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How to Play Murder Club and the J.B. Harold Series

Posted November 27, 2024

Murder Club is an early detective mystery game written and designed by Rika Suzuki. You play as detective J.B. Harold, investigating the murder of Bill Robbins, a prominent businessman with no shortage of enemies. The game has been released for dozens of platforms over the years, along with multiple remakes and sequels. There are five main games in the J.B. Harold series:

  • Murder Club (1986)
  • Manhattan Requiem (1987)
  • Kiss of Murder (1988)
  • D.C. Connection (1989)
  • Blue Chicago Blues (1995)

These games are difficult to find in the United States, and they’re not all available in English. Hopefully this guide will make them a bit more accessible to English speakers in North America.

About Rika Suzuki

Rika Suzuki was a pioneer in the mystery and adventure games in Japan. She co-founded Riverhill Soft in 1983, where she created the J.B. Harold series, the “1920s series” starring private investigator Ryūnosuke Tōdō, and others. She later co-founded CiNG, where she wrote and directed the Another Code series (also known as Trace Memory), as well as Hotel Dusk: Room 215, and its sequel, Last Window: The Secret of Cape West. Many of her games have never been translated to English or released outside of Japan.

The Original Murder Club

Murder Club was first released in 1986 for the PC-9800 series (or PC-98 for short), a popular line of computers in Japan. In 1989 it was brought to MS-DOS, and released in English in North America. This version of the game is no longer available for purchase, but fortunately sites like Internet Archive continue to make it available.

The original game is incredibly difficult, but if you’re willing to be patient, I think it’s a great introduction to the series and an important piece of video game history. Make sure to download the manual, as it contains vital information. It also includes pages for all the suspects in the game. I recommend printing these and taking notes on them, or at least using them as guideline for information to keep track of.

Mobile Phone Remakes

In 2010, the first three games were remade for iPhone and iPad. The remakes were handled by althi, a company founded by Yoshihiko Miyazaki, who worked on the original games at Riverhill Soft. They’re nicely done, with new illustrations that fit the games well. For some reason only one of the games, Manhattan Requiem, includes an option to play in English. This is one of the easiest ways to play the game if you have an iPhone or iPad, since it can be purchased from the App Store in most countries.

There are two other App Store releases that are only available in Japan. These are free-to-play versions that use a coin system to limit how much players can progress at a time. You can either wait to earn more coins, watch an advertisement, purchase coins, or pay to fully unlock the game. Since these versions require a Japanese App Store account, they’re difficult to play outside of Japan. I don’t recommend this option for most people.

Some of the 2010 releases are no longer available, including the third game, Kiss of Murder. These versions were also released for Android, but as far as I can tell none of these releases are currently available.

Nintendo Switch Remakes

In 2017 and 2018, the iPhone remakes were brought to Nintendo Switch. These are essentially the same games, so only Manhattan Requiem includes an English translation. Unfortunately these were never made available in North America, but there’s good news: the Nintendo Switch is region-free, and it’s not too difficult to purchase games from the Japanese store.

If you don’t speak Japanese, you’re probably only interested in Manhattan Requiem, but I wanted to include all of them since this is one of the easier ways to purchase these games outside of Japan. Here’s how to buy games from the Japanese eShop:

  1. Go to my.nintendo.com and create a new account. You’ll need a unique email address. Set the “Country/region of residence” to Japan.
  2. On your Nintendo Switch, create a new user account, and link it to the account you just created.
  3. At this point you can access the Japanese eShop, but you won’t be able to make purchases. Assuming you don’t have a credit or debit card from a Japanese bank, you’ll need an eShop card for the Japanese store. You can buy eShop cards from Playasia.
  4. Open the shop on your Switch using your new user account. The store will be in Japanese. I recommend using a phone app that can translate what the camera sees. Apple’s Translate app for iPhone, Google Translate for iPhone, and Google Translate for Android can all do this. Just set the app to camera point and point it at your Switch so you can see what each button does.
  5. Redeem any codes you purchased.
  6. Search the Store for “J.B.” and you should find all the games.
  7. Purchase and download the games you’re interested in. Once they’re downloaded, you can play them from your main user account if you prefer.

When you first play Manhattan Requiem, the game will be in Japanese. Here’s how to set it to English:

  1. On the main menu, select the second option (オプション”) and press the A button.
  2. Select the third option (言語：日本語) and press the A button again.

Blue Chicago Blues Fan Translation

The final game in the series, Blue Chicago Blues, was released in English for LaserActive. (This post originally said there was no official English release—thanks to Misty De Méo of CD-ROM Journal for correcting me.) In 2023, a fan translation was released for the Sega Saturn version, making it much more accessible using an emulator.

In order to play this, you’ll need a copy of the game, as well as a Sega Saturn emulator. RetroArch works well using the “Beetle Saturn” core, which is based on an emulator named Mednafen. You will also need the appropriate BIOS files for this to run. Setting this up is a bit advanced, but I wanted to mention it here since it’s currently the only option for playing this game in English.