Gyakuten Meets Orchestra!

You’ve got your Videogames Live, where they run through a few popular favorites from different games, different companies, different genres, and even different decades. You call that being a hardcore game fan? I might have agreed with you before, but now I can tell you: it’s junior league. If you want to talk hardcore fandom, you should have been at Shinjuku’s Bunka Hall on April 20th, 2008.

If you were, you would have seen a concert. A videogame concert. But this concert wasn’t some mish-mash of music from a hundred random franchises. It was music from one just one. One *awesome* franchise: Ace Attorney.

How could Ace Attorney—which is not a next-gen, 1080p juggernaut, was only released for portables, and has only a handful of games—manage a sold-out concert of its own music, performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra? Simple: by being THAT awesome.

Hit the jump for the full story, plus pictures and a fan-subbed trailer:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Behind-the-scenes, Ace Attorney™ | 3 Comments »

Capcom Kirbies!

I’ve been meaning to post this, but webcomic VG Cats had a strip one day, probably in celebration of a game that totally should have had Mega Man in it, called “100 Kirbies”, dedicated to the “what if” forms that Kirby could take on if he had to chance to suck them down like so many Slurpies.

How many incarnations can you recognize above? (Hint: They’re all Capcom related)

After you’re done with that lineup, check out the full strip. Scroll to the bottom of strip if you’re wondering which Kirby each is.

Posted in Okami, VG Cats, Dead Rising™, Resident Evil®, Street Fighter®, Ace Attorney™, Mega Man® | 3 Comments »

The good news: Phoneix Wright on your PC. The bad news: only in Japanese. Doh!

Look, I managed to write a headline for a Phoenix Wright post without using “Objection!” Clearly, I am improving. Anyhoo, news comes from Japan this morning that Daletto (an online company that Capcom is involved with and run by Inafune-san) will be releasing episodic chapters of Gyakuten Saiban — aka Phoenix Wright — on PCs in Japan. The UK-based website/magazine Computer and Video Games.com has the scoop:

According to a Japanese website Game Watch, each game will be split up into downloadable episodes, but oddly these episodes will not necessarily be complete chapters; the first game is tapped to be broken down into 17 installments.

Episodes will be priced at 120 yen, which is about 40p. And if you’re too tight to spend that, the first segment, available on March 18, will be free.

If you can read Japanese, you can get the info directly from Game Watch (along with a few other screens). Currently, we’ve got no plans to localize or release this title in the US, but we’ll let you know if that changes.

Oh, and for those of you paying attention, this is not the “big news” about Ace Attorney that was promised to be revealed in April in Japan. That news is actually even bigger and more exciting!

Posted in Ace Attorney™ | No Comments »

Epic Blog Post: Matsukawa-san’s Final Ace Attorney Dev Blog!

Matsukawa-san’s blog is back for the fourth and final entry of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney series. Matsukawa-san is so full of juicy Ace Attorney info that her developer blog posts are truly epic treatises that would make Proust blush. “The Birth of Apollo Justice” breaks down how the new guy got his name, the story behind each of the new cases, and ends with a very special announcement.

Check out all of her blog entries (her most recent entry is at the top) by heading over to the flash-tastic Ace Attorney site and clicking on the “Dev Blog” tab. Do it now!

Posted in Developer Blog, Ace Attorney™ | No Comments »

Two Turntables and a Microphone: the Bionic Commando Podcast!

I was lying about the turntables, but the microphone was for reals. The Bionic Commando podcasting crew is back again, and they seem to have tricked the sublime Minae Matsukawa into appearing on their show. Please note: I was planning to spare you yet another “Objection!” joke, but I see the temptation was too much for our podcasting crew to resist. Here’s the lowdown on this week’s show!

There can be no objections to this week’s special guest - the producer of the Ace Attorney series, Minae Matsukawa! To coincide with the release of Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice, Matsukawa-san will be talking about the development of the popular handheld series, being a female producer in Japan, and the future of the series. She’ll also be deciding which lucky listener will win signed AA goods taken straight from the evidence locker.

As if Matsukawa-san herself weren’t enough, they’re also giving stuff away for the best listener-submitted question. Check it out:

• 1^st Prize - A Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney) t-shirt, signed by Matsukawa-san, with a signed Gyakuten album!
• 2^nd Prize - A Gyakuten album signed by Matsukawa-san, as well as a limited edition promotional DVD for Gyakuten Saiban 4
• 3^rd Prize - A limited edition promotional DVD for Gyakuten Saiban 4

Listen to the show here. Do it for extreme justice.

Posted in podcast, Bionic Commando, Ace Attorney™ | No Comments »

Nintendo Gal ties the knot, Objections overruled

Andrea Campton is A) female B) a gamer and C) runs a cool Nintendo fan site, Nintendo Gal.com. Sorry, fellas, but this pretty much automatically makes her cooler than 90% of the girls you’re ever going to meet. Nintendo Gal got herself hitched this week, in a court room, no less. Guess what she did? Oh no, she didn’t!?! Oh yes, she did!!1 Follow the link for the pinnacle of Ace Attorney fandom (until someone else decides to do a whole AA cosplay wedding, that is). Congrats, Andrea and Mr. Nintendo Gal!

Update: spelling is hard and fact-checking on the internetz is simply not done. Sorry about the name typo, Andrea!

Posted in the internets, Ace Attorney™ | No Comments »

Return of Ace Attorney Producer’s Giant Blog!

Another gigantic (really!) blog entry from Ace Attorney producer, Minae Matsukawa.  Head over to the Ace Attorney site and click on the “Dev Blog” tab for the latest installment, intriguingly titld “Native Hunter.”  Matsukawa-san recounts the genesis of the series’ unique approach to voice acting, the Apollo Justice translator, and the glorious rise to the top of known Capcom neer-do-wells including Ben Judd (bully) and David Crislip (whose epidermis is totally showing).  Sample quote:

That’s when Mr. Yamazaki, the planner in charge of voice recording, came up to me and said, “Hey, we can be like a bunch of Monster Hunters!  We should hunt down and capture some native English speakers.  Then we can take their voices as trophies!!”  (“Monster Hunter” was pretty popular within our company at the time.)

Zow!   PS- yes I realize that’s Phoenix and not Apollo.  I just like the picture.

Posted in Developer Blog, Ace Attorney™ | No Comments »

Using “Objection!” in Ace Attorney stories is now officially banned

So help me, sweet baby Jeebus, we sorta can’t help ourselves but throw an “Objection!” or three into every post on Ace Attorney. Look, I’ve done it twice already! I’m officially declaring shenanigans on further Objection jokes in AA posts. The line must be drawn… here! Anywho, Colin Ferris is new fish in marketing here at Capcom on the AA series, so we decided to throw him to the wolves at Silicon Era to stand and deliver for his title. Colin explains why Apollo is named “Justice” while Phoenix is named “Wright,” throws out props for the cool pre-order keychain and compares Ema Skye’s character to CSI (favorably, of course). Go read, already!

Posted in Ace Attorney™ | No Comments »

Bringing Justice to Facebook — Apollo Justice!

Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about this whole “Facebook” thing. Evidently, it’s sorta like the Friendster of MySpace, or something. Plus Napster, with a dash of Ask Jeeves. Irregardless (<– always surprised that is a real word), we’ve finally given you something to do on Facebook other than stalk ex-girlfriends and/or beg them for a job/snu-snu/both. Presenting the first case file of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney in convenient Flash-y, Facebook app-y flavor. Sharp-eyed internetz afficiandos will recognize this as the next evolution of the Flash demo we presented here a few weeks ago. Commence to spamming friends, acquaintances, college chums, guild mates, band members, meter maids, made-up profiles, celebrity impersonators, Furries and what/whoever else you link to. Get the word out, legal fans!

Posted in Facebook, Ace Attorney™, Capcom® | 2 Comments »

New Ace Attorney Dev Blog from Producer Minae Matsukawa

Head over to the freshly updated Ace Attorney site and click on the “Dev Blog” tab to read the first entry in an ongoing series from Ace Attorney series producer, Minae Matsukawa. It’s an extensive piece–required reading for AA any fan–and there are more to come, so stay tuned for a new installment next week.

“Oddly enough, however, after Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney went on sale, it quickly sold out, and it was all thanks to you.  It really was you, the fans, who were saying ‘this game is really interesting!’, and ‘it’s awesome!!’ and ‘you’ve gotta buy it!’ all over the internet that sold this game to the world.  I can’t read English very well, so I used translation programs to read the reviews that people posted, and when I did, I was really touched by all the things you had to say!”

Posted in Interview, Ace Attorney™ | No Comments »