At the Tokyo Game Show, Capcom announced that the Ace Attorney series will finally be getting its own anime, and we got to see a preview of Ace Attorney 6!
アニメ[逆転裁判]、地上波テレビ放送で2016年4月からスタート。 pic.twitter.com/6Cb3q0nBtf
— ニンテンドードリーム(ニンドリ) (@nindori) September 17, 2015
The main characters of the anime will be Phoenix Wright, Maya Fey, and Miles Edgeworth, all of whom starred in the original Ace Attorney game. The anime will begin airing in April of 2016. It was announced at a special presentation about the next Ace Attorney game, Ace Attorney 6, which will be released in Japan for the Nintendo 3DS in 2016.
This new game takes Phoenix Wright to the fictional Kulain, land of the spirit mediums (which is probably related to Kurain Village, where also-a-spirit-medium Maya Fey comes from). Here, a new investigation mechanic is introduced: seeing the last moments of a dead person’s life. Phoenix has to find inconsistencies in the chief spirit medium Leifa Pandoma Kulain’s vision to exonerate a child who has been wrongly accused of murder. It sounds like classic, over-the-top Ace Attorney so far, and I’m pretty excited about it.
The first Ace Attorney game came out wayyyyyyy back when in 2001 for the GameBoy Advance. But don’t despair: the first three games of the series are all available on iOS, along with the fifth game, Dual Destinies.
The games follow the story of an up-and-coming but rough-edged defense attorney, Phoenix Wright. Phoenix has to contend with corruption and a cast of very, very colorful characters as he tries to stop people from getting wrongfully convicted for murder. In the Ace Attorney world, trials last only three days (in later games, two days). You spend each day of the game looking for clues, interviewing suspects, and then cross-examining the witnesses in court and looking for inconsistencies in their testimony.
These games are a lot of fun, and they can be really tricky brainteasers. In July, a prequel to the Ace Attorney series was released in Japan for the Nintendo 3DS. There’s no word yet on when this one will make its way to North America.