Shu Takumi is probably best well-known as the creator of Capcom’s hit Ace Attorney franchise, a series of detective-adventure games which casts players in the role of truth-seeking lawyers. Less well-known, perhaps, is his hobby as an stage magician or illusionist – a craft that serves him well in the field of both magic and mysteries.
Shu Takumi is an illusionist? … Of course he is. That just makes sense. Also explains why magicians and stage artists star so frequently in the AA series, lmao.
Edit: Lots of good tidbits in this article. Takumi talking about his attention to text flow and sound effects are great and part of what makes the games so much fun to read. I’ve played many visual novels and most are really monotonous to read, even when the stories are interesting. Meanwhile, some AA cases may be bad but they’re always a breeze. Must be a lot of work for the writers, producers and localizers to implement but it makes such a difference.
I am very much looking forward to Great Ace Attorney Chronicles in just a couple of weeks! Over the past month, I’ve been replaying the series from the beginning, and am delighted to find that I’ve forgotten almost all the details of the cases minus a few big ones, so it’s almost (but not quite) like playing the games again for the first time.
I’m currently on Apollo Justice, and am enjoying much more than my memories of that game led me to believe. But still that original trilogy of GBA games really is an incredible achievement. The end of Trials and Tribulations blew me away in terms of the skill at plotting across three games, and even all the loose threads coming together within Trials and Tribulations itself.
My expectations are pretty high on Great Ace Attorney, but I’ve heard mostly good things about them so I hope they can be met!
This is what makes the games stand out to me the most and I feel like not enough designers understand. Just because you are presenting text does not mean it needs to just be text. The speed of the text, the sound effects of the text as it displays, it all contributes into a much more impressive and charming experience.
Think about Runescape for example, the thing that will always sticks into my mind is the goofy text formatting everyone was doing. That’s part of why I liked that game in middle school was the silly rainbow wavy text going across the screen.
