Last year, Nintendo released Emio – The Smiling Man, the first new game in the Famicom Detective Club series in 30 years.

During its announcement and launch, Emio briefly went viral due to its creepy marketing and dark themes, which seemed quite out of character for the family-friendly Nintendo. In an interview with Inverse, producer Yoshio Sakamoto expressed surprise at how smoothly the project was approved by Nintendo, which in turn motivated the team to work hard on living up to expectations.

Yoshi Sakamoto (Producer): There was a theme and message that I really wanted to convey through this game, and in order to do so, there was no other way but to go in the direction we did. However, 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.

Kaori Miyachi (Asst Producer): While Sakamoto expected an uphill battle for internal Nintendo approval, I had the opposite thought. In fact, 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!”

Sakamoto: 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.

Miyachi: Thinking back, I think this was an ambitious game for Nintendo in many ways. I hope that players sense that through what we’ve done in this game.

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