Director Takumi and Producer Eshiro Were Also Present: A Report on A Store Signing and Handshake Event for The Nintendo 3DS Game Gyakuten Saiban 4 (2017)

Title: Director Takumi and Producer Eshiro Were Also Present: A Report on A Store Signing and Handshake Event for The Nintendo 3DS Game Gyakuten Saiban 4 / 「巧ディレクターと江城プロデューサーも来店した，ニンテンドー3DS「逆転裁判4」店頭サイン＆握手会をレポート」
Source: 4Gamer

Summary: On September 22, 2017, the Bic Camera Shinjuku West Exit Store held a special signing and handshake event to celebrate the release of the Nintendo 3DS version of Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Ace Attorney 4 - Apollo Justice). The event started at 18:30 and lasted for an hour. 4Gamer reported on this event two days later, noting that despite the rain, there were many fans to see Takumi Shū, who supervised the original Nintendo DS game released in 2007, and Eshiro Motohide, who was an assistant-producer on the original title. 4Gamer also got do a very short interview with the two men to reminiscence about the development of the original 2007 game.

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[Mari-Detective] The order was to power up everything! Gyakuten Kenji 2 Interview (2011)

Title: [Mari-Detective] The order was to power up everything! Gyakuten Kenji 2 Interview /「【まり探】オーダーはすべてにおいてパワーアップ！ 『逆転検事2』インタビュー」

Source: Dengeki Online

Gyakuten Kenji 2 (Ace Attorney Investigations 2 - Prosecutor's Gambit) was released on the Nintendo DS on February 3, 2011. About two months later, on March 29, 2011, Dengeki Online posted an interview with producer Eshiro Motohide, director Yamazaki Takeshi and character designer Iwamoto Tatsurō. The interview was held by Marizō, who writes about mystery and suspense adventure games for Dengeki in his Marizō Detective Agency corner. In this interview, Marizō asks the three men about when development on Gyakuten Kenji 2 first started, the aspects they focused on when making this sequel to the game starring Mitsurugi Reiji (Edgeworth), how characters were created, characters they liked, prospects of a sequel and about... the kind of underwear the characters wear.

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Gyakuten Saiban, The Meaning of Design (2006)

Title: Gyakuten Saiban, The Meaning of Design / 「逆転裁判、デザインそのココロ」

Source: Gyakuten Saiban Official Fan Book

Summary: Gyakuten Saiban Official Fan Book  was released in 2006, in the period between the release of Gyakuten Saiban Yomigaeru Gyakuten (Ace Attorney 1 DS) and Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Ace Attorney 4 - Apollo Justice). As a book aimed at fans of the series in this interim period, the book contains an interview with series writer/director Takumi, in which he looks back at the six years in which he has worked on the series until now. He talks about working on the first game and the difficulties they experienced during its development, from him not knowing how to write characters to the composer having to leave the project mid-way. He also talks about how it's almost miraculous how the three games formed one cohesive story, as he was always more concerned about making the next deadline and thus could not actually plan forward.

The Answer to Unfinished Matters - A Story Of Succession: Eshiro Motohide & Yamazaki Takeshi (2013)

Title: The Answer to Unfinished Matters - A Story Of Succession: Eshiro Motohide & Yamazaki Takeshi / 「やり残したことに答えが出せた、"継承”を描く物語 江城元秀X山崎剛」

Source: Gyakuten Saiban 5 Official Complete Guide + Special Episode Guide 

Summary: The official guide for Gyakuten Saiban 5 (Ace Attorney 5 - Dual Destinies), released in 2013, contains a long interview with producer Eshiro Motohide and scenario director Yamazaki Takeshi, where they talk about a variety of topics concerning the game, ranging from the jump to 3D graphics, how some characters were originally conceived and how they differ from the end product, the ideas behind the change in user interface and adding consumer-friendly options, and also the themes of the game and the thoughts that went behind creating the stories of the main characters. The interview also contains several extra columns, where the developers talk about smaller subjects, like references and other fanservice points found in the game, they talk about the Gyakuten Kenji (Ace Attorney Investigations) series they worked on too, and about smaller bits of trivia concerning the game, like the connections between Themis Legal Academy and a certain Gyakuten Kenji character or for example script conventions.

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Gyakuten Kenji Planning Document (Capcom Town Excerpts) (2023)

Title: Gyakuten Kenji Planning Document (Capcom Town Excerpts) / 逆転検事企画書
Source: Capcom Town Museums

Summary: On June 12, 2023, Capcom opened Capcom Town, a website to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the game company. On August 21, a few pages from the original planning proposal for Gyakuten Kenji (Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth) were posted in the Museum section of Capcom Town. These were the official documents for internal use to explain what the game was going to be about. In the four pages posted, we see what they wanted to bring over from the main series, but also how they tried to differentiate the game from the main series in terms of gameplay. While in other interviews, director Yamazaki has told about a time when they were contemplating making a game featuring Akane (Ema Skye), the pages shown here are from the time when they had firmly decided on using Mitsurugi (Miles Edgeworth) as the playable character in the planned game.

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Celebrating the Release of Gyakuten Saiban 4 - A Discussion with 4 Members of the Team (2007)

Title: Celebrating the Release of Gyakuten Saiban 4 - A Discussion with 4 Members of the Team / 『逆転裁判４』発売記念　チーム４者対談

Source: Gyakuten Saiban Official Fan Book 3

 

Summary: Gyakuten Saiban Official Fan Book 3 was released in 2007 coinciding with the release of Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Ace Attorney 4 - Apollo Justice), containing several pages on the development of the game. The longest article in the book is an interview with four members of the core development team of Gyakuten Saiban 4: the series supervisor and scenario writer of this game Takumi Shū, director Endō Mitsuru, producer Matsukawa Minae and planner Yamazaki Takeshi. The four discuss how the team structure changed for the development of this game, and the difficulties that arose from this transformation. Other topics discussed are about Takumi's drinking, things they'd argue about during development and changes made to the story. This interview is noteworthy for featuring director Endō Mitsuru, as he seldom appears in promotional material for this game.

Surviban Planning Document (Capcom Town Excerpts) (2023)

Title: Surviban Planning Document (Capcom Town Excerpts) / サバイバン企画書

Source: Capcom Town Museums

Summary: On June 12, 2023, Capcom opened Capcom Town, a website to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the game company. In the museum part of the site, in the Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) section, they also posted 10 pages from the planning document for Surviban, the prototype game which would eventually become the first Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney GBA) game released in 2001. The document was originally written by series creator Takumi Shū in 2000 and is about forty pages long in complete form. The whole document has been put on display in real-life at a few events, but they have never reproduced the whole document in publications, physical or digital. Most of the 10 pages shown off in the Capcom Town Museum have been published before in guide books. Though you can recognize the final product in the pages shown off, same courtroom mystery adventure game at heart, Surviban also has a few distinctive differences from the final product, from the game title to the exact flow of the game in the trials and also in terms of presentation. For example, one of the pages emphasizes the real-time element of the trials, which is not existent in the final product.

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Gyakuten Saiban 5 Blog Entry 17: Working on the Scenario (2013)

Title: Working on the Scenario /「シナリオのお仕事」

Source: Gyakuten Saiban 5 official site 

 

Summary: On August 12, 2013, the 17th post on the official Gyakuten Saiban 5 (Ace Attorney 5 - Dual Destinies) developer blog was posted, written by Fukuda and Fuse of the Planning section of the game, which had released about three weeks earlier. Both these planners worked on the scenario of the game, and in this dual post, the two explained how the story of a Gyakuten Saiban game is plotted, and how they give life to the characters that inhabit each episode. Fukuda walks the reader through the process of brainstorming, creating a plot and finally writing the whole script with character dialogues, while Fuse, who is not to be confused with the art director of the game who shares the same name, explains how they bring out a characters personality in their text.

 

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A Collaboration between Gyakuten Saiban 4 (3DS ver.) and Wanzhuji, Running Now! Takumi (Director) and Eshiro (Producer) Review the Food!! And We Ask About The Future of the Gyakuten Series (2018)

Title: A Collaboration between Gyakuten Saiban 4 (3DS ver.) and Wanzhuji, Running Now! Takumi (Director) and Eshiro (Producer) Review the Food!! And We Ask About The Future of the Gyakuten Series / 「3DS版『逆転裁判4』×万豚記コラボ実施中！　巧D＆江城Pが食レポ!!　『逆転』シリーズの展開も訊く」

Source: Famitsu 

 

Summary: Following the release of the 3DS port of Gyakuten Saiban 4 ("Ace Attorney 4 - Apollo Justice") in December 2017, the Chinese-style restaurant chain Wanzhuji, with restaurants all across Japan, featured a special collaboration with that game, with special sets recommended by Gyakuten Saiban 4 characters Odoroki Hōsuke (Apollo Justice), Garyū Kyōya (Klavier Gavin) and Minuki (Trucy), which also came with special stickers for each time you ordered one of these sets. Editors of Famitsu interviewed the producer Eshiro Motohide and director Takumi Shū in Feburary 2018 as they tried the food, but also asked them about special memories they have of Gyakuten Saiban 4 as well as about the future of the series.

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Gyakuten Kenji 2 Blog Entry 13: Scenario Camp! (2010)

Title: Scenario Camp! / 「シナリオ合宿！」
Source: Gyakuten Kenji 2 official site

Summary: In the post published on November 26th, 2010 on the official Gyakuten Kenji 2 (Ace Attorney Investigations 2 - Prosecutor's Gambit) developers blog, character designer Iwamoto Tatsurō writes a bit about the "writing camp" they held during the development of the game. The staff members that were involved with the scenario would stay for four nights at a company-owned resort, where they could concentrate on the scenario. As the character designer, Iwamoto was tasked with making rough sketches for the characters, which in turn would lead to changes or finetuning the scenario, like a feedback loop. While the trip turned out to be a lot more work than Iwamoto had initially expected, they also had time for some fun, like a character drawing contest, and the creative creations by producer Eshiro Motohide, director Yamazaki Takeshi and planner Furukawa Yuuki are revealed by Iwamoto here, together with sketches of those three men by Iwamoto.

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