Highlights
- Ace Attorney Investigations Collection revives a forgotten gem in the franchise’s history, offering fans a rare opportunity to experience both games.
- The troubled past of Ace Attorney Investigations series includes lackluster sales and a sequel that never received a global release, until now.
- Capcom’s attention to fan demand for remasters and the Ace Attorney series overall suggests a potential for a new mainline game in the future.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is the triumphant return of Ace Attorney on the Switch. At first glance, it may seem like a natural follow-up to Capcom’s other Ace Attorney remasters. However, there is more to this duology than meets the eye. Behind the series that stars one of Ace Attorney‘s most popular characters is the series’ most troubled past.
Ace Attorney Investigations is in fact the only remaining pair of Ace Attorney games that Capcom hasn’t released remasters for. Even when The Great Ace Attorney got its remaster, the community didn’t have high hopes about Investigations receiving the same treatment for a number of reasons. The return of Investigations is a huge deal, especially for anyone who has been keeping track of the franchise’s history.
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Ace Attorney Investigations Has a Troubled History
Ace Attorney Investigations promised to shake things up by departing from the strict visual novel format of other Ace Attorney games. A year after its initial release in Japan, international Ace Attorney fans got the opportunity to play Ace Attorney Investigations in 2009. Unfortunately for the future of the spinoff series, not many people took that opportunity.
Ace Attorney Investigations had lackluster sales, leading to a worry that Capcom may consider the game just another spinoff franchise dead on arrival. Thankfully, Investigations wasn’t considered a failed experiment, and wasn’t left completely by the wayside just yet. Unfortunately, future efforts proved similarly fruitless. Ace Attorney Investigations‘ lackluster launch meant few copies remained in circulation long after its release. This rendered the game essentially trapped on the Nintendo DS, with no other way of trying to reach it. Fans who had the hope of experiencing this story would have to sell an arm and a leg.
Capcom likely noticed this issue, and seemingly attempted to correct it by giving Ace Attorney Investigations a worldwide re-release in the form of a mobile game port. This occurred in 2017, seven years after the last global release of Ace Attorney Investigations. Though it preserved as much of the game as possible, playing the game on a phone simply wasn’t a strong enough substitute.
![Capcom-Logo](https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/capcom-logo-cropped.jpg)
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Ace Attorney Investigations Makes an Unexpected Comeback
Ace Attorney Investigations 2 Has Never Been Accessible
Ace Attorney Investigations may be caught up in a strange purgatory, but its sequel met an even worse fate than that. While efforts to bring its predecessor to a global audience continued to fail time and again, Ace Attorney Investigations 2 never received this support in the first place.
To date, Ace Attorney Investigations 2 has never received a global release of any kind. The game received a mobile port just like the prior entry in the series, but this port was never released globally either. The situation became increasingly concerning for the cult following that began to surround Investigations. Ace Attorney Investigations was by no means a resounding financial success for Capcom, and everyone that hoped for more knew that. Now, many wondered if Ace Attorney Investigations 2 was simply being held back as a result.
It’s very possible that the financial disappointment of Investigations meant its sequel was seen as too great a risk to release. That could have been the end of things, if not for Capcom’s recent Ace Attorney remaster collections. Despite the revival of other games that had never seen a global release, the troubling truth remained that Investigations 2 didn’t seem on track to get the second chance it deserved.
While Ace Attorney Investigations has been difficult to obtain for years, playing Investigations 2 in any legitimate fashion is pretty much impossible. Investigations is an expensive collector’s item, but Investigations 2 is an obscure relic that only exists internationally in the form of fan translations. This dynamic is at the heart of why the upcoming Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is such a huge deal: it will be the first time players everywhere will have the opportunity to experience both games, and in higher fidelity to boot.
Capcom is Paying Attention to Ace Attorney Fans
Ultimately, this latest effort shows that Capcom is paying very close attention to Ace Attorney fans. The remasters of the original trilogy and Apollo Justice sequel trilogy were both welcome, with the latter being a natural follow-up after the former. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles came as a pleasant surprise to remaster a region-locked game many thought would never see the light of day.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection was another game many players cried out for while never expecting a response in the first place. The failure of previous efforts was seen as too great, and frankly, too consistent. Yet, after a long wait and a lot of disappointment for fans and Capcom alike, the demand for more Ace Attorney was answered.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is a combined effort of localization and remastering that shows even more love for Investigations than many fans had any reason to expect. This, combined with the potential quality the collection is promising so far, implies Capcom was listening to Ace Attorney fans the whole time.
Likewise, it seems to suggest a commitment to renewing interest in Ace Attorney as a whole. With Ace Attorney definitively finishing its series of remasters, perhaps Investigations is setting the stage for a new mainline Ace Attorney game to finally arrive.
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Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy
First released in 2001, the Ace Attorney series gave birth to the Courtroom Battle genre of text adventure games. Phoenix Wright passes the torch on to Apollo Justice in this collection of 3 games, which traces Apollo’s growth as a lawyer as he navigates the Dark Age of the Law.