The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles Released!

The latest entry in this long-running series has finally been released outside of Japan! A package of two games in one, originally released in 2015 and 2017, has been localized and released for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PC platforms. Featuring improved graphics and English voice acting (not for the full game, it’s mostly beeps as usual), the game is priced at a very reasonable 40USD.

This entry in the series flashes back to the early 20th or late 19th century (it’s not entirely clear) and sees the ancestor of Phoenix Wright teaming up with the venerable… Herlock Sholmes? Yes, as the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the original Holmes stories, is notoriously litigious, Capcom has elected to spoonerize the name of this famous detective.

In fact, this is not the first time this particular name has been used to evade copyright problems. When Doyle was still alive, the French author Maurice Leblanc used Holmes in his story Arsene Lupin vs Sherlock Holmes (1905). When Doyle threatened legal action, all reprints of the story changed the name to “Herlock Sholmes”. Thus, even this evasive tactic has historical connections to the era in which the game is set!