Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (NSP, XCI) ROM (Full Game)

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a 2010 puzzle adventure video game developed and published by Capcom. The story follows Sissel, an amnesiac ghost with supernatural powers, and his journey to rediscover his identity. Players solve environmental puzzles, interact with eccentric characters, and uncover the truth of Sissel’s death throughout one night. Gameplay is split into two sections: gathering information by navigating through the city, and saving lives by traveling back in time.

Direction, writing, and game design were headed by Shu Takumi, creator of the Ace Attorney franchise. Development began after the Japanese release of Trials and Tribulations in 2004, to create a mystery beyond what the conventions of Ace Attorney had allowed. The game was announced at TGS 2009, and released for the Nintendo DS in Japan in June 2010, and in North America, Europe, and Australia in January 2011. An iOS port was released in Japan in December 2010, and internationally in February 2012. An Android port was released exclusively in Japan in November 2012.

Ghost Trick was positively received, with praise for its characters, art direction, animation, music, and story, and criticism for its puzzle design and traversal mechanics. Ghost Trick was a commercial failure in Japan, leading Capcom to cite its performance as a cause for lackluster Q1 2010 revenue. The game was nominated for several industry awards, including Game of the Year by GameSpot and Nintendo Power, and has garnered a cult following. An HD remaster released worldwide for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in June 2023, featuring improved visuals and additional content.

GAMEPLAY

Ghost Trick is a single-player puzzle adventure video game. Players control the character Sissel, an amnesiac ghost with supernatural powers, throughout one night. The story is divided into 18 chapters, each titled after the time of night in which they take place. At the start of the game, only the first chapter is available to play; when players complete a chapter, the next one is unlocked. Gameplay is split into two sections: gathering information by navigating through the city, and saving lives by traveling back in time.

Players can press the “Ghost” button to swap between the real world and the Ghost World—an alternate dimension in which time does not pass. In the Ghost World, Sissel takes the form of a blue flame and can travel between nearby objects. Every interactable object contains a glowing sphere of essence called a “core”. Players can swipe from core to core to explore the environment. In the real world, Sissel cannot move around, and relies on his ability to possess and manipulate objects: by pressing the “Trick” button, players can perform “ghost tricks”, creating paths of traversal or influencing characters in the environment. For example, moving a cart of doughnuts may prompt a character to chase after it, while also giving Sissel access to new areas.

Possessing a telephone in use allows Sissel to trace the source of the call, add the number to his Phone Book, and travel to the location on the other end of the line. Additionally, certain locations have internal telephone lines, giving players the option to explore multiple rooms within a single area. As long as a functional telephone is nearby, players are free to return to any previously visited location. While moving from place to place, Sissel eavesdrops on the characters’ conversations and comments on his surroundings. As players interact with characters and discover locations, information about them is added to Sissel’s record.

At multiple points in the story, players will arrive at the other end of a telephone line to discover the corpse of a character. By possessing the corpse, Sissel can communicate with the victim’s spirit and travel back in time to four minutes before their death. During these “4 Minutes Before Death” segments, players are tasked with averting the victim’s fate, using ghost tricks to manipulate the environment before time runs out. If players fail to rescue the victim, they can rewind time and return to the beginning of the sequence.

If players manage to delay the fate of the victim, a checkpoint is created in the timeline. In later chapters of the game, players can control Missile, the ghost of a Pomeranian who befriends Sissel. 4 Minutes Before Death segments during these chapters increase in complexity, as Missile’s spirit can reach further than Sissel’s, and can swap the position of two objects that are of the same shape. Successfully averting a character’s fate brings them back to life in the present.

Rescued victims also develop permanent cores, allowing Sissel to talk directly with any character who has previously died. Conversations in the Ghost World resemble the investigation sections of Ace Attorney, providing players with a list of topics to choose from and lines of inquiry to follow.

PLOT

At 7:02 pm, an amnesiac spirit named Sissel regains consciousness in a junkyard. He sees the corpse of a man nearby and assumes it is his. Ray, a spirit possessing a desk lamp, tells Sissel about the nature of spirits and the “powers of the dead”, including the power to travel back in time to four minutes before a person’s death. Sissel uses these powers, called “ghost tricks”, to save a young detective named Lynne from an assassination attempt. Sissel learns that Lynne came to the junkyard at his request, and decides that she is the only lead to uncovering his identity. Ray warns Sissel that his spirit will vanish at dawn.

Sissel and Lynne work together to save other victims as Sissel learns more about his past. Ten years prior, Detectives Jowd and Cabanela arrested Yomiel, a man falsely accused of foreign espionage. Yomiel fled into a nearby park, taking a young Lynne hostage, but was killed by a fragment from the impact of a meteorite named “Temsik”. Jowd adopted Lynne into his family, including his wife Alma, daughter Kamila, and pet dog Missile. Five years later, Alma was inadvertently killed by a Rube Goldberg machine built by Kamila for a surprise party. Jowd hid the evidence and took responsibility for Alma’s death to protect Kamila, going to prison under Cabanela’s watch.

In the present, Sissel and Lynne discover that Sith, a foreign agent, was behind Lynne’s assassination attempt. Sith claims to have kidnapped the justice minister’s daughter as blackmail to hurry Jowd’s execution, unaware that his subordinates mistakenly took Kamila instead. Sissel uses his powers to free Jowd from prison, though Cabanela soon recaptures him. Sissel proves the minister’s daughter is safe at home, leading the minister to call off Jowd’s execution. He tells Sissel and Lynne his fear that a spirit known as “the manipulator” is behind recent events, including Alma’s death.

Cabanela is shot and killed while investigating Sissel’s body. Missile, now a spirit with ghost tricks of his own, helps Sissel undo Cabanela’s death. Sissel learns that his corpse was used by the manipulator to kill Cabanela and escape. Cabanela reveals that Sissel’s body belongs to the manipulator, Yomiel, whose corpse went missing shortly after his death. The body contained traces of radiation found in the Temsik meteorite, preventing it from decomposing.

Sissel, Missile, Lynne, and Jowd follow Yomiel aboard Sith’s submarine, rescuing Kamila and cornering Yomiel. Sith confronts Yomiel, extracting the meteorite fragment from his body, and sinks the submarine after fleeing. Yomiel reveals that the powers of the dead are granted to those who die in the presence of Temsik radiation. He had been working with Sith’s organization to retrieve the Temsik fragment and eliminate all those who knew of its existence, including Jowd, Lynne, and Cabanela. Soon after his apparent death, Yomiel’s fiancée—also named Sissel—committed suicide. Yomiel had come to work for Sith as a spirit, and was promised the means to lead a normal life once Sith had the fragment.

With no means of escape and dawn approaching, Sissel realizes that the group can travel four minutes before Yomiel’s death, as his corpse is no longer being preserved by Temsik radiation. Sissel, Jowd, Yomiel, and Missile all travel ten years into the past and prevent Yomiel’s death, creating a new timeline. In the aftermath, Sissel discovers his true identity—a stray cat Yomiel adopted after his fiancée’s suicide. Sissel was killed when a stray bullet struck his cat carrier at the junkyard. Before returning to the present, Ray tells Sissel the truth of his own identity—an aged Missile from an alternate timeline, who failed to prevent Yomiel’s death without Sissel’s help and waited ten years to ensure his involvement. Spirits persist indefinitely, but Ray gives Sissel a deadline to foil the spies’ plot.

In the new timeline, Sissel has been adopted by Jowd, Alma, Lynne, and Kamila, while Yomiel waits out his prison sentence to rejoin his waiting fiancée. Because of the character’s actions in the past, Sissel was struck by the meteorite fragment instead and lives as a spirit with the fragment in his body.