Checking the Record; Ace Attorney UI Across Time

Ace Attorney's a franchise near and dear to my heart. I've played the games since picking up the original trilogy for the 3DS, and it's been a close favorite of mine for my entire adult life. The primary draws of the franchise are in its characters and courtroom deduction mechanics, but something I've noticed lately is the interesting ways the games have evolved in their UI usage over the years. Primarily how they reshape menus designed explicitly for the handheld dual screen format of the DS and 3DS series of consoles into a more digestible console and pc release. Here I'm going to try and use some small snapshots to piece apart what they've done to port these games in their currently 3 different collections on console and pc, and compare what they do differently to each other, while trying to pick apart what Capcom developers learned from the original trilogy, to the great duology, into the apollo justice trilogy. First off, it's good to note where the games start from in terms of UI.

This is a screencap from the original ace attorney 1 on DS. At this point in time they were very fervently using the DS's dual screens to full effect in being able to keep all important context on the top screen, while interactions were cordoned off to the bottom. This general UI format stuck through the DS series of consoles into the 3DS with minimal adjustments, beyond the usual prettying up and detailing of UI icons. It serves very well, though the inspect, back, and present buttons as they appear in the corners do feel slightly tacked on. Their color choice, while popping from the background, do little to blend with the rest of the game's UI standards. Meanwhile, ported to console and PC as the Ace Attorney Trilogy, the lack of a second screen meant all information needed to be accessible in the same space, and no touch screen assumptions meant that a simple tap and scroll through evidence bar can't suffice.

This is the first form of the new staple UI for the series, evidence laid out in a singular row, looping into pages of 10 evidence each, with an matching UI when flipped to the profiles section. Overall, it is definitely a downgrade in simple utility. The touchscreen provides the ability to access a given evidence item in less than 5 taps guaranteed, meanwhile for this linear list, you have to cycle from 1 end to the other to find your specific piece of evidence. It's just fine in small cases like the first case shown above, but if you get anywhere more than 2 pages of information (20 evidence pieces), the cracks quickly start to show. However on a technical level the graphic design on display is very solid. It's simply made, and doesn't use much flourish, but the yellow, white, and blue color pallet matches nicely with Phoenix's own color scheme. Not to mention, the box of information on the currently selected evidence works nicely as if emulating a write-up paper on the given evidence in question, with text lines and a highlighted title at the top, giving each piece of evidence a better courtroom feel. Another place this graphic layout helps, is all the extra vertical room for that information limits the chance for a user to forget what a piece of evidence is. Having a text blurb and image at the ready for each evidence without having to examine it means mistakes that might be common in the other layout's limited information are far less likely to occur. The lack of texturing flourishes could give this menu a slightly cheap feel, one not helped by the general lack of fanfare the additions to the trilogy release have, but what is there is coherent and flexible even if it lacks the smooth interaction of a touch screen menu. While a better menu might have existed for a purely mouse-based menu on PC, this being a multiplatform release gives it a good amount of slack. Such a simple system-agnostic menu could realistically be ported to anything so long as the screen being used can be wider than it is tall. Next onto the Great Ace Attorney duology, the games narratively take a huge departure. Being set in historic Meiji era Japan and Victorian England, the UI takes many cues from the time period to better settle into the game's world and story. Having 2 years between the larger console release of the original trilogy, these games use that game's framework as a base and work to improve it in small ways.

Breaking away from the court record visual imagery of the original, for a more theatrical title card style reminiscent of the game's own start of case title cards. This UI has a number of small visual aid improvements while in some ways leaning into usability issues already present in the original trilogy's redesign. Starting with the good, the way the currently examined testimony overlaps the menu rather than being shadowed behind it greatly helps readability. It also including your current mistakes available while checking for evidence makes it easier to avoid accidentally having to reload a save due to not knowing how many strikes you had left. Beyond layout though, the graphic design is also to personally to me a much more pleasant structure. The texturing and color choice really helps lean into the time period with the yellows and browns you'd expect of a sepia-toned silent movie or old photograph. Beyond that, the use of horizontal lines on many different aspects of the menu give a sense of weathering and shadow, as if you almost have a physical card in your hand displaying all these different options to you like a restaurant menu. It's really rather charming. Tragically however in some ways they seem to have taken a step back. Namely, the larger evidence icons and additional bars on either side limit the amount of evidence displayable per page. These 2 games more than more Ace Attorney games already can have a problem with lengthy evidence lists, going well into the third and fourth pages. Limiting your visible evidence per page from 10 down to 8 only exasperates the problems already present in this linear menu to begin with.

Finally onto the Apollo Justice Trilogy. These games, set after a timeskip from the original trilogy, follow Phoenix and his successor (or you know, what would be his successor if Capcom ever let Phoenix just be a mentor and not a protagonist) taking back the court system after a nearly decade long dark age in court proceedings.

This game takes UI back to a more structured evidence folder look, but with the flourishes introduced from Great Ace Attorney. Using more detailed texturing and color choice to have items stick out. The stitched leather rim, while totally unnecessary gives an idea of almost a wallet or fancy folder. The green tint to all the colors inside then being an interesting contrast point to the original's blue and yellow framing. It gives them a more cool and subdued energy, though how this relates in comparison to our new protagonist Apollo contrasted to Phoenix I couldn't tell you. He's fiery, red hot passion and well... green is an interesting choice to that. Regardless though, it's a very nice color choice and works really well with the texturing. Beyond that, the overall structure of the menu better captures that original trilogy idea of a document containing information on the subject. Green lined paper with a darker green header, I can perfectly envision the actual paper the title and description of these items is written on. Another nice touch is that the highlighted item rather than just having a border around it as in the original trilogy or duology, actually hovers off the grid a little, showing it to look like a printed photograph with a shadow beneath it. This helps further the physical evidence record idea within the Court Record mechanic, as well as just being a very clever way to tie a more game-y outlining method into a semi-diegetic view. Back on a mechanical level, it's interesting they moved the menu back from Great Ace Attorney, no longer having the textbox as part of the menu and instead keeping it behind but visible as in the original trilogy. Having the menu not darken the area outside of it like the original trilogy did does help keep everything in focus, but it is a little awkward how the mistakes bar appears overlapping while the textbox title doesn't. Feels to me those 2 should be on the same layer as one another with how they always move as a unit in and out of view. Another slightly iffy choice on this one is keeping the 8 item menu from Great Ace Attorney. In that game, the screen limits from how big the menu was with flourishes made it a little understandable, but a lot of unused screen real estate is there to fill with items if needed. It's not entirely clear why the menu only takes up about 75% of the horizontal space when the courtroom background doesn't do anything for the player in these moments. It could be argued that the designers at Capcom decided that 8 simply looks better than 10 in these menus and stuck with it, and fair enough if that's the case. It does still look very good and clean, but I just know it can create usability issues if the cases start to have evidence count bloat. With that being said, I've now covered the development across the menus of these 3 releases. Capcom's slowly but steadily started to put a greater focus into the menus and production of these games. From the slapped together visuals behind the original trilogy to apollo justice, a clear care and development has gone into refining this series' visual identity. I can only hope this level of visual craft can be seen in the Investigations collection when it gets release. Who knows, maybe I'll do a more systemic breakdown of those game's various systems and UI, because I know I have a lot to say about how their UI worked back on the DS original, and I can only imagine how the Logic system will look translated to a console release.