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Yuji Horii’s The Portopia Serial Murder Case Game Revived as NLP AI Tech Preview

Jenni LadaBy
Yuji Horii’s The Portopia Serial Murder Case Game Revived as NLP AI Tech Preview
Screenshot via Square Enix

Square Enix brought back the Yuji Horii PC-6001, MSX, and Famicom game The Portopia Serial Murder Case as an NLP AI tech preview. It is available on Steam in both English and Japanese on April 24, 2023. It will be a free-to-play example of AI with natural language processing, natural language understanding, and speech to text. However, the official site noted that there is no natural language generation for game characters’ responses due to “a risk of the AI generating unethical replies.” However, that could eventually appear. In The Portopia Serial Murder Case, players are a detective who works alongside their partner Yasu to investigate the death of a Mr. Yamakawa. Players input actual text to direct Yasu to act or investigate and solve the crime. Here are some of the initial screenshots.

The original Yuji Horii adventure game first never appeared outside Japan, though it did appear on multiple platforms. It debuted on the PC-6001, then eventually came to the MSX and Famicom before heading to mobile devices. Square Enix AI Tech Preview: The Portopia Serial Murder Case will be available on PCs via Steam on April 24, 2023.

Jenni Lada
About The Author
Jenni is Editor-in-Chief at Siliconera and has been playing games since getting access to her parents' Intellivision as a toddler. She continues to play on every possible platform and loves all of the systems she owns. (These include a PS4, Switch, Xbox One, WonderSwan Color and even a Vectrex!) You may have also seen her work at GamerTell, Cheat Code Central, Michibiku and PlayStation LifeStyle.