A few years ago, I wrote a post called Solving the Portopia Serial Murder Case. In it, I detailed how I spent a fair amount of time examining the English fan translation of the Famicom version of the adventure classic, Portopia, and figuring out how to complete the game efficiently. After playing through it several times and taking detailed notes, I created a walkthrough which I made available to download.

Now, in 2023, Square Enix has released a new version of this hugely influential title, but with a twist: rather than the text parser input of the PC original or the menu-driven gameplay of the Famicom version, this new edition serves as a tech demo of an AI-driven input system which Square Enix is calling NLP, or Natural Language Processing. Allegedly, NLP is able to recognize a wide array of commands typed or spoken and utilize them to control the game. In theory, this could revolutionize the way graphic adventure games are played.

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