10 best gaming surprises of 2021 (and 5 terrible ones)

08) Great Moment – Famicom Detective Club aged really well

Over the last two years, Nintendo has been working to drop Nintendo Directs that reveal a wealth of surprises to Switch owners and I still remember late 2020ish, possibly early 2021, when Nintendo made mention to the Famicom Detective Club getting rereleased. The two that were making a come back were “The Girl Who Stands Behind” and “The Missing Heir“.

I had heard of this and remembered it was a point-and-click mystery game that most people never got to play because it was only available on the Japanese-only Family Computer Disk System, and add on to their version of the NES that ran off floppy disks. It seemed an odd choice.

Then I finally got the chance to sit down with these games, remastered from the ground up with gorgeous, hand-drawn visuals and stirring remakes of the original soundtrack. Not only did these games have stories that held up really well over the last few decades, but they were so well written. I wanted to know everything about these characters and every detail. What was the burn mark on the tatami matt? Why won’t anyone talk about it? What happens when I call a phone number I unlocked in one game in the other game?

Both games were wonderful and uniquely unpredictable mysteries that can go from scary and tense to heartfelt and emotional and back again with no problem and I loved my time with both games.