Hi everyone. This is Minae Matsukawa, the producer of the Ace Attorney series, welcoming you to another installment of our ongoing behind-the-scenes series.

Well, it looks like we finally have a release date for "Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney", and I finally have the time to sit down and write a new entry. I suppose if we hadn't decided on a date by now, I'd be sitting here writing "RELEASE DATE!" over and over and over again instead.

Let's see. This time, I'd like to share with you a bit about how we got the voices we did for the overseas releases.

Ben Judd is the voice of Phoenix Wright. He nominated himself like some sort of presidential candidate by loudly declaring, "I'm going to be Phoenix!!" Luckily for him, he didn't have any rivals, so he got his wish. He won the position by a landslide; namely because he was uncontested.

Of course, it was simple to find someone to be Phoenix; he's a popular character, after all. But poor Winston Payne. As expected, there wasnot a single volunteer.

"What now...?" I thought to myself.
That's when Mr. Yamazaki, the planner in charge of voice recording, came up to me and said, "Hey, we can be like a bunch of Monster Hunters! We should hunt down and capture some native English speakers. Then we can take their voices as trophies!!" ("Monster Hunter" was pretty popular within our company at the time.)

And so, our game of "Native Hunter" began. We scoured the entire company roster for native English speakers.

"Oh, here's a guy in Localization! Localizer GET!!"
"There's a person in the Overseas Marketing division who's willing to help out!"
They definitely weren't monsters, but we were able to find and enlist the cooperation of native speaker after native speaker in this fashion! We didn't even have to force anyone; they were all willing and glad to help out!

Then came the actual voice recording sessions for the first Phoenix Wright game. I'd like to say that this is how voice recording is usually done, but that would be sort of misleading, as we had our own special way of doing things.

"And next we have Mr. David Crislip. If you please."
"Sure. So which character should I start with?"
"Why don't we start with Payne?"
David Payne started yelling, "Objection!" in an unusual tone of voice. Then it was David Edgeworth's turn to yell in a smooth, sophisticated voice, and then the demonic David von Karma.

We took voice for the three main characters. After each take, we reviewed it and gave David a few directions.

"Sorry, David, but could you do Von Karma's voice again? But this time, try to make your voice even deeper! And try to make Edgeworth sound cool!!! Oh, and can you try Payne in an even higher, squeakier voice!?"

David performed as he was told and tried his best - the multitudes of directions we gave him flew fast and furious. We kept the takes the R&D team thought were the best, and put into the game ROM. I have to confess that we were so focused on recording their voices that we ended up being big meanies by leaving the voice actors in the dark. They had to wait until they got to play the ROM before they found out which character their voice was used for.

But even now, I want to say a big "thanks" to all the Capcom employees who loaned their voices to the various characters with their unique yells of, "Objection!" I have to say that as the producer, I was super grateful that we could get voice actors for free! *laugh*

......
...Ahem.

I kid, I kid. Here's the real reason.
The voice actors in the Japanese versions of the Ace Attorney games are all Capcom employees. When we decided to make the overseas version, we felt that it would be really neat if we could do the same thing. And so, we started to promote the idea throughout the company one person at a time by telling everyone about how we were going to be making an English version of the first Ace Attorney game. Even now, people look forward to the opportunity to be a character in the next game.

Switching gears here, I'd like to talk a little about the man behind the English translation of "Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney", Mr. Alexander O. Smith.

After working with us on the first Ace Attorney game, he was quick to accept our request to translate .Apollo Justice.. I remember at the first meeting, where we made the initial request, how excited he was to jump right into this project. It was written all over his face. I told him how much I looked forward to working with him and how I couldn't wait to see what shape the English version would take. It is thanks to beautiful writing of this incredibly nice guy that the English version of "Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney" was born.

Voices, translations...
All of this talk is nice, but we wanted to give everyone a chance to experience "Apollo Justice", so to that end, we have made a Flash version of the game's demo available online. You can play it right here on the Capcom website, even while you read this entry. I hope you'll pass the word along, and convince a friend or two who have never bought an Ace Attorney game before to give it a try. The admission fee to play such an interesting game demo is free, after all! You can even say that it was your voice that made it possible.

Yes, that's right. We heard your cries of, "Objection!"
The staff at Capcom USA (CEI) told us that this time, with this game, we simply had to create an English version of the Flash demo we had on our Japanese website. "The fans are waiting!" they said. So I hope you.ll help us spread the word and post about or post the Flash demo up wherever you can!

The Ace Attorney series would have gone nowhere without the help of those who were willing to loan their voices to it. Of course, everyone who is reading this entry right now is another voice in our chorus, and for that, I thank you.

Well, it looks like time's up. Next time, I'll tell you about how to battle fiercely with nothing but your voice.

Until then...