when all's said and done the Japanese voice acting add nothing. Contrary to what monolingual people think, you cannot get the "feel" of a line, if you don't understand the lingo, so Japanese dubs are only interesting for mega-nerds who think it's cool to listen to gibberish.

So far the best thing about this game is its marketing, and the physical release. I'm sure they'll manage to move several hundred thousand units. Here's hoping the follow-up demo bits are actually good.

Releasing episodic demos i think is ideal for these story driven point and click games because yeah, it's like letting you watch the pilot of a new anime for free on YouTube, getting you hooked on it, then the rest you have to pay for if you liked it enough.

The episodic releases I think doesn't work if it's for a big RPG because yeah, why by the demo just to play the crappy/mediocre tutorial stage of an rpg that gets better later? Pokémon Sun and Moon released a dumb little demo you had to get to aquire Ash-Greninja, a Pokémon they want us to forget exists today, and the demo basically just let you wander around the starter town doing dumb cheesy quest with unimportant NPCs, leaving you trapped from exploring more do to the area being under construction. That demo was worth skipping if not for it being the only way to get an exclusive Pokémon.

And FF7 releasing Yuffie DLC exclusive to the PS5 has infinity compliment and stalled my decision to buy a game I already was sure to buy. Because it meant this Yuffie episode couldn't be purchased with the first game if you had a PS4, and I wasn't going to buy a PS5 anytime soon just for the Yuffie episode. Then when the game came out which I bought the PS5 for, I still haven't bought FF7 Rebirth because the PS5 was already a very expensive purchase, and adding a $100 is just too much for me to handle on a single paycheck. A $100 game that would have been $80 I'd of bled to pay right away if the Yuffie DLC that I don't want to miss wasn't packaged with Rebirth, and it wasn't the ONLY way for me to get the DLC now. I can't go back and buy it separately on its own after transferring my games to the new console. I have to buy it with the new game. And I'm not sure I'm even going to commit to bing playing this massive rpg just yet even if I bought it now, so why rush to sink $100 into a game I don't have time for? And now Rebirths sales looks bad because I'm not the only fan who stalled at the $100 price tag on system selling exclusive rpg game. I think releasing episodes was a bad idea for FF7 in this case, Integrate should of been treated as post game DLC for Remake on all consoles, not just the PS5, made into a small purchase commitment on its own, while the sequel could sell itself and the PS5 on its own value.

The reveal was not "almost disappointing". It was disappointing 🙁

The main reason I got obsessed with one of my favorite game franchises (bayonetta) was because they had a demo when I had nothing else to play. Demos are truly the best way to convince someone to buy your game.

6:04 I have a core memory of playing the demo for Metal Gear Solid 3's 3DS remake over and over in the course of a few weeks when I was around 12(?), completely SCOURING the demo level for everything I could find. Years later post-lockdown I was finally able to play through the whole thing and I loved it to pieces. Muscle-memoried my way through what they had in the demo. Yeah it's not the "definitive" version or anything but I fell in love with it as an experience. Lived up to my childhood expectations :3

One note for anyone who wants to try the 3DS version of MGS 3 – if you can, at least start it on actual hardware that still has the 3D functionality. I played on 2DS XL and missed out on a cool little Easter egg.

Honestly if even 10% of people who saw the initial teaser checks out Emio (or even the remakes) then the marketing strategy worked. I know I'm interested in checking out Emio at some point. I would love to see the sales data of Emio after it's been out for a couple months