It's an absolute classic for a reason and it's influence can't be overstated, but with it's very short length it relies a bit too much on arbitrary progression and pixel hunting. Additionally it's lack of music and rather stale visuals could have been improved on even at the time.
Game Review - by Spinner 8
The second NES game released by Enix, the first being the forgettable Door Door. I don’t know much about this game, but it’s by Yuji Horii, so you know it rocks. At first it looks like a standard text adventure, but I hear later on it becomes a weird Wizardry-style dungeon crawler thing.
DvD Translations adds:
This is the first adventure game released on the Famicom. Yuji Horii ported this, his successful NEC PC-8801 game, to the Famicom to determine whether the Famicom action game crowd would take to an adventure game. The game did quite well. Because of this, Horii was able to release the game he really wanted to make for the Famicom, the first Japanese console RPG: Dragon Quest.
(editor's note: and take to it they did, becoming perhaps the single most foundational title in the Japanese adventure game canon)
I ended up looking stuff up because some of the cryptic elements (like looking in this specific corner of the drawer) got on my nerves. But the ending was honestly surprisingly moving. This is definitely one of the first well-written video games, or at least one of the first where the dialogue within the game is intriguing, funny, and even emotionally impactful.
One of those games where I can't see its greatest "flaw" in the moment as anything but a plus in hindsight. At points Portopia is vague and obscure enough to drive you mad. How is anyone supposed to know to search there? How is anyone meant to guess to do that or show that one item at this one place? But what this frustration does is transform what could have been a nice enough detective story into a hypnotic procedural of stasis; an unending loop of the same questions and the same faces, progress never seeming to go anywhere, everything winding back to dead end circles, beautifully reflected in the giant maze of white walls you get lost in during the climax.
It's a game that, whether through frustration or curiosity or glee, inevitably leads to you assaulting suspects for answers. And distressingly...it works.
Okay, asterisk on "you" because one of the many deeply clever things about Portopia is that you, the player character, are not the one who directly does anything. You just tell your subordinate what to do. It's a weird distinction but a VERY important one that raises all kinds of questions w/r/t your role in the story and as the player and what exactly inhabiting a character while playing a game implies narratively.
Anyway, the maze in the basement is without hesitation one of THE great moments in video games. Like, genuinely startling, unsettling stuff. You spend the whole game in menus and simple, colorful illustrations, and then suddenly as you descend below the surface color and life gives way to dead white walls twisting around themselves for an eternity, pathways opening and closing as if the place is alive. It's significant that here is the one time you take actual control. The simplest graphics in the world and yet some of the most effective atmosphere in the medium's history. Like being suddenly sucked into an Akio Jissoji directed nightmare.
One of the most important games of all time thanks to all that it inspired and not an inch of that inspirational power has gone anywhere. Meditative masterpiece. Horii my metaphysical king. Insane stuff
It's a game that, whether through frustration or curiosity or glee, inevitably leads to you assaulting suspects for answers. And distressingly...it works.
Okay, asterisk on "you" because one of the many deeply clever things about Portopia is that you, the player character, are not the one who directly does anything. You just tell your subordinate what to do. It's a weird distinction but a VERY important one that raises all kinds of questions w/r/t your role in the story and as the player and what exactly inhabiting a character while playing a game implies narratively.
Anyway, the maze in the basement is without hesitation one of THE great moments in video games. Like, genuinely startling, unsettling stuff. You spend the whole game in menus and simple, colorful illustrations, and then suddenly as you descend below the surface color and life gives way to dead white walls twisting around themselves for an eternity, pathways opening and closing as if the place is alive. It's significant that here is the one time you take actual control. The simplest graphics in the world and yet some of the most effective atmosphere in the medium's history. Like being suddenly sucked into an Akio Jissoji directed nightmare.
One of the most important games of all time thanks to all that it inspired and not an inch of that inspirational power has gone anywhere. Meditative masterpiece. Horii my metaphysical king. Insane stuff
Do you think there were any horny cishet guys playing this in 1985 who thought this was so hot they had to jack off immediately?
Becomes a whole lot less impressive when you find out how much of had already been done, especially by Infocom, but nonetheless, Portopia is a good, solid game in its genre. It has plenty of pixel hunting nonsense for items not displayed on screen, but the actual story writing is uncharacteristically good for the time, and so all is ultimately forgiven.
Quasi mi sento in colpa a dover dare un voto non eccellente ad un gioco del genere.
Portopia ha fatto la storia, inutile girarci attorno: il secondo gioco pubblicato, dall'allora neonata, Enix detiene il merito di essere il precursore delle visual novel e di tutti i videogiochi con avventure narrative, che rappresentavano un'inedita alternativa ai giochi d'azione: al posto dei riflessi, il videogiocatore doveva ora fare affidamento al proprio pensiero logico e alla capacità di ragionamento.
Non solo, ma il lavoro di Yuji Horii (futuro creatore di Dragon Quest, a sua volta fondatore dei JRPG) fu anche un'importante fonte di ispirazione per aspiranti autori, essendo, insieme a Super Mario Bros di Miyamoto, il videogioco che spinse Hideo Kojima a incanalare il proprio talento creativo nel game design.
Ma storia a parte, il gioco com'è?
Sorprendentemente profondo e articolato per trattarsi di un gioco del 1983. Come ogni visual novel, ma anche avventura grafica dell'epoca, di stampo investigativo, lo scopo è quello di risolvere il grande enigma di un caso di omicidio compiendo una sequenza variabile di azioni standard (Spostati, interroga, prendi, esamina etc) a seconda della zona e del contesto in cui ci si trova. Il fiore all'occhiello che contraddistingue Portopia è la sua libertà d'azione: il giocatore non sarà obbligato a seguire dei binari fissi per poter avanzare nell'indagine, ma potrà gestirla come meglio crede nell'ordine che preferisce, data la possibilità di poter ottenere lo stesso risultato in più modi differenti. Occhio, perché non è scontato questo fattore; molti giochi moderni, per quanto siano più raffinati tecnicamente, non offrono sempre tutta questa libertà d'azione.
D'altro canto, non sempre il dosaggio di questo "libero arbitrio" risulta adeguato, poiché capiterà diverse volte di essere costretti a fare cose totalmente randomiche pur di procedere con la storia principale, senza che vi sia alcun riferimento grafico o dialogo a fungerci da indizio
Altra grave mancanza, poi sistemata in porting futuri, è quella della colonna sonora. Il sonoro è presente, pure con un ruolo talvolta fondamentale per la risoluzione degli enigmi, ma solo il minimo indispensabile. L'assenza di "musiche" rende sì l'esperienza di gioco più simile a quella di un'indagine reale, ma a costo di abbassare l'impatto emotivo di alcuni momenti chiave della trama, come il climax finale.
Se siete amanti dei gialli classici cosiddetti "dalla stanza chiusa", allora questo gioco fa per voi. L'intreccio narrativo sembra uscito direttamente da un libro di Agatha Christie e il colpo di scena finale, ripreso e rielaborato da giochi più recenti, vi lascerà di stucco. I personaggi che ci accompagneranno durante questa (dis)avventura non saranno molti, tuttavia saranno valorizzati dalla loro vibrante personalità e dalle diverse reazioni verso le nostre azioni più "sceme".
Sicuramente Portopia è un gioco difficile da recuperare in lingua, quantomeno, inglese, ma lo sforzo è stato più che sufficientemente ricompensato da un'avventura ispiratrice e ricca di segreti. In caso aveste la pazienza di un santo, o foste dei folli, non esitate un solo secondo a giocare The Portopia Serial Murder Case.
Portopia ha fatto la storia, inutile girarci attorno: il secondo gioco pubblicato, dall'allora neonata, Enix detiene il merito di essere il precursore delle visual novel e di tutti i videogiochi con avventure narrative, che rappresentavano un'inedita alternativa ai giochi d'azione: al posto dei riflessi, il videogiocatore doveva ora fare affidamento al proprio pensiero logico e alla capacità di ragionamento.
Non solo, ma il lavoro di Yuji Horii (futuro creatore di Dragon Quest, a sua volta fondatore dei JRPG) fu anche un'importante fonte di ispirazione per aspiranti autori, essendo, insieme a Super Mario Bros di Miyamoto, il videogioco che spinse Hideo Kojima a incanalare il proprio talento creativo nel game design.
Ma storia a parte, il gioco com'è?
Sorprendentemente profondo e articolato per trattarsi di un gioco del 1983. Come ogni visual novel, ma anche avventura grafica dell'epoca, di stampo investigativo, lo scopo è quello di risolvere il grande enigma di un caso di omicidio compiendo una sequenza variabile di azioni standard (Spostati, interroga, prendi, esamina etc) a seconda della zona e del contesto in cui ci si trova. Il fiore all'occhiello che contraddistingue Portopia è la sua libertà d'azione: il giocatore non sarà obbligato a seguire dei binari fissi per poter avanzare nell'indagine, ma potrà gestirla come meglio crede nell'ordine che preferisce, data la possibilità di poter ottenere lo stesso risultato in più modi differenti. Occhio, perché non è scontato questo fattore; molti giochi moderni, per quanto siano più raffinati tecnicamente, non offrono sempre tutta questa libertà d'azione.
D'altro canto, non sempre il dosaggio di questo "libero arbitrio" risulta adeguato, poiché capiterà diverse volte di essere costretti a fare cose totalmente randomiche pur di procedere con la storia principale, senza che vi sia alcun riferimento grafico o dialogo a fungerci da indizio
Altra grave mancanza, poi sistemata in porting futuri, è quella della colonna sonora. Il sonoro è presente, pure con un ruolo talvolta fondamentale per la risoluzione degli enigmi, ma solo il minimo indispensabile. L'assenza di "musiche" rende sì l'esperienza di gioco più simile a quella di un'indagine reale, ma a costo di abbassare l'impatto emotivo di alcuni momenti chiave della trama, come il climax finale.
Se siete amanti dei gialli classici cosiddetti "dalla stanza chiusa", allora questo gioco fa per voi. L'intreccio narrativo sembra uscito direttamente da un libro di Agatha Christie e il colpo di scena finale, ripreso e rielaborato da giochi più recenti, vi lascerà di stucco. I personaggi che ci accompagneranno durante questa (dis)avventura non saranno molti, tuttavia saranno valorizzati dalla loro vibrante personalità e dalle diverse reazioni verso le nostre azioni più "sceme".
Sicuramente Portopia è un gioco difficile da recuperare in lingua, quantomeno, inglese, ma lo sforzo è stato più che sufficientemente ricompensato da un'avventura ispiratrice e ricca di segreti. In caso aveste la pazienza di un santo, o foste dei folli, non esitate un solo secondo a giocare The Portopia Serial Murder Case.
This review contains spoilers
That was the worst twist I've ever seen. How do you even get that from joke clicking on something in the menu
A pretty solid, adventure game/VN for the Famicom. There are a few areas here and there where it gets awfully confusing and turns into pixel hunting or moving back and forth, but really, I get it now
If you like adventure games just give this a shot. Its a few hours of your life and outside of the 3d maze (which is stupid but i respect the dedication from Horii to randomly place a 3D dungeon crawl in his adventure game) you'll probably have a lot of fun with it.
If you like adventure games just give this a shot. Its a few hours of your life and outside of the 3d maze (which is stupid but i respect the dedication from Horii to randomly place a 3D dungeon crawl in his adventure game) you'll probably have a lot of fun with it.
THE MAZE...reminded me of yu-no's later amazing 'labyrinth' (in the metaphorical sense)
To give more details... it's a meta take on the mystery/detective genre? Of course by the 80s mystery had likely played with twists around point of view / narrator a lot, I wonder if this was the devs' stab at adapting those ideas to a game format. As an experiment, I'm not sure it entirely works fully - in hindsight you can read Yasu's actions as disobeying you, twisting the truth, but in the moment it feels like the game is just kind of buggy or missing info - even if this feeling is likely intentional. Whereas in a book..you can read the book. You could get 'stuck' in a book but not in the same way you get stuck in a game.
That's not to say that the game is pretty funny at times, playing with the command-input format (different texts playing for repeated interactions, gags, etc). I like that it's very aware of the affordances the commands give - building tension through the labyrinth, Yasu's constant stare in some spots.
I kind of wonder how you were to deduce this yourself. I ended up using a guide halfway through so I wasn't sure if you could ask Yasu about the IOU or diaryy to get hints that he was the culprit... oh well!
Other than the feelings of 'we're never going to figure this out' and the tension of Yasu's always wanting things to be done with I think the main characters don't get quite enough screentime for the payoff/reveals to feel super justified.
But overall hey! Pretty interesting still. And the use of that maze at the end is such a great subtle horror moment. We think of old games as being archaic but really they seem happy to shift registers at will...
To give more details... it's a meta take on the mystery/detective genre? Of course by the 80s mystery had likely played with twists around point of view / narrator a lot, I wonder if this was the devs' stab at adapting those ideas to a game format. As an experiment, I'm not sure it entirely works fully - in hindsight you can read Yasu's actions as disobeying you, twisting the truth, but in the moment it feels like the game is just kind of buggy or missing info - even if this feeling is likely intentional. Whereas in a book..you can read the book. You could get 'stuck' in a book but not in the same way you get stuck in a game.
That's not to say that the game is pretty funny at times, playing with the command-input format (different texts playing for repeated interactions, gags, etc). I like that it's very aware of the affordances the commands give - building tension through the labyrinth, Yasu's constant stare in some spots.
I kind of wonder how you were to deduce this yourself. I ended up using a guide halfway through so I wasn't sure if you could ask Yasu about the IOU or diaryy to get hints that he was the culprit... oh well!
Other than the feelings of 'we're never going to figure this out' and the tension of Yasu's always wanting things to be done with I think the main characters don't get quite enough screentime for the payoff/reveals to feel super justified.
But overall hey! Pretty interesting still. And the use of that maze at the end is such a great subtle horror moment. We think of old games as being archaic but really they seem happy to shift registers at will...
I definitely don't recommend playing this game without any kind of guide because it requires just blind luck to find required items.
The story is short and has really unexpected twist at the end (well, there were some hints during the game but overall I didn't see that coming), and it's the earliest game with some real story telling and graphics that I've played (I don't count games like mystery house because they're too dumb). It even reminded me Ace Attorney so it definitely inspired many great games
The story is short and has really unexpected twist at the end (well, there were some hints during the game but overall I didn't see that coming), and it's the earliest game with some real story telling and graphics that I've played (I don't count games like mystery house because they're too dumb). It even reminded me Ace Attorney so it definitely inspired many great games