Dai Gyakuten Saiban to be localized officially as The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

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Years after the games’ original releases on the Nintendo 3DS, Capcom is finally ready to bring the two Dai Gyakuten Saiban games over to the west. Set to package the two previously Japan exclusive games, The Ace Attorney Chronicles will see an official translation and localization of The Great Ace Attorney and The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve. Both titles take place in the same universe as other Ace Attorney games, but these are set in the 20th century. Fan translation projects have been in the works for years now, with the first game being entirely playable start to finish in English. The official translation will launch on July 27th, for PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4, priced at $39.99. A physical copy will be available, but will be limited to the Switch platform.

Get ready to cross-examine your opponents and reason your way to justice in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, releasing for the first time in North America and Europe on July 27.Announced today in a video message by Shu Takumi, Director of the Ace Attorney series, the collection tells the story of an ancestor of Phoenix Wright, the protagonist of the iconic Ace Attorney courtroom adventure series. In The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, players take on the role of a defense attorney to track down evidence, argue in court and ensure a just ruling. Featuring newly recorded English voices, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles includes The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve, both previously only available in Japan. The collection will be available for MSRP $39.99 on Nintendo Switch™, PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system and Steam. A digital bundle featuring both The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Steam for MSRP $59.99.

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xatzimi

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It was unexpected because Capcom have said several times in the past the games would never ever come west because of some bullshit about them being near impossible to translate due to the fact they rely on a lot of Japanese cultural references or something along those lines.
They never said this, only that there were "certain issues" preventing a release, which was speculated to mean many different things. The most likely cause was a combination of copyright and limited audience on the 3DS.

In case the joke was lost on people, Ace Attorney has always been set in Tokyo but the localization team decided to translate as if it was in L.A. and replace a ton of Japanese pop references with American ones. That's a much heavier lift with this game because the whole point of it is Japanese protagonists coming to Britain before WWII and all the culture clash that goes with that. It looks like they are just playing it mostly straight this time, using the original Japanese names, and even keeping Natsumei Souseki as a character in one of the cases (although really if there's any Japanese novelist known outside of the country it should be him...)
It's not just before WWII, it's before the first, and not long after the opening of closed-country Japan. Quite a clash of cultures indeed.
They kind of wrote themselves into an eventual corner by rewriting the setting. While using the japanese names makes sense as a result, I hope it's a one-off thing; it feels wrong for the franchise.

Yes, the post-Reichenbach Falls stories. They retain the right to those stories and adaptations. They also argued that they own the copyright to the character traits that Holmes develops in the later works, like "being nice" and "showing emotion" but those claims didn't hold up in court.

However the character and name of Holmes, and the elements of the pre-Reichenbach Falls stories, can be used in other works.

I guess they are just playing it safe.
I think they're playing it safe to avoid a court battle over it (rather ironic) even if they're very likely to win it. Though from my understanding, certain characters are based on those particular stories. The Doyle estate is litigious and the trial would be costly. Possibly enough to significantly impact the potential profit of the game while it was on 3DS. All claims expire in 2023, so they could've waited it out a bit longer, but I personally enjoy "Herlock Sholmes."
 
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AkiraKurusu

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I think they're playing it safe to avoid a court battle over it (rather iconic) even if they're very likely to win it. Though from my understanding, certain characters are based on those particular stories. The Doyle estate is litigious and the trial would be costly. Possibly enough to significantly impact the potential profit of the game while it was on 3DS. All claims expire in 2023, so they could've waited it out a bit longer, but I personally enjoy "Herlock Sholmes."
I'm pretty sure there was a classroom question involving Sherlock Holmes and "Herlock Sholmes" in Persona 5, and that question also brought up Arsene Lupin.
 

Kurt91

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Alright, time for a brief history lesson.

The Doyle estate, all the way back to Arthur Conan Doyle himself, have always been rather sue-happy in regards to copyright around Sherlock Holmes. Maurice Leblanc (Yes, the Persona 5 coffee house was named after him) experienced this himself when writing his stories about Arsene Lupin. He originally wrote the books with Sherlock Holmes as the detective opposing his gentleman thief. He actually published a good part of his story before Doyle lodged a complaint. (Back then, stories like this were released per-chapter much like comics and manga are today. They were then compiled and published in book format, again, much like manga is today.) So, to avoid legal trouble, when it came time to publish the collected chapters as a full novel, whether it be out of smartassery or spite, he renamed "Sherlock Holmes" as "Herlock Sholmes" and "Watson" as "Wilson", so he was legally in the clear yet readers knew EXACTLY who these characters were supposed to be.
 

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Sherlock Holme is public IP now so the only reason for this is for satire.
While this is true to an extent, it is a bit more complicated than that. This Twitter thread explains it better than I could:

The Doyle estate is very pernicious with their IPs, and they're able to manipulate some loopholes with the US copyright system that the Japanese version didn't have to deal with.
 
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Julie_Pilgrim

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While this is true to an extent, it is a bit more complicated than that. This Twitter thread explains it better than I could:
https://twitter.com/Sane_Intolerant/status/1384892764630958082
The Doyle estate is very pernicious with their IPs, and they're able to manipulate some loopholes with the US copyright system that the Japanese version didn't have to deal with.
That reminds of the fact in the sonic comics(idw comics to be exact), sonic is not allowed to show too much emotion(source)
 

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