Source: Gyakuten Saiban 2 official site (down)
Gyakuten Saiban
Before I’ll talk about Gyakuten Saiban 2 (Ace Attorney 2 – Justice For All), I want to talk a little about the previous game.
Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney GBA) was released one year ago, on October 12, 2001.
And we got all of your reactions here at Capcom… I was so touched. The messages we got here at the Gyakuten Saiban team all helped relieve the hardships we had to endure while making the game, and were full of warmth. What made us especially happy, were that there were also messages from people who usually don’t play games.
“I borrowed the game from my daughter and played it all to the end. It was a lot of fun."
“I made my friend lend the game to me and I was hooked!”
Etcetera. …I would perhaps have been even happier if you had borrowed the game, but bought it yourself.
This might sound a bit crazy, but it is more important to me that Gyakuten Saiban is mystery fiction, rather than a game. I wanted to make something even people who didn’t play games could easily pick up, something they with which they could enjoy the fun of mystery fiction. That is why I kept the rules and the controls very simple and even used as much Japanese as possible in the system messages.
To tell you the truth, while I was thinking of the game mechanics, I always had one special person in mind. That person was my mother back home. My mother reads novels, but doesn’t even seem to understand how to read comics. She is of course a professional in being bad with machines. The chances of her successfully setting the VCR, is as big as a pro baseball player hitting the ball during a slump.
I once gave my parents a game machine as a present, but she’d put a mahjong game on top of the CD-ROM of a shōgi game my father was playing, switch the machine on and go complaining: “I wanted to play mahjong but shōgiis coming up!”. In a way, she’s very good at what she does.
So I wanted to make a game even my stubborn mother could play! With this very personal slogan, we finally finished Gyakuten Saiban.
I sent the game to my parents on the release day. There were some difficulties, but after triumphing over the many obstacles, she finally managed to get to the ending of the game this spring. Just imagining that similar dramatic stories have been happening all over the country, is quite interesting on its own.
Gyakuten Saiban (Backstage)
Naruhodō: …Let’s start right away with commenting on him.
Mayoi: That’s just like you. Your eyes are all sparkling!
Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney GBA) was released one year ago, on October 12, 2001.
And we got all of your reactions here at Capcom…
Mayoi: We were so happy!
Naruhodō: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Mayoi: So I got so many fans. There’s even someone who sent me a whole year supply of miso-rāmen.
Naruhodō: That’s…amazing.
Mayoi: But I think that’s just enough for half a year.
Naruhodō: You eat too much, Mayoi-chan…
The messages we got here at the Gyakuten Saiban team all helped relieve the hardships we had to endure while making the game, and were full of warmth.
Mayoi: That’s what he’s saying, but weren’t there some weird ones too?
Naruhodō: Well, of course. There’s this one for example. “I was impressed by playing this game.”
Mayoi: But that’s good.
Naruhodō: There’s more. “I never would’ve believed you could see such nice semi-transparency in a handheld machine.”
Mayoi: What does that mean?
Naruhodō: I think the writer was impressed by the semi-transparent text windows.
Mayoi: Impressively…boring.
Naruhodō: To each their own. But the problem is this. “Naruhodō looks cool shouting objekshon!”
Mayoi: ? What’s wrong with that?
Naruhodō: It’s not “objekshon”, it’s “objection”!
Mayoi: Well, yeah.
Naruhodō: I shouted that like a hundred times in the game. Was that all for nothing? It kinda gets to me.
Mayoi: Relax, relax.
Naruhodō: Even the team member responsible for the sounds in the game had made a list of all sound effects where it said: Naruhodō – Objekshon. I’m screaming with all I’ve got, so you all should really listen to what I’m saying…
Mayoi: Na-Naruhodo-kun. Cheer up! You know, show us the real thing here. You know. Yell “Objekshon!”
Naruhodō: You’re doing it on purpose, right?
There were some difficulties, but after triumphing over the many obstacles, she finally managed to get to the ending of the game this spring.
Mayoi: Ah, that’s a great story. Naruhodo-kun, I always feel these parent-child stories…
Naruhodō: Read it carefully. It says “this spring.” That’s half a year after it was released.
Mayoi: Ah, you’re right.
Naruhodō: He only said “there were some difficulties”, but I guess something dramatic happened in those six months.
Mayoi: Dramatic?
Naruhodō: Like his parents calling every single day. Like this.
Mother: I got stuck again.
Son: Again? Where?
Mother: Errr… in Turnabout Sisters. Where you find the body.
Son: That’s the start of the game! (Son picks up the walkthrough document next to him). Did you examine the telephone in the office?
Mother: Telephone?
Son: You know, there’s a telephone on the desk.
Mother: … (Mother remains silent for a while). There’s no phone.
Son: Eh?
Mother: There’s no telephone there.
Son: Wha-wha-what, but it’s right here! (Son taps the document like Naruhodō)
Mother: What do you mean with here!
Son: The desk of course! The gigantic telephone!
Naruhodō: He said they had this kind of conversation for half a year.
Mayoi: This isn’t just about completing the game, I think.
Naruhodō: Whole families are torn apart by this.
Mayoi: …that doesn’t happen, Naruhodo-kun.
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