JRPGs as we know them wouldn't exist without this obscure adventure game, and now it's back as an AI chatbot
The Portopia Serial Murder Case, a Japan-only PC and NES game that indirectly led to the creation of such notable franchises as Dragon Quest and Metal Gear, is being revived by Square Enix in the form of a free-to-play AI chatbot.
April 23 will see the free-to-play Steam launch of - lemme make sure to get the full title here - Square Enix AI Tech Preview: The Portopia Serial Murder Case. As the title implies, this project will marry natural language processing technology to that original game, allowing you to more intuitively interact with the game's NPCs in what appears to be the style of AI chatbots.
Portopia was never released outside of Japan, and if you're not familiar with this period of gaming history, you might not realize just how influential it truly is. Published by Enix, it was the first megahit designed by Yuji Horii. Horii would take many of its interface and storytelling techniques into Dragon Quest, the game that set the blueprint for pretty much the entire Japanese RPG genre and whose success led Square to greenlight the original Final Fantasy, years before Square Enix merged into a single entity.
Hideo Kojima says (opens in new tab) Portopia and Super Mario Bros. were the games that inspired him to join the industry, and Metal Gear Solid V even includes portions of a Portopia ROM buried deep in its code. Portopia was one of the first games played by modern-day Zelda boss Eiji Aonuma (opens in new tab). And, while Portopia certainly wasn't the first Japanese adventure game, its success did influence what would become the visual novel genre, up through modern descendents like Phoenix Wright.
Portopia is a detective mystery game where you have to solve a murder. In its original PC incarnation, you had to
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