YMMV / The Portopia Serial Murder Case

• It Was His Sled: Yasu being the killer is arguably more well known than the game itself thanks to it becoming a Japanese meme, to the point that Haruhi-chan casually spoils the twist in one chapter.
• Memetic Mutation: Yasu is the culprit. ^Explanation The murderer turns out to be the player's assistant, Yasu. In addition to rendering the ending a massive case of It Was His Sled, that meme is probably the reason most western audiences have even heard of this game.
• Once Original, Now Common: The game was revolutionary when it released back in 1983, as it pioneered many of the concepts that would drive the Adventure Game and Visual Novel genres going forward. Nowadays, practically all of the ideas have become so commonplace that The Portopia Serial Murder Case doesn't come across as innovative anymore.
• Porting Disaster: The game got a version presented as an "AI tech preview" in 2023. It got new art, but lost the friendly menu system of the NES version, instead presenting a free form text interface. It suffers from You Can't Get Ye Flask even more than the original version and players were expecting a far more intelligent AI. The AI is bad at recognizing even the commands it is supposed to know, minor changes such as punctuation can lead to different results, and there's a Game-Breaking Bug where it entirely stops recognizing anything after reopening the game. Currently, despite being free, it is the lowest-rated Square-Enix game on Steam by a significant margin.
• Tear Jerker: In spite of the stripped back storytelling, Yasu's reaction to learning Kouzou had become The Atoner, his confession and his pleas for Fumie to not confess herself are still surprisingly moving.
• That One Level: The maze under Kouzou's house. It is extremely easy to get lost in it, as every spot looks identical within it and the closing off of paths makes it impossible to rely on backtracking.
• Values Dissonance: At multiple points in the game you are required to engage in police brutality by having Yasu beat suspects until they confess to some key point. This is, needless to say, much less acceptable today than it was in 1980's Japan when the game was released.

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