According to Enterbrain's Famitsu, the Tantei Jingūji Saburō franchise had sold over 2,220,000 units at the time of its twentieth anniversary,[3] making it one of the longest running and best-selling Japanese adventure game series in history.

A recurrent series tradition takes titles from popular music as names for instalments, with frequent reference made to works of Kenji Sawada.

The scenario for the series' 3rd and 4th installments was written by a fledgling Kazushige Nojima, who added segments following the secondary lead which alternated on a predetermined basis.

Most of these features would become recurrent in the series, with the 6th installment, written by Hirotaka Inaba, replacing the previous game's stylised character design with a painted realist style rendered by original character designer Katsuya Terada, and adding a new "password" mechanic, involving hidden codes in the main game which could be used to unlock bonus content.

With WorkJam founder Yutaka Kaminaga finding previous scenario writers unavailable, writing credit for the series' eighth installment, released for PlayStation 2 in 2002, fell to Mitsue Kaneko.

In 2011,[citation needed] WorkJam began to wind down production, with full responsibilities for the ongoing development of a special 25th-anniversary game for the Nintendo 3DS falling to Arc System Works.

In 2017, Arc System Works announced that plans for a 30th-anniversary revival had led to its obtaining of exclusive rights to Expris' WorkJam-inherited properties at the end of the previous year.

Following this, the company worked with Orange and Neilo to publish several titles for handheld and home consoles, while exploring new avenues for PC delivery and reviving the mobile line for smart devices.

He was born the third son of a wealthy business enterprise owner, but chose to travel to New York City during his youth to work as an assistant detective.

Another prequel, telling a story set during Jingūji's schooldays, was published by Dengeki Bunko in 2004, followed by a brief sequence of releases at Sesame Books, ending in 2007.