Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club might not have been the M-rated Switch horror game that many first assumed it would be, but the dark return of the Famicom Detective Club series was still a huge shock on multiple levels, and even producer Yoshio Sakamoto was surprised that it got approved so easily by Nintendo.
In a new interview with Inverse, Sakamoto is asked about the game's mature themes, to which he reveals that "there was no other way but to go in the direction we did" in order to convey the theme and message he wanted to get across. With that said, "this game is clearly doing something different from most Nintendo games, so I expected that we would have a hard time getting approval from Nintendo teams internally," he admits.
This wasn't something that assistant producer Kaori Miyachi was concerned about, as she reveals that she "had the opposite thought." She says: "There were times during the production when a worried Sakamoto would say to me 'Is it alright for us to make this kind of story?', and I would always reply, 'I'm sure it'll be fine!'"
Clearly, even though she acknowledges that Emio "was an ambitious game for Nintendo in many ways," Miyachi was right, as Sakamoto continues: "I was honestly surprised how smoothly this project was approved. I was convinced that if we approached this theme sincerely and conveyed the message we truly wanted to convey, that would be the best way to live up to the expectations of Nintendo, who gave us the go-ahead, and that motivated us to do our best."
It all worked out in the end, anyway, and we can only hope that Nintendo is willing to give the thumbs up to more surprising projects going forward, especially as we creep closer and closer to the Switch 2 (or whatever the Switch successor ends up being called).
