J.B. Harold Murder Club

Sounds ominous, doesn't it?

J.B. Harold Murder Club stands as one of the most difficult games ever made. Released for the at-the-time revolutionary TurboGrafx-16 CD system, this hard-boiled detective story was played by few gamers and had its mysteries solved by even fewer. The game certainly wasn't graphically impressive, and its release on CD-ROM merely served as a vehicle to produce great audio and deliver some of the most memorable voice acting of all time. Why does this extremely obscure game deserve to be resurrected from its grave? Simply put, to this day there isn't much out there quite like it.

As the name implies, you play the role of a young detective by the name of J.B. Harold, out to solve the murder of a man by the name of Bill Robbins. The case will get you involved with a cast of nearly a dozen suspects, as well as numerous characters and locations all over town. By gathering evidence and clues, you'll slowly unravel the twisted tale that led up to the death of Bill Robbins. Much like a traditional point-and-click adventure game, J.B. Harold Murder Club placed all of its emphasis on story, and the key to getting anywhere in the game was using your skill as a detective rather than lightning-quick reflexes to get to the bottom of the case.

Solve it!

Sure, it's been said repeatedly that the adventure genre is dead, at least in the commercial aspect. Konami's Shadow of Destiny and the epic tale of Shenmue both came close to letting you relive the intrigue of solving a murder, but neither of these games dealt with anything more than the case at hand, which is precisely why another chapter in the life of J.B. Harold would be so great. While Shadow of Destiny brought time travel into the fold and Shenmue tried to be too many different games at once, a J.B. Harold Murder Club of today would probably follow a formula that closely resembles that of Knights of the Old Republic. Both games feature character interaction as the major gameplay element and even have a similar type of multiple phrase response. Whatever it looked like, just so long as it had the cool, jazzy feel of the original, a new J.B. Harold Murder Club would certainly garner more attention than the first one ever did.