Ace Attorney

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This page is meant to provide an overview of the entire Ace Attorney franchise. Links are provided under most section titles for more detailed information on each aspect of the franchise. More information on the main series can be found in the page Gyakuten Saiban.

Ace Attorney is a franchise centered around a series of ocular novel / adventure hybrid video games developed and published by Capcom. It began as a trilogy of comedic legal thrillers known as Gyakuten Saiban ( 逆転裁判 ; literature. “ Turnabout Trial ” ) created by Shu Takumi and released for Nintendo ‘s Game Boy Advance handheld game comfort in Japan between 2001 and 2004. The trilogy was later ported to the Nintendo DS between 2005 and 2007 and released internationally, becoming known as the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy. These games follow the exploits of a passionate cub defense lawyer named Phoenix Wright ( Ryūichi Naruhodō in Japan ) who fights for his clients in a court setting loosely resembling that of the japanese legal system, using fact-finding skills, cross-examinations, and evidence. subsequent games have branched off and altered the convention of the original trilogy, adenine well as starring different protagonists. Among these, two detective games jointly known as Ace Attorney Investigations ( 逆転検事 Gyakuten Kenji ; lit. “ Turnabout Prosecutor “ ) place the player in the function of Phoenix Wright ‘s rival, a genius prosecutor named Miles Edgeworth, as he investigates crime scenes using evidence collection, logic, and arguments. A prequel duology set in Meiji-era Japan and victorian London called The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles stars Ryunosuke Naruhodo, an ancestor of Phoenix Wright, and a version of the fabricated detective Sherlock Holmes as two of the main characters. The original trilogy has besides been ported to WiiWare, io, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PCs through both forcible copies and the Steam digital distribution platform. The original Gyakuten Saiban recipe has continued with Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes as fresh recruits seven years after Phoenix Wright ‘s original adventures .

Games

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The mainline Ace Attorney games are hybrids of ocular novel and adventure game, which require the musician to collect evidence during investigations and present it to the witnesses in trials. The game is presented chiefly using either animated planar manga-like sprites or three-dimensional models shaded to look like sprites, with text dialogue, sound effects, and minimal spoken clips to simulate manner of speaking. These games are as follows :

There are some other games in different genres, and major Ace Attorney characters have been featured in other games both within and outside of Capcom .

history

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Original trilogy

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The concept of the series was conceived in 2000, when Shinji Mikami gave Shu Takumi six months to create any game he wanted. Takumi had wanted to develop a mystery game, in which players spotted lies and contradictions in statements given by others. He originally conceived the serial as a detective game, in which the player takes the function of a “ private eye ”. The original concept of the narrative for the first game was that the supporter would become the suspect in a murder when a body was discovered in his office. After being assigned a useless lawyer, he would go on to defend himself against the charges. Takumi dropped the detective theme, due to his concept having little to do with actual detective work, and realized that a court setting with an lawyer as a supporter would be a better match for his idea. [ 1 ] Takumi was inspired by western mystery fabrication, most notably Perry Mason, an american ferment about a fabricated defense lawyer who operates in a lot the same fashion as Phoenix Wright. [ 2 ] This inspiration would by and by go on to inspire the name of the “ MASON System “ in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. Another western inspiration was Columbo. The show ‘s singular structure of showing viewers the murderer at the start, in order to focus on how the detective overcomes the perpetrator ‘s tricks, preferably than who the perpetrator is, inspired the Ace Attorney custom of revealing the perpetrator of the game ‘s first episode. [ 3 ] Takumi has besides cited A Aiichirou as an inspiration, and has mentioned Soutou no Akuma as an influence in the sequence Bridge to the Turnabout. [ 2 ] For the legal arrange, Takumi was inspired by the state of the japanese legal system as it was in the year 2000. At the time in Japan, the defense lawyer occupation was one of the most notoriously unmanageable occupations in the area, with most attorneys not winning a single lawsuit their entire career, and the then-current judiciary system had a conviction pace of 99 %. For this reason, Takumi wanted players to control an “ underdog ” defensive structure lawyer, who would battle against the odds to prove his clients impeccant. Takumi and his team took several trips to observe criminal trials at a courthouse, as research, equally well as for team-building. Takumi recalls that while observing the first test, involving indecent exposure charges, he was particularly struck with how “ homely ” the atmosphere was. After observing more trials, including a murder trial, he noted the reality of the civil, calm nature of trials, peculiarly recalling a moment in which the defense mechanism and prosecuting attorneys very civilly dealt with a charge the early had regarding the latter ‘s cross-examination. In the end, he decided to ignore this reality, in party favor of creating trials that relied heavy on exciting court drama. [ 4 ] The first Gyakuten Saiban ( subsequently localized as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney ) was conceived and created by a modest team led by Shu Takumi. At the time, Takumi did not know whether the game would be released outside of Japan, therefore he avoided using plot points and linguistic process tricks that would be specific to japanese culture. After finishing the first crippled, he asked Mikami whether it would be released outside of Japan, to which the latter replied, “ Of course not. No way. ” therefore, Takumi decided to use whatever plat points and tricks he wanted for the adjacent two sequels. [ 5 ] The first Gyakuten Saiban was then remade for the Nintendo DS as Gyakuten Saiban: Yomigaeru Gyakuten ( meaning “ Turnabout Trial: Turnabout Rebirth “ ) in 2005, which included an English-language mode, making it a popular import deed. Later that year, a union american version of the remake was released as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, followed by a european adaptation. The remake besides featured an excess case, Rise from the Ashes, which used the microphone and touch screen features of the Nintendo DS for using forensic tools. exchangeable remakes for the next two games followed, named Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice for All and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations in localizations, though these did not feature extra cases .

DS earned run average

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The fourth title, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, was built for the Nintendo DS from the ground astir, and starred a fresh lawyer, Apollo Justice. Mechanics from Rise from the Ashes made a return in diverse capacities in this game and in subsequent games. The practice of including an english mood was discontinued, the English localization of function entirely appearing in international releases. Because the games were now being localized, Takumi returned to avoiding the use of Japanese-specific plot points in this game, though he felt that the yakuza-themed Kitaki kin would make sense to international audiences. [ 5 ] Capcom then partnered with Daletto ( a company co-founded by Capcom to work with on-line games ) to release the foremost three games as episodic capacity only in Japan between March and May 2008. After Apollo Justice, Takeshi Yamazaki took over the conductor ‘s position from Takumi and produced two games starring Phoenix ‘s equal Miles Edgeworth, Gyakuten Kenji and Gyakuten Kenji 2. The first was localized internationally as Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, though only the english lyric became available. io and WiiWare remakes of the master three games soon followed, though in case of the io, only the first game made it to North America .

3DS era

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After Gyakuten Kenji 2, Yamazaki was tasked with directing continuations of the main series, while Takumi returned to the series to work on spinoffs concurrently. Takumi ‘s first game since Apollo Justice was Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, a crossing over with Level-5 ‘s Professor Layton series, which was released in 2012 in Japan. Yamazaki-directed Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies was released in 2013, and received north american and european releases some months afterwards. Non-Japanese audiences would wait until 2014 for vs. to be localized. On December 27, 2013, Capcom announced that the Dual Destinies team, including director Takeshi Yamazaki, was working “ full moon force ” on the next Ace Attorney game, and that Shu Takumi was working on a newly game that would be announced in 2014, but at the prison term they did not reveal whether it was related to Ace Attorney or not. [ 6 ] On February 13, 2014, Nintendo announced during a japanese edition of Nintendo Direct that Takumi ‘s game would be a “ wholly different ” newfangled submission in the Ace Attorney series for the Nintendo 3DS. [ 7 ] This championship, Dai Gyakuten Saiban: Naruhodō Ryūnosuke no Bōken, was finally released in July 2015, starring an ancestor of Phoenix Wright ‘s called Ryunosuke Naruhodo who lived in Japan during the Meiji period. This was followed by Yamazaki ‘s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, which was released internationally in 2016. The storyline of Dai Gyakuten Saiban was concluded with Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2: Naruhodō Ryūnosuke no Kakugo in 2017. Neither Dai Gyakuten Saiban game saw a spill outside of Japan on the 3DS or for their Android / io ports .

Modern remakes

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Since 2019, the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney HD, and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles have been released or are in the procedure of being released internationally on multiple platforms, including PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Steam, and Xbox One, though Chronicles is not planned to have an Xbox passing. Chronicles includes English translated versions of the Dai Gyakuten Saiban duology, with the person games being titled The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve .

Setting

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Most of the games take place in an urban region largely set in the 2010s and 2020s. For the japanese versions, it is a town somewhere in Japan, while english versions place the games in Los Angeles, California. Cases tend to be localized within the city, though some take position well outside city limits, such as Kurain Village and Flight I-390. The main characters of Ace Attorney are lawyers who investigate crime scenes and then take their evidence to court. Throughout the stories, these lawyers work under an intricate system of rules in the crime setting ampere well as the court. Trials are the driving force of the plots in the Ace Attorney games. The court proceedings in the low-level trials seen in the Ace Attorney earth function on the initial trial system, which is based on the japanese legal system. basically, when a person is accused of a crime, they are immediately given a bench trial presided by a estimate, a prosecuting lawyer from the state, and a defense lawyer who must completely prove the charge barren of the crime, normally by finding contradictions in witness testimonies, within three days, after which the case is consigned to a higher court. Turnabout Succession uses a jury trial alternatively, the solution of a change in the Ace Attorney populace ‘s justice arrangement .

Gameplay

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Main category: Gameplay

This section deals solely with the games listed in the Games section.

Each game is made up of four or five episodes ; the games and episodes have some interconnection, recurring minor characters, and similar crime elements. The episodes typically become longer and escalate in complexity over the course of each crippled. There are two phases to each font : investigation and trial sessions ( the Ace Attorney Investigations games use arguments alternatively of trials, which are functionally very exchangeable ). Starting with the DS releases of the original trilogy, touchscreens and microphones can be used in addition to, and as an alternate to, the normal button-based controls, allowing the actor to shout “ Objection ! “, “ Hold it ! “, “ Take that ! “, or “ Gotcha ! “ at the allow times .

Investigations

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Main article: Investigation

Investigations include the ability to visit several key locations in the shell and talk to people involved with it while searching for testify by examining the scene. While talking to people, players can present evidence and occasionally profiles of others involved with the character. Investigations can besides sometimes include diverse other game mechanics. For model, one can dust for fingerprints by tapping the filmdom to apply fingermark powderize, then blowing at the microphone lightly to blow the gunpowder away. The musician can examine attest as fully-rendered 3D models from different angles ; key details concerning the evidence are much revealed this direction.

Trials

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Main articles: Trial & Argument

trial sessions are generally made up of testimonies consisting of statements by witnesses. The player broadly cross-examines the spectator to locate a contradiction by showing a part of tell that relates to what the witness has testified. The player may besides “ press ” the witness, asking the witness to clarify a instruction. sometimes pressing and presenting testify will lead to extra statements added to the testimony. Presenting evidence successfully may besides lead to newly lines of testimony altogether and it is about always the alone way to proceed in the game. The ultimate goal in the court is to have a “ not guilty ” verdict handed down to the defendant. Often, however, the player is only able to delay the character until the following day, giving them more clock to investigate the crime. generally, the player must determine who the true perpetrator of the crime is in decree to absolve the defendant of guilt. Presenting testify is accompanied by the defense lawyer pointing with their finger, as in the game ‘s logo, and cheering, “ expostulation ! “ ( 異議あり !, Igi ari ! ), accompanied by a actor’s line burp of the same give voice, both of which have become iconic representations of the serial. If the actor presents the wrong attest, attempts to present at the wrong time, or fails in other parts of in-court questioning, they lose some measure of acceptance by the evaluate, and if the musician is wrong excessively many times, the casing will be terminated with a guilty verdict for the accused, and the player will have to restart from their last write point or the beginning of the court session .

localization

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The localization of the games adapts the story to take set in an alternate-universe Los Angeles in which japanese culture has been allowed to flourish and blend into american culture, alternatively of being met with boisterous historical resistance as in real life. [ 8 ] Character names are adapted into English ; for case, “ Ryuuichi Naruhodou ”, whose first name references a dragon and whose final name is a pun on the idiom “ I see ”, is renamed “ Phoenix Wright ”, whose first gear name references the phoenix and whose last name is a pun on the discussion “ correct ”. additionally, relatively incidental references to japanese acculturation are replaced by references to western culture ; for model, “ Mayoi Ayasato ” frequently hungers for ramen, while the English equivalent “ Maya Fey “ lusts for burgers. however, the universe of japanese temples and Japanese-themed towns is left integral. Budget and fourth dimension constraints have caused this system to be implemented slightly inconsistently, such as Eldoon ‘s Noodles staying integral. References to the United States in the japanese versions are changed to respective european countries ( normally Germany ) to account for characters who are meant to have visited a alien nation. In Reunion, and Turnabout, an american car is called a british car in the localization of function because cars in the United Kingdom and Japan drive on the left english of the road, whereas north american cars drive on the right .

reception

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critical reception

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The westerly gambling press has by and large given favorable reviews of the games in the series. The games have received praise for their presentation, music and dialogue, and for being hard gamble bet on titles in an otherwise lacking market. Criticisms have included one-dimensionality, lack of replay value, and lack of development in the general gameplay formula. Reviewers have besides noted the unrealistic nature of the court arrangement ; GameSpot noted in its review of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney that, during court sessions, one should “ suspend your unbelief about the whole operation, since, although it feels fairly cheeseparing to reality, many things go on during the proceedings that would credibly horrify actual members of the legal system. ” Issue 22 of ( N ) Gamer besides noted that the games sometimes involve “ odd leaps in logic ” that can degenerate the experience of presenting evidence into a trial-and-error operation. Justice for All and Trials and Tribulations were criticized for a miss of the alone DS features introduced in the first game .

popularity

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In Japan, the games have enjoyed a reasonable sum of popularity. The unite sales ( both GBA and DS ) of the first two games totaled around 400,000 units, while the GBA version of the one-third game, neared 250,000 units. The fourth game sold 160,000 copies on the day of release in Japan, with a total of 250,000 units moved during the inaugural week of secrete. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth sold 172,000 units in the workweek of its handout and 42,000 the follow week. In both cases, the bet on was the second gear best selling DS title in Japan, trailing Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. In the United States, the success of the first game exceeded the gloomy expectations of retailers such as Wal-Mart and Toys “ R ” Us, forcing Capcom to prepare at least three extra runs of the game to meet the need. Capcom had produced nine to ten runs of three-to-four thousand units before Toys “ R ” Us requested 15,000 copies. Capcom has stated that as of December 2020 the series has sold 8.0 million units cosmopolitan. This success makes Ace Attorney Capcom ‘s 9th best sell game franchise. [ 9 ] In accession, as of December 2020 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy became the best selling individual let go of of the series with 1.0 million units sold, thereby being celebrated as one of Capcom ‘s Platinum Titles. [ 10 ]

music

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Main category: Music

Capcom has produced several albums for the Ace Attorney series including : original soundtracks for each game, albums consisting of orchestral and sleep together arrangements of blue-ribbon tracks, and the soundtrack for the film adaptation. The series has besides produced three stage musicals in partnership with the all-female musical theater company, the Takarazuka Revue .

original soundtracks

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The official Ace Attorney original soundtrack albums are about all released on the Suleputer label that Capcom typically uses, with the exception of the Gyakuten Saiban Movie Original Soundtrack, which is on the VAP tag. The composers creditworthy for the music are Masakazu Sugimori, Akemi Kimura, Noriyuki Iwadare, Toshihiko Horiyama, Yasuko Yamada, Tomohito Nishiura, Yasumasa Kitagawa, Kōji Endō, and Masami Onodera .

game soundtracks

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placement albums

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common musical themes and titles

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many of the like melodious themes with match titles or style prefixes/suffixes are used throughout the series to represent particular cases, locations, plat points, or characters, and appear on each game soundtrack with variations in tempo, winder, and arrangement. These variations are sometimes quite wide, leaving little obvious similarities between tracks except the titles. Some examples include “ Cross-examination ”, “ Reminiscing ”, and “ Triumphant Return “ themes .

Musicals

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Main category: Musicals

There are three stage musicals produced by Capcom and the Takarazuka Revue :
The first two musicals have been released on DVD in Japan and all three have received releases of the main numbers on iTunes Japan.

Drama CDs

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Main category: Drama CDs

There have been a handful of drama CDs released by Capcom. These CDs contain original cases, presented by voice actors in a radio-drama manner .

Manga

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There are two different manga series. The first was published by U.S manga publisher Del Rey Manga, and is an older collection of dōjinshi ( fan comics ) created by several different manga artists. The first volume was called The Phoenix Wright Files while the second was called The Miles Edgeworth Files. The second series was distributed by Kodansha Comics, written by Kenji Kuroda, and illustrated by Kazuo Maekawa. These stories are structured more in the style of the original games .

anime

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An zanzibar copal adaptation of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy was announced in 2015 ‘s Tokyo Game Show. Produced by A-1 Pictures, the beginning temper, which aired from April to September 2016, covered Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and most of Justice for All, while the second season, which aired from October 2018 to March 2019, covered Trials and Tribulations .

Collaborations

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For more significant collaboration events, see Category:Attractions

• In 2017, the Okayama Bar Association released a collaboration poster[11] with both Phoenix Wright and their mascot, Tasuppi, in the interest of encouraging people, particularly youth, with legal troubles to seek out legal counsel.

• In 2017, as celebration of the 15th anniversary of the Ace Attorney series, the Japanese navigation app NAVITIME added a special downloadable feature as part of its “dress-up” mechanic that incorporated Ace Attorney elements into the app flow, such as the judge’s gavel when starting navigation and Phoenix Wright saying Objection! when the user made a wrong turn.

References

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