Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 1: Greetings (2004)

Title: Greetings / 「ごあいさつ」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: In the first column written for the official Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) website, Naruhodō (Phoenix Wright) and Mayoi (Maya Fey) greet the readers and explain that Takumi Shū, the director and writer of the game, has left for his vacation, so they decide to show off the writing diary Takumi kept during the development process of the game. They comment on the little notes scribbled by Takumi in this diary. In this first column, we see how Takumi came up with the plot of the game’s first episode Turnabout Memories.

Naruhodo Gyakuten Saiban! 6 "Gyakuten Saiban 3" (2005)

Title: Naruhodo Gyakuten Saiban! 6 "Gyakuten Saiban 3" /「なるほど逆転裁判！第6回 逆転裁判3」
Source: DreaMaga 2005, Febraury issue

Summary: The column "Naruhodo Gyakuten Saiban!" ("I See! Ace Attorney!") in the monthly game magazine DreaMaga (an abbreviation derived from its old format titled DreamCast Magazine) ran for 19 months starting in the September 2004 issue and was written by Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) creator Takumi Shuu, as build-up to the release of the DS port of the first game. These columns usually consisted of a short essay by Takumi, some dialogues that had been cut out of the games, and a one-page dialogue-based short story starring the characters from Gyakuten Saiban, accompanied by an original illustration by Suekane Kumiko, the original main character designer of the games.. The theme for the sixth column is Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations), with as highlight the original idea he had for the final episode of this game. Note that this translation only includes the column itself, and none of the other parts (short story/cut dialogues).

Iwamoto Column Entry 8: Little Jokes And I (2004)

Title: Little Jokes And I / 「ボクと小ネタ」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: In the eighth column for the official Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) website for the Game Boy Advance, character designer Iwamoto Tatsurō writes about hiding little jokes and other stuff in the background images for the games. Because the images are first drawn on a higher resolution, and later shrunk down for the Game Boy Advance, a lot of these jokes were hard to see when they were originally released, though more recent HD releases have changed this.

Iwamoto Column Entry 4: Character Design And I (2004)

Title: Character Design And I / 「ボクとキャラクターデザイン」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: Character designer Iwamoto Tatsurō writes about how he designs characters in his fourth column for the official Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) website for the Game Boy Advance. He talks about how he works together with director/writer Takumi to come up with the characters together, but Iwamoto talks also about the importance of buying reference material to become better as an artist, even if it means you need to buy books you normally wouldn't.

Iwamoto Column Entry 3: Gyakuten Saiban 2 And I (2004)

Title: Gyakuten Saiban 2 And I / 「ボクと逆転裁判２」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down) 

Summary: In his third column for the official Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) website (of the GBA version), character designer Iwamoto Tatsurō writes about his work for the second game in the series. He had already worked in the first game, but he was made the main character designer for the second entry in the game. Iwamoto confesses he went a bit too far actually, and that it was his fault that Gyakuten Saiban 2 ended up with four of the originally planned five episodes, because his animations and designs were just too big to store on a GBA cartridge.

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

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 7: Part 2: Greetings (2004)

Title: Part 2: Greetings / 「パート2: ごあいさつ」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: The seventh column for the official Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) website is titled Part 2, as the previous six columns featured Naruhodō (Phoenix Wright) and Mayoi (Maya Fey) commenting on Takumi's development diaries. Starting with this column however, Takumi uses his own voice to talk about how development went on this game. Here he looks back at the last three years of working on the series.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 14: The Magnificent Turnabout Pt. 2 (2004)

Title: The Magnificent Turnabout - Part 2 / 「華麗なる逆転・後編」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down) 

Summary: In the fourteenth column for the official Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) website, Takumi explains how he managed to solve a fatal problem in the original script for the final episode of the game, The Magnificent Turnabout  (Bridge to the Turnabout). After three years, Takumi decided to take the advice he had written so often in the games and use it himself, and that led to a surprising result.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 13: The Magnificent Turnabout Pt. 1 (2004)

Title: The Magnificent Turnabout - Part 1 / 「華麗なる逆転・前編」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: In the thirteenth column for the official Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) website, director Takumi starts his two-part series on the final episode in the game: The Magnificent Turnabout (Bridge to the Turnabout). As seen in previous columns, the last episode of each game usually proves to be the most difficult, and this was no exception. Even though he already had a rough outline finished for the first part of the game, that version had actually been abandoned earlier because it contained a fatal flaw he didn't manage to fix. But with little time left, Takumi was forced to use that version anyway, and hope he'd come up with a solution to his problem anyway.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 16: Finale (2004)

Title: Finale / 「大団円」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: In the final column written for the Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) website, Takumi looks back at the release of the game, as well as the whole series. At the time, this was supposed to be the last game in the series, so Takumi takes the time to look back at all that has happened inside the courtroom, and says farewell to his characters and the players who have supported the series these three years.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 15: Infinity Born From "Restrictions" (2004)

Title: Infinity Born From “Restrictions” / 「“制限”が生む、無限大」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: The fifteenth column for Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3: Trials & Tribulations) has director Takumi talking about what the limited storage space on a Game Boy Advance cartridge means for the development of these games. While you would think that restrictions would be a bad influence on that, Takumi points out that being forced to come up with ideas is not a bad thing per se, and indeed, many of the elements thought "typical" of this series, were simply results of the team having to cope with storage restrictions.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 12: Turnabout Beginnings (2004)

Title: Turnabout Beginnings / 「始まりの逆転」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down) 

The twelfth column of the Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials and Tribulations) website has Takumi writing about the fourth episode in the game: Turnabout Beginnings. Takumi talks about how he had considered making this the first episode in the game, because it is chronologically the first trial to happen. He also explains how Mitsurugi (Edgeworth) came to have a role in this episode.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 9: Turnabout Memories (2004)

Title: Turnabout Memories / 「思い出の逆転」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: In the ninth column director Takumi wrote for the official website of Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials and Tribulations), he talks about the first episode of the game: Turnabout Memories. Like he explained in the previous column, little happenings (which he dubs irregularities) often result in big changes in this series and he points out two of them that occured during the development of this opening episode, which would have ramifications for the whole game. As always, these columns on specific episodes do contain spoilers.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 10: The Stolen Turnabout (2004)

Title: The Stolen Turnabout / 「盗まれた逆転」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: In the tenth entry of the Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations) blog, Takumi talks about writing the second episode in the game: The Stolen Turnabout. As he mentions in the eleventh entry of the blog, he considers the second episode in his games as the second-most important episodes after the first one, because they are usually the first full case in a game. For 3, he decided to use a story based on the works of Edogawa Rampo, the author of the short story that got Takumi interested in mystery fiction in the first place. Takumi also talks about the new prosecutor Godot.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 8: In Short, "Irregularities" (2004)

Title: In Short, "Irregularities" / 「つまりそれは、“不測の事態”」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: In the eight blog entry for the original Game Boy Advance version of Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations), series director Takumi talks about 'irregularities': little happenings that Takumi tries to bend into positive energy for the development process. He talks about how certain restraints, like the amount of space available on a Game Boy Advance cartridge, can have all kinds of effects on the final product. He also explains a bit about how they selected the voice actors for the voice clips in the game, and how they also have an influence on the story.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 Blog Entry 11: Turnabout Recipe (2004)

Title: Turnabout Recipe / 「逆転のレシピ」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban 3 official site (down)

Summary: In the eleventh blog entry for Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Ace Attorney 3 - Trials & Tribulations), series director continues with his series of stories about how each of the episodes was created. Turnabout Recipe is a special case, because it was originally written for Gyakuten Saiban 2 (Ace Attorney 2 - Justice for All). In a blog entry for Gyakuten Saiban 2, Takumi did mention they had to cut a whole episode away because they didn't have enough space. He eventually got to use the story for this game. He also explains the origin of the rather memorable lunchbox seen in this episode.

Interviewing Gyakuten Saiban 123 Designer Iwamoto Tatsurō (2014)

Title: His Favorite is Godot! Asking About The Memories Of How the Characters Were Created And Development Back Then. Interviewing Gyakuten Saiban 123 Designer Iwamoto Tatsurō / 「お気に入りはゴドー検事！キャラ誕生の経緯や開発当時の思い出に迫った「逆転裁判 123」デザイナー・岩元辰郎氏へインタビュー」
Source: Gamer

Summary: In this interview published on May 3, 2014 about Gyakuten Saiban 123 (Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy), Iwamoto Tatsurō tells about the work he has done on the original three Gyakuten Saiban games. While he was the secondary character designer (and all-round graphics artist) for the first game, he became the main character designer from the second game on after Suekane Kumiko left Capcom. He talks about desiging characters, about how the development went on the first games and about his favorite character and even about how he voiced Mitsurugi (Miles Edgeworth).

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