[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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Producer Matsukawa and Director Takumi Shū talk about Gyakuten Saiban 4!! (2006)

Title: Producer Matsukawa and Director Takumi Shū talk about Gyakuten Saiban 4!! / 「『逆転裁判4』について松川プロデューサー＆巧舟ディレクターが語る!!」
Source: Famitsu

Summary: On June 23rd, 2006, Famitsu posted an interview on their site with producer Matsukawa and scenario writer Takumi Shū about Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Ace Attorney 4 – Apollo Justice), which was still in development. The interview had originally been posted in June 30, 2006 issue of Famitsu, but the online version includes parts that had been cut from the paper version due to page constraints. At this point in time, the new protagonist Odoroki Hōsuke had been announced together with his assistant Minuki (Trucy), and it had also been revealed the game was set seven years after the finale of the previous game, but little more was known at that point about the game, as this interview was also set before the bigger Tokyo Game Show presentation several months later. A lot of the interview therefore focuses on how this project got started, about Odoroki and Minuki’s roles in the game and about how the story will turn out. Interestingly, the interview title refers to Takumi as the director, even though he isn’t the director of Gyakuten Saiban 4, whereas the introduction of this article (not translated here) refers to him as being responsible for the scenario of the game.  

 

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

Gyakuten Kenji 2 Blog Entry 2: Gyakuten Kenji Returns!

 Title: Gyakuten Kenji Returns! /「逆転検事、ふたたび！」
Source: Gyakuten Kenji 2 official site

Summary: In this blog post published on September 16, 2010 on the Gyakuten Kenji 2 (Ace Attorney Investigations 2 - Prosecutor's Gambit) blog, director Yamazaki talks about the special demo they made for the Capcom booth at the Tokyo Game Show, which was going on at the time this article was posted. He then decides to talk a bit more about the contents of that demo, which is a slightly altered version of the first episode of the upcoming game. Yamazaki explains how he came up with the idea of the story of this first episode and even reveals an alternate idea he had, but which ultimately got discarded.

Yomigaeru Gyakuten Character Blog Entry 3: Leaving It Up To Heaven (2005)

Title: Leaving It Up To Heaven / 「神頼み」

 Source: Gyakuten Saiban Yomigaeru Gyakuten official site

Summary: The official blog of Gyakuten Saiban Yomigaeru Gyakuten (Ace Attorney (1) DS) consisted of two seperate columns. The normal columns were written by director/writer Takumi, producer Matsukawa and the occasional guest writer, but the character blogs consisted of dialogues between Naruhodō (Phoenix Wright) and Mayoi (Maya Fey) as they bantered about all kinds of topics related to the upcoming game release. In the third entry of the character blog on August 19, 2005, Naruhodō and Mayoi talk about the new episode which would be added to the DS release and reveal some of the case ideas Takumi had played with before settling on the story of the episode which would eventually become Yomigaeru Gyakuten (Rise from the Ashes)

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.

Turnabout Anecdotes and Memoirs of Two Decades (2021)

Title: Turnabout Anecdotes and Memoirs of Two Decades / 『逆転の逸話と20年の回想』
Source:  Famitsu, November 4 issue, 2021
 

Summary: Famitsu celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) franchise with a special counting over thirty pages, with retrospectives on the whole franchise, from games to spin-off material and also several interviews with key staff members who have worked on the various games in these twenty years. In this article, Famitsu interviews series creator Takumi Shū, addressing points like how it was working on the original game twenty years ago, how the writing process goes, people he worked with and the way the series has grown into a multimedia franchise that is much more than just one single GameBoy Advance game. 

 

Looking Back At Episode 1 Turnabout Foreigner with Gyakuten Saiban 6 Director Yamazaki (2016)

Title: Looking Back At Episode 1 Turnabout Foreigner with Gyakuten Saiban 6 Director Yamazaki (2016) / 『逆転裁判６』山﨑ディレクターと振り返る第１話「逆転の異邦人」
Source: Nintendo Dream, August issue, 2016

Summary: The August 2016 issue of Nintendo Dream featured an article starrring Yamazaki Takeshi, director of 2016’s Gyakuten Saiban 6 (Ace Attorney 6 - Spirit of Justice). Yamazaki played through the first half of the first episode, Turnabout Foreigner (The Foreign Turnabout), together with the people of Nintendo Dream and answered several questions regarding this particular episode. In this article, they talk about featuring a foreign setting and what makes the writing difficult, the use of animated cut-scenes, the animated prologue movie they posted on the official website, the things to think of when writing the first episode of a game and more.

Beware of spoilers for this episode.

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

A Long Interview With the Developers: The Core Truth of the Gyakuten Saiban series (2007)

Title: A Long Interview With the Developers: The Core Truth of the Gyakuten Saiban series / 開発者ロングインタビュー『逆転裁判』シリーズの真理』

Source: Gyakuten Saiban 4 Official Guidebook

 

Summary: The official guidebook for Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Ace Attorney 4 - Apollo Justice) includes a very long interview on the development of the game with three core staff members of the team: series supervisor Takumi Shū, art director Nuri Kazuya and producer Matsukawa Minae. Many questions are asked and answered, from topics regarding how the game was promoted to how characters were designed, how the story of the game was written, to Takumi's favorite mystery stories, how gameplay elements changed the way they had to work, and basically all aspects of the whole development cycle. The three are also asked about their favorite characters and stories in the series, as well as about when things didn't as initially planned. 

 

This article contains spoilers for the game.

 

Is Shin at Home a Softie for his Son? The Developers of Gyakuten Kenji 2 Answer Questions from our Readers (2011)

Title: Is Shin at Home a Softie for his Son? The Developers of Gyakuten Kenji 2 Answer Questions from our Readers / 「信さんは家では息子に甘いパパ？ 『逆転検事2』開発者が読者の質問に回答」
Source: Dengeki Online

 

Summary: In April 2011, Dengeki Online posted an article with a short Q&A with the developers of Gyakuten Kenji 2 (Ace Attorney Investigations 2 - Prosecutor's Gambit), which had been released on the Nintendo DS about two months earlier. The questions submitted came from readers of Dengeki and are about various topics, ranging from questions about the writing process of the plots to asking about details regarding the character designs or how certain characters are portrayed in the game. 

Images are taken from the source article. Copyright belongs to their respective owners. The article contains spoilers for the plot of the game.

Creator Interview - Takumi Shū (2012)

 Title: Creator Interview - Takumi Shū / 「クリエイター・インタビュー　巧舟」
Source: Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine, March 2012
 

Summary: The Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) special “No objection to Gyakuten Saiban” featured in the March 20212 issue of Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine had essays and in-depth looks at the Gyakuten Saiban series and legal mystery fiction in general, as well as special interviews with the two main writers of the series: Takumi Shū, director and writer of the main series, and Yamazaki Takeshi, director and main writer of the Gyakuten Kenji (Ace Attorney Investigation) spin-off series. In the interview with Takumi, he talks about the mystery fiction that inspired him, how the plotting works in the Gyakuten Saiban series and what books he'd like to adapt as a game if given the opportunity.

Looking Back At Episode 3 The Rite of Turnabout with Gyakuten Saiban 6 Director Yamazaki (2016)

Title: Looking Back At Episode 3 The Rite of Turnabout with Gyakuten Saiban 6 Director Yamazaki (2016) /「『逆転裁判６』山﨑ディレクターと振り返る第３話「逆転の儀式」
Source: Nintendo Dream, October issue, 2016

Summary: The October 2016 issue of Nintendo Dream featured an article starrring Yamazaki Takeshi, director of 2016’s Gyakuten Saiban 6 (Ace Attorney 6 - Spirit of Justice). Together with the people of Nintendo Dream, Yamazaki played through part of the third episode of the game, The Rite of Turnabout. He talks about early versions of the game, the reintroduction of Mayoi (Maya Fey) in the series, the difficulties that come with writing the third episode in a Gyakuten Saiban game in general and how Gyakuten Saiban 6 serves as the culmination for the whole series, paving the way for future titles.

Beware of spoilers for this episode.

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

Looking Back At Episode 2 Turnabout Magic Show with Gyakuten Saiban 6 Director Yamazaki (2016)

Title: Looking Back At Episode 2 Turnabout Magic Show with Gyakuten Saiban 6 Director Yamazaki /「『逆転裁判６』山﨑ディレクターと振り返る第２話「逆転マジックショー」」
Source: Nintendo Dream, September issue, 2016

Summary: The September 2016 issue of Nintendo Dream featured an article starrring Yamazaki Takeshi, director of 2016’s Gyakuten Saiban 6 (Ace Attorney 6 - Spirit of Justice). Together with the people of Nintendo Dream, Yamazaki played through part of Turnabout Magic Show (The Magical Turnabout) and answered all kinds of questions regarding this particular episode. He addresses issues like the use of animated movies in the game, exploring Minuki (Trucy Wright) in this episode, how to insert game mechanics in the story, why Akane (Ema Skye) was chosen as the police detective in this game and more.

Beware of spoilers for this episode.

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

Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 - A Romantic Adventure Of Reminiscence With The Development Staff Vol. 1 (2017)

Title: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 - A Romantic Adventure Of Reminiscence With The Development Staff Vol. 1  / 「『大逆転裁判２』開発スタッフと回想する冒險浪漫談 Vol.1」
Source: Nintendo Dream, October issue, 2017

Summary: The October 2017 issue of Nintendo Dream featured a long multi-part interview with the development staff of the 2017 title Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 (The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve). In Volume 1 of this feature director/scenario writer Takumi Shū, art director Nuri Kazuya and producer Eshiro Motohide discuss the game in general. They explain how the game had to be produced under very limited circumstances, but that everyone was eager to get the game out to provide the players with the answers to lingering mysteries from the first game. They also talk about Takumi’s understanding of the characters had changed and how the main visual art was conceived. In the second part of the article, the interviewer showed Eshiro and Nuri columns Takumi had written for Nintendo Dream when the first Dai Gyakuten Saiban  (The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures) was released in 2015 and asked them about the same topics like how they first gotten interested in games and what their hobbies are.

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

Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 - A Romantic Adventure Of Reminiscence With The Development Staff Vol. 4 (2017)

Title: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 - A Romantic Adventure Of Reminiscence With The Development Staff Vol. 4 - Episode 3: The Return of the Great Departed Soul / 「『大逆転裁判２』開発スタッフと回想する冒險浪漫談 Vol.4　第3話「未来科学と亡霊の帰還」」
Source: Nintendo Dream, October issue, 2017

Summary: A long multi-part feature starring the development staff of the 2017 game Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 (The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve) was published in the October 2017 issue of Nintendo Dream. In the fourth part of this series, director/scenario writer Takumi Shū, art director Nuri Kazuya and producer Eshiro Motohide look back at the third episode of the game, The Return of the Great Departed Soul. They discuss how the characters were designed and what the concepts behind them were, how the story was written and other tidbits. The article features slight spoilers for this episode.

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

Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 - A Romantic Adventure Of Reminiscence With The Development Staff Vol. 3 (2017)

Title: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 - A Romantic Adventure Of Reminiscence With The Development Staff Vol. 3 - Episode 2: The Memoirs of the Clouded Kokoro / 「『大逆転裁判２』開発スタッフと回想する冒險浪漫談 Vol.3　第2話「吾輩と霧の夜の回想」」
Source: Nintendo Dream, October issue, 2017

Summary: The October 2017 issue of Nintendo Dream featured a long multi-part feature with the development staff of the 2017 game Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 (The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve). In the third part of this unique feature, director/scenario writer Takumi Shū and art director Nuri Kazuya talk in-depth about the second episode in the game, The Memoirs of the Clouded Kokoro. The duo discusses how the characters were designed, what the original concepts behind this episode were and how things changed over the course of the development process. The article features slight spoilers for this episode and the fourth episode of the first Dai Gyakuten Saiban.

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