We're slowly gathering entries for our yet-to-be-announced Phoenix Wright Shirt Makers' Club. These elite crafters have decided to express their fandom for Capcom's graphic adventure series and its characters in the most reverent way they know: by giving Phoenix Wright a place of honor on the front of a t-shirt.
The latest, from reader Maxy, goes beyond the limitations of home crafting. Maxy's sister has access to professional apparel-printing machinery at a uniform company, and transferred this iconic image of Phoenix on what looks like a 3/4 sleeve baseball shirt. Maya Fey, as pictured on the Gyakuten Saiban boxart, appears on the back. It's kind of unfair that we can't follow Maxy's example and make one of these! It may be unfair enough to warrant an OBJECTION!
Amazon has cut the price of Phoenix Wright: Justice for All, the sequel to everyone's favorite court-based adventure game, bringing it down to $19.99. We don't expect this deal to last for long, so race your shopping cart to the checkout lane as fast as your feet will allow.
If for some reason, God forbid, you haven't played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney yet and are hesitant to start the series midway through, don't forget that you can also pick up a used copy at GameStop or EB Games for as low as $21.99! We admit, that's still pretty expensive for a game as old as this one, but it's better than paying full price. All you'll need to take advantage of this sorta-bargain is the coupon we posted earlier this morning.
We were just coming down from our adrenaline-fueled reverie over Contra 4 when this came along and OBJECTED its way into our lives. TAKE THAT!, normal heart rate! It's a trailer for Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations!
What's more, Capcom USA bloggers promise frequent updates on the official blog and in the forums! It's so nice when a company thinks about all of us non-E3-goers who just want to see some cartoon arguing.
Sometimes the Internet randomly drops some delightful content on our laps. Depending on our mood, we feel that either the forces of the Intertron love us and are giving us wonderful gifts, or that they're conspiring to keep us from working.
Case in point: we knew about Court Records and all of the good works they do for those of us afflicted with Gyakutendonitis. But until GoNintendo pointed it out, we hadn't realized that there were fan translations of official GyakutenSaiban/PhoenixWright manga available on the site right now. We'll, uh, try to keep posting while we read.
If you buy the Japanese Best Price release of Gyakuten Saiban 3-- cue the chorus of "don't buy it or Capcom won't localize the next one"-- you may be entitled to a set of reversible box covers for the whole series of DS releases. It looks like they're designed so you can store 2 games to a case.
However, the Gyakuten Saiban series already uses a consistent boxart design in Japan, meaning that all four of the DS games already match. And on top of that, the design for these bonuses is significantly less interesting than the original boxart. Of course, we're still getting this thing.
We wish it was nicer-looking, but it's lovely of Capcom to hand out bonus stuff in general. We hope these get included with import orders (that's right, we're ordering the import!)
Anyone care to join us in a mournful, dejected "OBJECTION!"? We don't necessarily object to the release of a soundtrack CD for Gyakuten Saiban 4-- quite the opposite! We object to the Japan-only status of the release, and the similar lack of availability of its counterpart game. We haven't even heard the music from the game to know if it's worth buying, but the two US-released games have had great music. We just ... needmorestuff with cartoon lawyers on it, because we love the cartoon lawyer games so much!
While we're throwing useless objections out, we'd like to register our disgust with the prices of Japanese CD's. 3150 yen ($26) is actually on the low end of CD prices.
We still get occasional comments from confused readers who can't decipher which Gyakuten Saiban games correlate to which Ace Attorney games. This has been especially confusing recently, as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations (based on Gyakuten Saiban 3) was announced for the US at the same time as Gyakuten Saiban 4 was being released in Japan.
4cr must have gotten similar confused comments, but, unlike us, they decided to do something about it. Well, we're doing something about it now, but it's just linking their article, which is much easier. They've written a history of the series, detailing exactly which games were ported from the GBA, and the US and Japanese titles of each game. If this is too academic, you can always buy every lawyery-looking game you see, and figure it out when you get home.
Don't object to our speculation, but Capcom has registered a trademark that sounds like it may have relevance in our daily lives. "Apollo Justice" ... hmm. The first name is taken from a mythological figure, one associated with law and truth, and the last name is also legal-themed. Oh, we got it-- this is the name of the next Resident Evil game.
Oh, or Ace Attorney. "Apollo Justice" would be a pretty good name for Odoroki Housuke, the protagonist of Gyakuten Saiban 4. And if that's what the trademark is for, then it's a good sign for those of us hoping for a localized version.
We're having a pretty hard time coping with our Gyakuten Saiban withdrawals. Ever since we learned that we wouldn't be able to play the Japanese release in English, we've had to turn to alternate means to get our daily allowance of fake Japanese law. We refresh the GS4 website obsessively, play the translated demo until it hits question-mark land, and shout "OBJECTION" at every opportunity that is even a little appropriate.
We found some screens on Famitsu to torture ourselves with. They show the intro to the second case, a witness in Chapter 1, and Chapter 2's defendant. If you want to make yourself feel bad about the lack of Ace Attorney in your life, then by all means, have a look. If you can't handle the wait, we suggest trying to put the whole thing out of your mind.
DS Fanboy pal Zachary Hinchliffe is powerfully awesome, and you can quote us on that. He's working with Croik of the Phoenix Wright fansite Court Records to translate the Japanese Gyakuten Saiban 4 Flash demo, which actually consists of part of the first case.
It's in a very early stage right now-- essentially, once you get past the intro and into gameplay, the text switches over to question-mark speak that is even less useful than the original Japanese dialogue, but you can at least watch the introduction. And you can set your bookmark now to play more as more gets translated, because we're sure you'll get to play this demo to completion in English before the game gets an English release.
Since we never cover anything Phoenix Wright-related, we thought we might relent for once and put him in this week's video spotlight. Don't start expecting it. You know we can't stand those silly games. Rubbish, all of them!
We're practicing for April Fools. Did it work? Hit the jump for a special Gyakuten Saiban 4 trailer while you ponder.
We just found out about the employee blogs that Capcom USA has on their website. One in particular, belonging to "Scarlett," is especially cool because it features an interview with a member of the Phoenix Wright Ace AttorneyJustice For All localization staff, Janet Hsu!
The interview provides some fairly interesting information about working at Capcom Japan, and about trying to make something as Japanese as Gyakuten Saiban make sense to American audiences. There's also the incredible statement from Ms. Hsu that she only took Japanese classes for about 2 years before coming to Japan. Certain members of the DS Fanboy Blogging Squad have taken much more Japanese than that and can't translate their way out of a paper bag. It's official: Janet Hsu is our new hero, and so are her colleagues JP Kellams and Brandon Gay.
Capcom put this gorgeous "school calendar" (it starts at April) up for sale in their Japanese store today, and we're dying over here. Look at that cover! That is better than most posters, there. There's Ema Skye, and Phoenix Wright, and the whole group is surrounded by new guy Odoroki Housuke's bracelet thing.
And there's six pages of official art inside. This is too much. We don't really have anything clever to say about it. Look at it. It's a thing we want, a lot, and probably won't be able to purchase.
Oh, man, we feel so inadequate. How can we be PhoenixWrightfans if we can't look at some Gyakuten Saiban characters when we want to see what day it is? We're going to have to look into placing an order for this thing. 1,260 yen turns out to be ... $10.45.
Oh, and while you're at the e-Capcom store, check out these other just-out-of-reach Gyakuten goods!
Sample calendar page after the break. You could resize it and make a very blurry, artifacty wallpaper out of it!
Ema Skye, the science-obsessed, Luminol-toting teen sidekick from Case 5 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban: Yomigaeru Gyakuten) is making a return appearance in the new DS sequel, pink goggles and all. Her new character art portrays her as a little more grown-up, so maybe she'll be less annoying. Even if not, we really started to feel sympathetic to Phoenix's junior-detective friend in that case (Don't know what we're talking about? PLAY THE GAME!).
Speaking of return appearances, you know who else will be returning when this comes out? Us. Our frothing demand for this game increases. You might as well call us "Phoenix Wright Fanboy."
Click past the post break to scientifically investigate a few screenshots.
In this episode of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the characters find themselves at a turnabout dinner table, trying to get to the bottom of a mystery. If you've played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (and you really, really should have), you may spot some awfully familiar mannerisms that give the homage away.