Name: Sherlock Holmes: Hakushaku Reijō Yūkai Jiken
Item: Sherlock Holmes: Hakushaku Reijō Yūkai Jiken
Rating: 5.5
Author: Retro Replay

Sherlock Holmes: Hakushaku Reijō Yūkai Jiken

Sherlock Holmes: Hakushaku Reijō Yūkai Jiken opens with a wonderfully strange promise: guide Holmes across Great Britain, hunt for clues to a kidnapped countess, then settle arguments with street thugs using his feet. The mix of city searching, item collecting, passwords, and side-scrolling fights has a scrappy early-NES charm, especially once you understand that each stop is part of a larger investigation rather than a disconnected action stage.

That charm comes with hard edges. Combat is blunt, hazards are unforgiving, and the requirement to build the thug-related percentage to 100 can turn detective work into a tedious cleanup job. Still, it is an intriguing curiosity for gamers who enjoy rough, experimental action adventures and want to see Sherlock Holmes pushed into a far more physical role than usual.

Platform: NES

Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first hour is less about elegant deduction than getting your bearings. You travel by train, search cities for places worth investigating, and then enter side-scrolling areas such as parks, sewers, and houses to look for clues and useful objects. That structure gives the case a sense of forward motion: you are not simply walking right and punching everything, but trying to work out where Holmes needs to go next.

Once you reach an investigation area, the game becomes a much rougher action adventure. Holmes kicks hostile thugs, can pick up a knife or gun, and searches for clues, keys, medicine, a lamp, and a magnifying glass. The oddest detail is that innocent citizens can also be kicked for money. It is a bizarre fit for Sherlock, and it makes the game feel more like a tough 1980s action game wearing detective-fiction clothes than a faithful simulation of Holmes’s methods.

Frustration sets in because danger is everywhere: pits, gunfire, and repeated contact can end the attempt. More troublesome is the percentage tied to dealing with thugs. Reaching 100 percent is necessary to finish, so progress can become a matter of thoroughly clearing out opposition rather than following the thread of the mystery. Bosses, passwords, and gang hideouts do give each city a concrete finish line, but the route there sounds more laborious than clever.

If you enjoy old games that ask you to persist through opaque structure and stiff punishment, there is something compelling in piecing together its rhythm. Go in ready to explore each city carefully and treat every item as potentially important. Gamers hoping for a clean detective puzzle or a refined brawler will likely find the case more exhausting than absorbing.

Sherlock Holmes: Hakushaku Reijō Yūkai Jiken — screenshot 1

Graphics

The game shifts from city searching to 2D side-view action areas, letting you explore places including parks, sewers, and houses from a scrolling perspective. That clear change of viewpoint at least helps separate the travel-and-search portion from the dangerous on-foot investigation.

Sherlock Holmes: Hakushaku Reijō Yūkai Jiken — screenshot 2

Story

The central hook is direct and effective: a countess has been kidnapped, and Sherlock Holmes must trace the case across Great Britain. Each city becomes another stop on that trail, with a boss to defeat and a password needed to resolve the local investigation at a gang hideout.

It is a mystery framework built around progress gates rather than a richly described Holmes drama. Clues are scattered through locations, interrogating thugs contributes to completion, and the next lead is earned through exploration and combat. That makes the investigation feel tangible, even when the detective’s behavior is absurdly aggressive.

The contrast is the memorable part. Holmes collecting a magnifying glass and keys feels appropriate; Holmes kicking citizens for cash absolutely does not. If you can enjoy that tonal collision as a relic of an era when licensed characters were readily bent around arcade-style demands, the premise remains charming. For a more traditional, text-driven Holmes case, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective – Volume III points in a very different direction.

Overall Experience

Hakushaku Reijō Yūkai Jiken is an awkward but distinctive detective-action hybrid. Its best moments come when travel, location hunting, clues, and inventory objects make you feel like you are gradually cracking a case. Its weakest moments arrive when attrition-heavy fights and the mandatory percentage grind crowd out that curiosity.

The payoff is worth it mainly for patient retro fans and Sherlock completists. You need tolerance for severe consequences, a strange combat focus, and a design that can ask for exhaustive enemy handling before letting the investigation move on. In return, you get a genuinely unusual NES interpretation of Holmes rather than another generic action hero with a famous name pasted on top.

It is easier to admire than to recommend broadly, but its weirdness has staying power. Give it a chance if you like excavating ambitious, unpolished 8-bit experiments and can laugh when the world’s most famous detective solves problems with a kick. For game-specific history and release details, see this background on Sherlock Holmes: Hakushaku Reijō Yūkai Jiken.