It's mid August folks. Tokyo Gameshow is coming up, specifically September 20th. But TGS being the cycle that it is, we've always gotten early leaks from Famitisu. If things stay the course, we could have our leads by September 18th ~Afternoon Eastern Time. A month from NOW.

So mark your calendars folks. I figure we've got an excellent chance of seeing some more Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney (Maybe some Layton gameplay or maybe even a Japanese release date?). Less likely, but still very plausible, would be more info on Ace Attorney 5. I say less likely because we don't know what state GS5 is in. Are they still working concepts? Do they have a plot? Characters? Mechanics? We only that it's a thing. No protagonist, no platform, no updates since the Movie Promotion/Anniversary event.

The only thing moderately up in the air is if Level-5 is hosting their personal expo this year in October, which they have the past two years. It hasn't been announced yet, and Level-5 is attending TGS this year. But if we were to hear about the next Level-5 Vision/World or whatever they're going to call it, it'd be soon, as in 'this month' soon. As in, 'there's 2 weeks left to this month left' soon. If Level-5's Expo is announced that may divide where the juicy release info is for Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney. Last year the Level-5 show was a rehash of TGS. Which was disappointing for us, but that game will sell itself. On the other hand, Level-5 was being quite ambitious last year with a monsoon of new IPs. And good for them. The industry needs those things. Sucks for us, but good for them.


Now, here's where things get interesting, GS123HD has been updated for iOS on the Japanese App Store a few days ago. The major things I've observed are in case 1-5, The Blue Badger and Video Tape have been restored to what you see in the DS version. This effectively means the last of what was eye gorgingly bad about the original release back in the beginning of the year is gone. This means that if I could actually read the text in the game, I'd enjoy it. Genuinely! Perhaps this foreshadows an English release? The game was originally released as a tie in for the Ace Attorney movie earlier this year. It 'had' to come out then, bugs be damned. But the movie hasn't come out (yet?) in the west so Capcom could not use that as justification for a release. But with the majority of flaws out of the way, perhaps we may see this soon-ish? There's still the issue of HD-izing some things for the west. The west did get some unique graphics for Evidence, Backgrounds, not to mention Young Phoenix. So it's not just a case of dumping the DS localization in. But it's still a possibility.

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Don't really care for GS vs. Layton, totally awaiting the GSHD123 to release to the west though.

I'd say PLvsAA is probably a lock - AA has traditionally had presence at TGS in appropriate years, and if Level-5 is still aiming for a 2012 release, that's coming up mighty fast. Level-5's also gotten a few other big releases out of the way like Time Travelers, so it'd be in their interest to start putting the spotlight on PLvsAA.

GS5 I would say is likely to have some information, but not a guarantee. Remember that GK1 was announced in April or so, but the media we had then was largely placeholder. It's not impossible to think AA5 would've had a similar treatment if the 10th anniversary event had taken place a few months later. GK then got a more detailed reveal at TGS, with more finalized assets. Still, like you said we really don't know anything about GS5's development except that it's been greenlit, so it could still be MIA if Capcom doesn't feel what they have is up to snuff, especially with PLvsAA also able to be shown off.

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While I'm excited by all the info, the possibility of GS5 info is what's really getting me excited. I'm hoping they show they've been working on it for some time, so it gets released in the next year and we get a localization decision sooner.

I can dream....

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Course you don't XD You don't have a 3DS though I agree I'm not excited for 'Layton Gameplay' since I'll admit I'm not a super Layton fan. I played the first game and it was pretty good, great time killer on bus journeys even if the music becomes associated with difficulty and frustration the series does great things for the puzzle genre which is typically rather dull and by connecting it with a plot it makes it interesting.

So Layton Gameplay alone won't really be fantastic since the series is strong because of it's plot. However if I see Phoenix going about solving puzzles or even a shot of Phoenix gradually approaching the screen in thought before going "Aha!" I'll be happy. Shake it up a bit, if Layton is getting in the court, let Phoenix get in the puzzles.

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I'm not entirely sure it's safe to call off his thoughts on Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney vs Ace Attorney 5. I'm honestly not yet convinced the series won't jump ship to iOS and Android. No question about it, GS123HD was a rush job. But it was 3 games worth of rush. That's ambitious no matter how you look at it. The series has always had first runs on Nintendo portables, but there's also always been a back door to Japanese cellphones. With the advent of modern world wide cellphones, which are as powerful as consumer desktops from 10 years ago, it makes the series future a bit amorphous. To put that into perspective, GS just had its 10th anniversary.

But we may have our answer in 4 weeks.

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Now I want to have parts in the game where they switch roles. Professor Layton and Luke would have to deal with tough/annoying witnesses while Phoenix and Maya are being forced to solve puzzles whilst in a serious investigation.

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Wooster, So would you say that GS123HD is the definitive version of the trilogy? As in, (assuming it got a localization) would this be the version you'd always prefer to play? I remember at first hearing reports about choppy videos and missing character frames but it sounds like that's fixed now.

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Oh. That stuff still applies. Very few characters blink, that's seemingly never been modified. Dalilah's shawl is still dithered. The Animation sheets have very 'very' minor alterations to. Select few of them, so problems persist.

What I am saying though is that the flaws that made the game totally throw at the wall unbearable are gone.

In the original release, you had to download bloated versions of each PART to a case. So for case 1-5 for instance, you'd have to download say Ema's entire HD Sprite sheet over a dozen times. And that's not counting all the other resources for the case. And if your screen went idle while downloading it would fail and you'd need to redownload.

No blip-blip sound effects when people talk. And the security video became this abomination.

Most of my complaints now are around the court record animations and the horrendous wrapper to navigate the cases (For instance, it knows what case you played last and what part, but defaults the game select to GS1.) There's however a quick shortcut on the main menu to continue where you left off. But it's nasty if you're jumping around.

However, these complaints aren't what I'd consider show stoppers. If Capcom were to localize and ship this version, I figure there'll be complaining yes. But a far cry from the riot that would've happened from releasing 2.0.0

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Ah. So it probably wouldn't be a perfect-or-better replacement for my DS games. But it sounds like it still works pretty well which means that if a game (GS5) was built from the ground up with the new system is might work out really well.

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Exactly! But keep this also in mind, paying for all of GS123HD costs about half of any of the DS games new. That and the HD graphics really are a wonder to behold, even with missing frames and lack of blinking animations.

So if you're missing one of those games from your collection, it makes for a more then decent substitute. But you're spot on regarding where I suspect the future of the series might be headed. Keep in mind, Ghost Trick also got the HD port treatment, but wasn't 3 games crammed into one. It benefited greatly from that.

Even if GS5 becomes a port of the 3DS version on iOS I expect the lessons learned and the smaller scope and being road mapped from the outset will be major boons and would make it a much much better experience.

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I stupidly sold all my ace attorney games like a year ago and then wanted to replay them all again (partly because I wanted to play them again and partly because there were no 3DS games for my age group at the time) and even though I only spent about 5 bucks of real cash on getting them back, I spent around $100 of "Trade Money" from various stores to find them again. So compared to that the GSHD pricing doesn't seem so bad.

I never got to play Ghost Trick on DS, but I recently bought the iOS version. Is that an HD remake or is it just a port of the original?

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It's a bit of both honestly, Ghost Trick that is. But you have to concentrate to notice where they took liberties from the DS. It's very good.

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LMAO.

Dear GOD, all that bouncing. It's like I just dropped into South Park. It can't possibly get any wor--

*hits 1:05 in the video*

...............oh.

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It reminded me of old PC adventure games like Myst where if the wrong version of Quicktime was installed the videos would look like this.
Considering the iPhone's current speed, I wonder why they weren't able to just embed the video in the thing? or at least convert it to a gif or a jpeg frame animation.

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Your guess is as good as mine. My guess is that space was a concern. But a movie wouldn't have been that big. And I have even less of an idea why they didn't puppet show the badger dance. It appears to have been designed for it in the first place. Right now it's just a stack of indexed pngs, not really a step up from GIF. Both the security tape and the badger.

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