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.

Images are taken from the source. Copyrights belongs to the respective owners.

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.

Images are taken from the source. Copyright belongs to the respective owners.

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.

Images are taken from the source. Copyright belongs to the respective owners.

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.

 

Images are taken from the source article. Copyrights belongs to the respective owners.