Turnabout Fanclub!

Ace Attorney, known in Japan as Gyakuten Saiban (逆転裁判?, lit. "Turnabout Trial"), is a series of adventure/visual novel games created by Shu Takumi[1] and published by Capcom in which players assume the role of a defense attorney in a fictional courtroom setting, which is based on the Japanese legal system, to strive to find their clients "not guilty" using investigation, evidence, and cross-examination to prove their case.


There are two phases to each case, Investigation and Courtroom sessions. Investigation includes the ability to visit several key locations in the case and talk to people involved with it while searching for evidence by examining the scene; the second and third game also introduced the "Psyche-Lock," a system through which the defending attorney can break mental barriers to learn the truth from uncooperative witnesses during investigation. Players can present both evidence and, in the second and third games, profiles of people involved with the case.

Presenting evidence is accompanied by the defense attorney pointing with his finger, as in the game's logo, and shouting "Objection!" (異議あり!, Igi ari!?), accompanied by a word bubble of the same word, both which have become iconic representation of the series. If the player presents the wrong evidence, attempts to present at the wrong time, or fails other parts of in-court questioning, they lose some measure of acceptance by the judge, and if the player is wrong too many times, the case will be declared over with a guilty verdict for the accused, and the player will have to restart from their last save point or the beginning of the court session.


The first three games in the series, originally released only in Japan and in Japanese between 2001 and 2004 for the Game Boy Advance platform, have been ported to the Nintendo DS as well as localized into English and other languages. The series has been developed for the DS from the ground up starting with the fourth game. The DS remakes and games in the series take advantage of the DS features, including the microphone and touchscreen. The series was released on WiiWare in Japan from December 15, 2009 and in North America from January 11, 2010.

The first three games feature and are sometimes referred to by the eponymous main protagonist, Phoenix Wright. The fourth game, set seven years after the end of the third game, introduces a new protagonist, Apollo Justice, who takes over from Wright, and Miles Edgeworth, a key character from the first trilogy, is featured in a special interquel title set between the third and fourth games.