Though it was once one of Capcom's most popular and well-known franchises during the height of the Nintendo DS and Wii's innovation, the Ace Attorney franchise definitely cooled down quite a bit in recent years. This has partially been due to several entries skipping a Western release, the result of series sales receiving diminishing returns stateside.
Two overlooked games, the Great Ace Attorney duology, is finally coming to the West in the form of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. These games feature an ancestor of series star Phoenix Wright and a world-renowned (and potentially copyright infringing) detective of literary proportions. For the Western release, the games are getting around it with a slight name change.
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
The collection is comprised of The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve and is releasing on the Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 and Windows in July. It features the franchise's classic courtroom and investigative gameplay, examining evidence and interrogating witnesses to discover the truth behind several cases.
While the other games have semi-modern settings, these are set between the 19th and 20th centuries and star Ryūnosuke Naruhodō. This character is an ancestor of Phoenix Wright and shares his descendant's strong sense of justice. His friends who become involved with him in the game's many cases include law student Asogi Kazuma and their judicial assistant Susato Mikotoba. However, it's their encounters in England that dive deep, if not a little too deep, into the world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Herlock Sholmes and the Case of the Missing Trademark
Aiding the trio in their quest is none other than the eccentric English investigator Sherlock Holmes, who is assisted by Iris Watson, the daughter of his deceased friend John Watson. While this adds a literary layer to the franchise that was theretofore unseen, it also became problematic when it came to bringing these titles to the West.
Though the Sherlock Holmes character is mostly in the public domain, there are still quite a few adventures of his that are not. This is a lesser issue in countries where copyright and trademark laws are more lenient, but Western countries are usually a lot more stringent in that department. Thus, the upcoming compilation renames the character with the goofy moniker of Herlock Sholmes. Likewise, Iris's last name is changed from Watson to Wilson, severing the character's official ties to Doyle's work.
This isn't even the first detective team-up to go this route, with the 1908 novel Arsene Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes implementing a similar method of featuring Doyle's consulting detective. That was especially important back then, given how recent all of the Sherlock Holmes books still were. Of course, renaming the character with a ridiculous anagram of his might sound goofy to some. This does, however, fit with the comedic and sometimes irreverent tone of the Ace Attorney series, even if it does leave a few things lost in translation.