Portopia Serial Murder Case 

Well before Yuji Horii was “the Dragon Quest guy,” he was the creator of this wildly influential 1983 detective game. Like the early ‘80s text adventures from Sierra Online, Portopia helped pave the way for narratively ambitious adventure games. The game features first-person graphics, nonlinear gameplay, an open world, and branching dialogue choices. The Famicom version also included one of the earliest uses of the point-and-click command menu. All of these things are commonplace now, but that wasn’t the case at the time.

Portopia was never officially released in the West until April 2023 (as a reimagined “AI tech preview” from Square Enix, womp womp). Even so, its influence is everywhere in modern gaming. In a 2005 interview with GameSpot, Metal Gear and Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima cited Portopia and Super Mario Bros. as the two games that inspired him to pursue a career in the industry. “My encountering this game expanded the potential of video games in my mind,” he said of Portopia. — JG