50 free Ace Attorney trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Ace Attorney started as a six-month experiment: Shinji Mikami told Shu Takumi to build whatever he wanted, and a seven-person team shipped a courtroom game for the Game Boy Advance in 2001 that Capcom now counts among its strongest properties. Along the way the series gave us a coffee-drinking masked prosecutor, a whip-wielding 18-year-old prodigy, a spirit medium whose favourite food changed from ramen to burgers in translation, and a detective named Herlock Sholmes for copyright reasons. These 50 questions cover the whole franchise: the original trilogy and its localization puns, Apollo Justice and the Perceive system, Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, the Investigations spin-offs, The Great Ace Attorney, the Professor Layton crossover, and the live-action film and anime. Easy questions stick to Phoenix, Maya and Edgeworth; the expert tier asks about composers, voice actors and the name the localizers almost gave Phoenix. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you pick something up even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a game-night round.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who created the Ace Attorney series and wrote its original trilogy?
Shu Takumi
Takumi also provided Phoenix's Japanese voice in the first four games and later wrote The Great Ace Attorney.
Q 02Which company develops and publishes the Ace Attorney games?
Capcom
Capcom has said it wants to grow the series into a core IP alongside Mega Man and Devil May Cry.
Q 03On which handheld did the first Ace Attorney title launch in Japan in 2001?
Game Boy Advance
It was first planned for the Game Boy Color, until the team saw the GBA screen and footage of Mega Man Battle Network.
Q 04Phoenix's Japanese surname, Naruhodō, is a running pun meaning roughly what?
"I see"
The localizers kept "Wright" as his surname so the script's "right/Wright" jokes could replace the Japanese wordplay.
Q 05What is Maya Fey, Phoenix's assistant in the first three games?
A spirit medium
Maya was originally going to be a lawyer-in-training preparing for the bar exam before Takumi made her a medium.
Q 06Which gameplay mechanic did Justice for All introduce to the series?
Psyche-Locks
Takumi says he pictured the system instantly in a meeting but still asked for three days to "come up with" the idea.
Q 07What object lets Phoenix see and break a witness's hidden secrets?
A magatama
The comma-shaped bead is a Shinto symbol, one of the Fey-clan details the localization deliberately kept Japanese.
Q 08Apollo Justice's Perceive system was compared to spotting what?
A poker tell
Apollo's bracelet tightens when a witness fidgets, a power he shares with his half-sister Trucy through their mother.
Q 09What do Spirit of Justice's Divination Séances show the player?
A victim's final moments
The developers first considered ghosts or puppet possession for this but rejected them as too creepy.
Q 10Who is the detective partner in The Great Ace Attorney's joint-reasoning scenes?
Herlock Sholmes
Takumi first sketched a system for correcting a detective's deductions around 2000, fifteen years before it shipped.
Q 11Which prosecutor is the playable lead of the Ace Attorney Investigations games?
Miles Edgeworth
Ema Skye was the original suggestion for the lead; fan feedback pushed the team toward the more popular character.
Q 12Where and when is The Great Ace Attorney set?
Victorian-era England
The story opens in Meiji-era Japan before moving to London, a change artist Kazuya Nuri pushed for.
Q 13Who is the protagonist of The Great Ace Attorney?
Ryunosuke Naruhodo
He was written as how Phoenix would speak and act if he had lived in the Meiji period; the name was chosen in seconds.
Q 21Which writer handled the first game's English localization?
Alexander O. Smith
Smith had never heard of the series before the job and rewrote about half the jokes around the characters in each scene.
Q 22Who has directed the series' localization since the second game?
Janet Hsu
Hsu also voices Franziska in English and French, and devised the alternate-history Los Angeles setting.
Q 23Whose short story "The Psychological Test" inspired the series' creator?
Edogawa Ranpo
Hoshi was the other named influence, for his "element of surprise and unexpectedness".
Q 14Which masked rival prosecutor debuts in Trials and Tribulations?
Godot
The character's only starting brief was a mask and white hair; the red visor came before his role in the plot was set.
Q 15What does prosecutor Godot drink constantly in court?
Coffee
His theme, "The Fragrance of Dark Coffee", was written to evoke a jazz café and is a staple of series concerts.
Q 16Which fellow game director voiced Godot in Japanese?
Hideki Kamiya
Kamiya joined Capcom alongside Takumi in 1994 and had been asking for a voice role since Justice for All.
Q 17What weapon does Franziska von Karma use on witnesses, lawyers and the judge?
A whip
Takumi said the second game's cast was meant to be "100% out of this world" and was surprised nobody called the idea ridiculous.
Q 18By what age had Franziska von Karma become a prosecutor?
13
She is 18 when she arrives to replace Edgeworth as Phoenix's rival in Justice for All.
Q 19In the English localization, which city is the series primarily set in?
Los Angeles
It is an alternate LA where anti-Japanese laws were never passed, which is why Japanese culture is everywhere.
Q 20Maya's favourite food, ramen, became what in the English version?
Burgers
Spirit of Justice lampshades the change by describing Maya as liking both.
Q 24Which boss gave the series' creator six months to make any game he wanted?
Shinji Mikami
Takumi had just finished Dino Crisis 2; Mikami later told him to turn the game into a trilogy.
Q 25How many months did the seven-person team spend making the first game?
10
Staff recorded the voice clips themselves; Takumi voiced Phoenix and artist Tatsuro Iwamoto voiced Edgeworth.
Q 26What does the original Japanese title Gyakuten Saiban literally mean?
"Turnabout Trial"
Every case title in the English games keeps the word "Turnabout" as a nod to the original name.
Q 27Which director made the 2012 live-action Ace Attorney film?
Takashi Miike
It premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Kotaku called it "the best video game movie ever".
Q 28Who played Phoenix Wright in the live-action film?
Hiroki Narimiya
Narimiya and Mirei Kiritani reprised Phoenix and Maya as the voice cast of the Professor Layton crossover.
Q 29Which studio produced the 2016 Ace Attorney anime?
A-1 Pictures
The same studio had animated Spirit of Justice's cutscenes; season one covers the first two games minus two cases.
Q 30Which studio made the anime's second season, adapting Trials and Tribulations?
CloverWorks
The season also adapted "The Lost Turnabout", the only original-trilogy case season one had skipped.