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• Perfect Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth: Eigo Desu, En Ingles, In English, Talkin’ ‘Merican

  Not really. I apologize for misleading you. I didn’t need to lie in the headline. All it needed to say was “Miles Edgeworth” and you would have clicked it nine times, rabid with anticipation of countless jurisprudence-related delights! You wouldn’t even read the article. You would just come on in looking for images of Miles and his perfectly coifed visage, hoping for some small passage of his urbane wit and scathing insight. Maybe not. Naturally I’ve been curious about Capcom’s new Ace Attorney spin-off, Perfect Prosecutor. Not just because Miles has gone from supporting character to star. The game’s also piqued my interest since it’s the series’ first foray into third-person play. This is good news. Who wants to play a Miles Edgeworth game if you can’t look at him the whole time? Capcom’s been keeping the game under wraps since it was announced last year, letting out only a few screens and a trailer or two. Happy day though! The Japanese Perfect Prosecutor homepage has a flash demo of the game’s first case and, even though it’s a hassle to read, intrepid internet denizens Croik and JapaneseGIRL have made an English translation script! Read More... Posted Mar 02 2009, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, nintendo ds, capcom, ace attorney, phoenix wright, perfect prosecutor, miles edgeworth

• Fandom Unplugged: The Beginning

  “Fandom,” that which compels us to gravitate to others who enjoy our pursuits (video games), can be a difficult thing to tolerate thanks to a certain percentage of maniacs. You would be amazed at how heated a debate can get if it's about whether or not Miles Edgeworth from Phoenix Wright is circumcised. We witness these baffling arguments, and we swear we'll never get so passionate about such stupidities. But the very next week, we lose ourselves in a message board argument and pound out words like “GAYlo” before we pull back the reins and gape in horror at what we've become. Why do we fall so easily? Is this what comes of the Internet and other technologies that save us enough time to wonder with friends in Brazil about whether or not Dr Light built Roll with certain “hardware?” Or is fandom just part of an ancestral grouping instinct that dates back to a swampy era wherein our ancestors declared everyone to be either “Crug” (“Part of my awesome tribe”) or “Flarth” (“Part of that other, lamer tribe”)? Read More... Posted Feb 04 2009, 11:26 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with no comments Filed under: mega man, phoenix wright, halo, fandom, nadia oxford, game magazines, fandom unplugged

• My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

  It's the end of another year, and that can only mean one thing: it's list season. Inevitably, you're going to see top ten lists by the thousands; and, as an official member of the enthusiast press, I'm afraid I can't violate my directive. But, to make things a little more interesting, I've decided to assemble my 10 favorite games of this year in non-hierarchical form because--let's face facts--it's hard to pick a favorite. And unlike other top 10 lists, this one will be doled out to you in piecemeal over the next several excruciating days! Please enjoy. Back in early 2006, when I picked up the first DS Phoenix Wright, I really didn't know what I was getting into.  Sure, the novelty of the whole "lawyer sim" thing would've been enough to carry me through at least one game, but thankfully, Phoenix Wright was more than just a gimmick.  For nearly two years, I found myself wrapped up in the epic trilogy of Phoenix Wright (at around 15-20 hours' worth of reading in each one, they'd make J.K. Rowling balk) until its inevitable end in late 2007's Trials and Tribulations.  But after the wrapping up of Capcom's convoluted tale, I still wanted more--and after staring at the same dated sprites for three whole games, it was about time for a DS-developed lawyer quest, as Capcom had teased with the substantial bonus mission at the end of Ace Attorney.  Capcom eventually promised to grant nearly all of my wishes with a brand-new installment in their created genre, but I was a little skeptical that the replacement of protagonist Phoenix Wright with some new, young pup would sour me on the sequel. Read More... Posted Dec 16 2008, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: capcom, phoenix wright, ds, bob mackey, top 10, top 10 of 2008, apollo justice

• Barack Obama: Master Debater

  With 2008 being an election year, you'd think there'd be more video game/politics crossovers. Sure, we've got The Political Machine, but that's about it; I know this sort of material can become dated fast (see the Bush-esque politician in 2004's Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal), but--damn it--how are we nerds supposed to connect to politics in any substantial way? The answer to this question, of course, lies in the community; and the video I wish to showcase is proof of that.  YouTube user wddpcbass has produced a neat little parody that, while lacking in production values, takes a key moment in the last Presidential debate and perfectly translates it into a scene from the Phoenix Wright series. Obviously, if you've never played any of Capcom's DS lawyer sims, you'll have no idea why this is supposed to be funny. But trust me: it is.  All that's missing is John McCain tearing off a wig or pounding the lectern. Note: The context for this video is that Obama is replying to a misconception about his tax plan. After seeing this parody, all I can think about is a political campaign sim very much in the style of Phoenix Wright: travel to different locations, dig up dirt on your enemies, and destroy them in a formal debate. And in my fictional game world, the moderators of said debates will actually have power over the proceedings. Any takers? This could be huge. Read More... Posted Oct 16 2008, 05:30 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: capcom, phoenix wright, ds, parody, bob mackey, politics, obama

• Turnabout Animation

  Capcom's Ace Attorney games (Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice, with an upcoming spin-off for Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth) have developed a large and enthusiastic fanbase around the gaming world thanks to their dramatic courtroom stories and outlandishly hilarious characters. Naturally, this fandom is at its most excited in the publisher's native Japan, where the original trilogy was released twice (once on Gameboy Advance and again on Nintendo DS), there is a wildly popular serialized manga (set to be released in the United States by Del Rey Manga next month), and even sold-out concerts by an orchestra that only plays songs from the Ace Attorney games. In fact, it was on the orchestra's blog that rumor recently broke about the possibility of a Phoenix Wright animé in the works. Read More... Posted Aug 06 2008, 02:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: derrick sanskrit, capcom, ace attorney, phoenix wright, manga, anime

• Far Out, Man

  When the demo for PixelJunk’s latest play on genre convention, Eden, went live on the Playstation Network late last week, I was still knee deep in a country spanning jaunt, my only real gaming time devoted to quick sessions of Shiren the Wanderer and Phoenix Wright: Justice For All. I’ve been following Eden closely since Dylan Cuthber and Q Games started showing it off earlier this year, intrigued by its subdued yet dense pop-art visuals, deep house soundtrack, and its peculiar momentum-based play. Now that I’ve spent some time with the free appetizer hosted on PSN, I am, like Derrick, entranced by Eden. Beyond the basic satisfaction of moving through Eden’s gardens, its central theme of growth – your actions bring life to the environment resulting with subtle shifts in each garden’s music – is emblematic of the shift in the way games broadly can be classified. Read More... Posted Jul 31 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, derrick sanskrit, everyday shooter, phoenix wright, Playstation, psn, shiren the wanderer, eden, pixeljunk, echochrome

• It’s Dangerous to Go Alone

  Some scant meditations on the nature of travel, the common language of games, and life imitating art written on Friday, July 18th. I’m sitting in Penn Station and the pedestrian traveler traffic is unusually heavy for 2:30pm on a non-holiday weekend. There’s a strange thing that starts to happen to you if you’ve lived in this town for long enough, particularly if you spend the majority of your time in Manhattan. You start walking like Sonic the damn hedgehog, moving just a little too fast alongside other people moving just a little too fast, dodging left and right, always looking three steps ahead, finding the quickest path. Living in New York is like playing an RPG; you’re always holding down the run button. Read More... Posted Jul 21 2008, 03:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, zelda, phoenix wright, shiren the wanderer, tetris

• Whatcha Playing: The New Adventures of the Nintendo DS

  A strange thing happened ‘round about last October. For the first time since its release in April 2005, I was regularly playing games on PSP. I had been carrying a grudge against Sony for promising the world with their first handheld and not delivering even a fraction of the compelling software that they had on the first two home Playstations. But then, all of a sudden, there were all these fantastic games to sink my teeth into. Strategy RPGs like Jeanne D’Arc, old-school action like Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and true genre benders like Crush had finally brought me into the PSP fold. The drawback? My DS went on the shelf and wasn’t touched for months. Oh, I brought it down when Contra 4 came out and on that rare Saturday morning that I felt like going back to my Animal Crossing village to do some weeding, stomp some roaches, and writing some letters. But I wasn’t playing anything new and I started wondering if the brief reign of the DS — not as a force of business but as a fount of compelling design — was over. Man, was that stupid. Read More... Posted Jul 07 2008, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, whatcha playing, nintendo ds, psp, castlevania, pokemon, phoenix wright, contra, ninja gaiden, jeanne d'arc, shiren the wanderer, crush

• Whatcha Playing: How Many Buttons Do I Gotta Push?

  Last week, while watching video of Final Fantasy VI, I commented to my colleague Pete that old Final Fantasy is not fun to watch. He laughed and replied, “No comment.” The inherent absurdity of what I’d just said wasn’t lost on me either. There’s a constant disconnect between you and the activity in role-playing games. You select an action from a menu and then watch your avatar on the screen carry out the command after the fact; more often than not, you only watch the game. The basic design of an RPG necessitates strategy behind each selected action, but most RPGs are so simple that you can win by just pressing a single button to do one thing over and over again. I love role-playing games and, if I’m completely honest, I can admit that I get immense satisfaction of pressing that one button repeatedly and watching numbers (a character’s attributes or any other arbitrary statistic) rise as a result. Sometimes, just pressing a button is enough for a game to engage me. Read More... Posted Jun 02 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, whatcha playing, nintendo ds, final fantasy, animal crossing, ace attorney, phoenix wright