Capcom has recently made me both angry as fuck and extremely sad. Ace Attorney isn’t being localized and it’s not the first game to go through this.
I’m an avid follower of Phoenix Wright. I know every case, I know all the victims, murderers weapons and the convoluted steps to get to their asses in jail and I was extremely excited when Ace Attorney Investigations 2 came out in Japan. I’d heard tiny spoilers that made me more excited and made me distance myself from any more spoilers. And then Capcom said “LOLSORRYNOPE YOU’RE NOT GETTING SHIT.”
And even though I was extremely furious and sad It wasn’t a surprise. Because games like Ace Attorney don’t sell.
And don’t get me wrong. It is surprisingly popular. In anime conventions you can sort of rely to spot at least one person sweating their ass off in a red three piece suit with a cravat suffocating them slowly in the heat. But its not enough money for Capcom and y’know what? I can understand that. They’re a company and that’s their job; to get profit. And I don’t blame them one bit. What I do blame is that “wordy” games like Phoenix Wright just aren’t fortune makers.
This isn’t the first time I’ve loved a game and the sequel stays in Japan, or as TVTropes so lovingly calls it “No Export For You”.
Take another “wordy” game; Hotel Dusk.
Hotel Dusk was basically like a noir novel. You held the DS sideways and the game was part puzzle/part interrogating people and praying you don’t get kicked out of the hotel for being a nosy jerk. And it was different. The art style was amazing and fresh and interesting, the characters were interesting. I loved Kyle Hyde with his “No shit Sherlock” attitude and jerk with a a heart of gold personality. And the story was intruiging and great. I had nothing bad to say about this game. I played it and loved it.
And then they announced a sequel.
And then Cinq went bankrupt.
I flipped. There was no way I wouldn’t be able to play this game; but I sure as fuck didn’t know Japanese and I couldn’t exactly learn it in a week could I? But the game got localized for Europe, and I imported the game; something I had never done before and probably wouldn’t do with any other game.
The game was not a huge hit, but the people who had played it were fiercely devoted to it. And the best part was that Phoenix Wright fans often loved Hotel Dusk as well. PW fans seem to run in the same gaming circle; there was also a massive crossover with Professor Layton, another brainy plot heavy game series with puzzles that I frequently googled because I had spent the last 2 hours of my life trying to figure out how to get a fox and a chicken on a boat without killing each other to cross a river.
Professor Layton has its own fans afraid in a stranger way. While Professor Layton has had it’s fifth game Mask Of Miracle announced for localization, there hasn’t been a single word about it’s fourth game Specter’s Flute, which makes several different levels of no sense. Layton once again has a massively loyal fanbase, and Level-5 has stated that they are taking over the translation of the series in America, which at least means that there’s reasonable hope for it getting here sometime.
This brings me to Professor Layton v Ace Attorney. This one is a bit more iffy. It’s rare to see a game announcement that made everyone in two fandoms collectively freak the fuck out, but this game managed to do it. If it wasn’t a fan going “OH GOD MY DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE WHAT IS THIS MADNESS” it was a fan going “Oh I love Phoenix Wright/Layton so I guess I should go play the other game!” And with Phoenix Wright apparently not being localized I’m not sure if PL v AA is being localized too. And as a fan of both it truly hurts that such great games aren’t being localized because the rest of American gamers aren’t into the things I’m into. Being a fan of a niche title sucks in a lot of different ways sometimes, but this is the worst.
And the reason these games don’t do so well? Because it’s mostly reading; not blowing aliens up every two minutes. For example Ghost Trick, from the Ace Attorney creator Shu Takumi was given great reviews but it didn’t sell well. One reviewer basically said “It was at times too wordy”. And this truly breaks my heart. That a game series should be condemned because it focuses on words and its story is a damn shame. I always believed that video games could be another medium for story telling, but if it doesn’t include copious explosions every few minutes, good luck getting it to sell. And if it doesn’t sell you better learn Japanese or else you’re never getting to see that game abroad.
