FAQ

What is Gyakuten Saiban 3?

Gyakuten Saiban is a trilogy of Capcom "lawyering sims" for the Game Boy Advance. The GBA games were successful in Japan but never released outside. Recently an updated version of Gyakuten Saiban 1 for the Nintendo DS was translated to English and released as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, but Gyakuten Saiban 2 and 3 have not been officially translated.

You play the role of a hotshot defense lawyer who specializes in making "comebacks" on apparently doomed cases. You'll be up against ruthless coffee-chugging prosecutors and uncooperative witnesses in a series of increasing intricate mysteries. To progress, you'll have to cross-examine witnesses and nail them when their blather contradicts the evidence. But watch out: the judge has an "annoyance bar" and if it drops to zero he'll think nothing of passing a guilty verdict on the spot.

Gyakuten Saiban 3 is the third game in this series, released in Japan in January 2004. The writing style has matured considerably since the first game, and this third installment in some ways the best of the three. Here's a review (of sorts).

The original Japanese title for the series is Gyakuten Saiban. "Comeback Courtroom" is a literal English translation; that's what I liked to call the game in English before Phoenix Wright was released.

What is this project?

This project aims to release a full, free, professionally-done translation patch for Gyakuten Saiban 3, and release open-source tools for Windows and Linux useful to translate the two other games in the series.

The ROM hacking part of the project is now at a quite advanced stage, and at this point translators are needed.

Where can I get an original copy of the game?

You can purchase the original Japanese version of Gyakuten Saiban 3 at an import games store, for example at Play-Asia. Then it will be legal for you to obtain a copy of the game ROM, and you will be then able to apply our translation patch (when it is done) to play it in English. We can only provide a translation patch, not the original game. We will not send anyone a copy of the ROM.

Why don't you translate Gyakuten Saiban 2 first?

My initial reason for working on Gyakuten Saiban 3 was that it's my favorite game in the series, personally. But now that Gyakuten Saiban 1 has been officially translated, the decision to start with 3 seems particularly serendipitous since I didn't waste my time on a redundant fan translation. Similarly GS3 is less likely to receive an official translation than GS2, so it's safest to stick with it.

I am, of course, open to the possibility of Gyakuten Saiban 2 being fan translated later if necessary. This is the main reason why I choose to release my ROM hacking tools to the public. Because the 3 games are built on the same engine, tools and information for hacking Gyakuten Saiban 3 will be, with some modification, useful for the other games as well. I would be happy if other fan translators decided to pick them up.

Is Capcom going to do an official translation?

That depends on how much profit Capcom made on sales of Phoenix Wright. Sales for the first month were about 10,000 units, which is not bad but by no means spectacular. It seems likely to me that GS2 and GS3 won't be released: they probably wouldn't want to make a straight localization of GBA games to their DS-based Western audience, but it would be too expensive for them to remake GS2 and GS3 for the DS. I think it's much more likely that GS4 will be localized than either GS2 or GS3.

If an official translation were to be made, we would terminate the fan translation project, because it would then no longer be necessary. We support Capcom and have no intention of creating an alternative translation that would compete with theirs.

When will the translation be finished?

It will take a while. The hurdles for this game are particularly high. The size of the script is very large since the game revolves around text. There is a sizeable amount of text outside the main script, embedded all over the place in the game's graphics. And the translation needs to be especially careful in order not to obscure crucial details which can be important to the gameplay.

On the plus side, because the game is divided into 5 distinct "cases", it makes sense to release partial translations as the project progresses. In other games, suddenly "running out of English" can make partial translations very frustrating, but here the neat pre-existing divisions reduce the problem. We do not have to wait until the entire game is finished before making a release. The first patch we will release will be a translation of Case 1 only.

Currently there is only one person really working on this — me, Broco. I'm a solid programmer and I've been studying Japanese for 5 years, so I technically have the skills necessary to do the whole project on my own, but I don't have the time. I would greatly appreciate help from anyone with enough Japanese proficiency to work on the translation. Please e-mail me at broco@users.sourceforge.net if you are interested in joining the team. I have no shortage of script blocks to assign to new translators!