Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken is one of those NES games that feels way ahead of its time. You play as a detective trying to crack a murder case, but here’s the kicker—it’s all text-based with these simple but effective visuals. You type commands to investigate, question suspects, and piece together clues. Feels a bit like those old-school adventure games where you’d type "look under bed" and hope the parser understood you.

What’s wild is how much this game influenced later stuff—Yuji Horii basically laid the groundwork for visual novels here. The atmosphere’s surprisingly heavy for an ‘83 release, too. You’ll hit dead ends, get stuck on weird phrasing, and then suddenly everything clicks. Not gonna lie, it’s janky by today’s standards, but there’s something weirdly gripping about it. If you’ve ever wondered where games like Phoenix Wright got their DNA, this is a big chunk of it.