Hokkaidou Rensa Satsujin: Okhotsk ni Kiyu

In Yuji Horii’s follow-up to The Portopia Serial Murder Case, you once again play as a Tokyo police detective (whose name you assign) charged with solving a mysterious murder. This time, your initial investigation of a dead body found floating in Tokyo Bay quickly leads you to follow the trail of clues to Hokkaido. There, assisted by local police officer Shunsuke “Shun” Saruwatari, you will visit numerous popular real-life tourist attractions as you attempt to puzzle out the truth behind an ever-expanding series of murders.

While maintaining the same first-person adventure format, this game drops the parser-driven interface used in earlier versions of the preceding title, instead introducing the menu system which was to become typical of Japanese adventure games. The player selects from a number of simple commands (Go, Ask, Take, Show, Photograph, etc.) to find new evidence and advance the plot; also, the “Examine” command can (and sometimes must) be used to point at and examine specific spots in the scene pictured, so that the interface is not solely text-based.