Professor Layton convinced Capcom to take the Ace Attorney series 3D
Elementary, my dear Apollo
For most of its run, the Ace Attorney series was represented visually through traditional sprites and 2D artwork. That would eventually change with the release of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies on the 3DS back in 2013. Many thought the shift was due to the jump in power from DS to 3DS, but now we know it actually was related to a completely different franchise.
GamesRadar had the chance to chat with Kenichi Hashimoto, producer of the upcoming Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, to get some insight into the Ace Attorney series’ history. In a discussion about the game’s move from 2D to 3D, we learn that Level-5’s Professor Layton series helped inspire Capcom to take Ace Attorney into the 3D realm.
As you might remember, Capcom and Level-5 teamed up for Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which happened to utilize 3D visuals. It turns out the success of that title paved the way for Ace Attorney’s shift to 3D.
“We had no plans to shift to 3D with Apollo Justice,. During the development of the fifth game, Dual Destinies, we saw how successful the 3D visuals were in Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney. Combined with the capabilities of the then-current Nintendo 3DS hardware, we felt that we couldn’t ignore the 3D possibilities. So we tried out a visual style of 3D models which looked like 2D art, and it turned out even better than we expected.”
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