Nintendo, with their Touch Generation series (which includes the likes of nintendogs and Brain Age) of easily accessible, non-gamer friendly titles, should have asked Capcom if they could have included Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Combining two aspects of America's legendary dramas, CSI's crime scene investigations with Law and Order's courtroom antics, into a family-friendly package, with a better advertising campaign this could have been a best seller. But instead its release fell on deaf ears and was out of print by the time word of its courtroom genius had spread a few months later.

In what is becoming a more common occurrence nowadays, just when the demand for the game had reached its highest point, with complete copies of the game going for nearly double the original $29.99 price point, Capcom decided to re-release the game this June. It immediately sold out. With a second re-release just hitting stores, if you have been avoiding Phoenix Wright like jury duty, consider this a subpoena from your local game store!

Ace Attorney, a DS remake of the Japan-only Game Boy Advance game Gyakuten Saiban, opens with you filling the blue suit of rookie defense attorney and title role, Phoenix "Nick" Wright. Having just passed his bar exam, Nick is ready to put his lawyer skills to work. The gameplay is essentially divided between two parts, which are broken up with assorted (and usually reverent) banter: courtroom proceedings and investigation. Courtroom proceedings have you cross-examining witnesses to try and prove your client's innocence. Investigation has you traveling around town, scouring crime scenes for evidence, to tracking down and interviewing potential witnesses.

Cross-examining involves reading through witness statements and searching for contradictions that you can prove using the court record (which includes testimony, evidence and official documents like autopsies). For the first four chapters the court record consists of 2D items, but in the DS-specific fifth chapter you can manipulate evidence in 3D in the search for clues. If you're not sure where a contradiction is then press the witness further to see if they say something they shouldn't be able to know, that didn't happen or that happened differently than what they say. Sometimes these are simple and easily identifiable, but other times you will be scratching your head fruitlessly to find one, or find the proof needed. Don't worry though, as not only is there no time limit for how long you deliberate, you have at least five chances to get it right per court session, and in some instances, your chances are unlimited. This is less about how you did it and more that you actually did it!

Investigation plays out much like a PC point-and-click adventure; you search around a static screen, looking for things that appear out of place or possibly connected to your case using the touch screen. When you find something of interest, you touch it with the stylus and examine it further. Nothing here is too difficult to use or grasp, although at times it is easy to get stuck, as events are connected to what you do. If you go out of the ideal order, you could be backtracking over and over, trying to trigger the next event.

With gameplay this simple, there has to be some reason to play through the over twenty hours of game spread across five chapters, and this is the wonderful, anime-inspired narrative. It begins with Nick preparing to enter the courtroom to begin his first case. Talking with his mentor, and employer, Mia Fey, they are interrupted by his defendant and childhood friend, Larry Butz, freaking out about how there is no hope for him. No, I didn't mistype his name - his name really is Larry Butz. So if you thought that this was going to be a serious drama through and through then you may want to stick to just watching courtroom dramas on TV. For everyone else, be prepared to laugh, cry, be confused and be shocked - Capcom's U.S. division did a phenomenal job of translating this game into English, taking the drama of murder trials and dosing it with generous amounts of absurdity and comedy. With characters like the bumbling detective Dick Gumshoe, elderly TV studio guard Ms. Oldbag and TV director Sam Manella, who only speaks in Internet slang, there is rarely a dull moment when interacting with the non-playable characters.

It's not always an easy task translating a game with a quirky Japanese sense of humor, not to mention one coupled with courtroom drama, but you wouldn't know that here. As many of your characters have recurring roles over the five chapters, character development is not a problem; by the time chapter two hits you will most likely be as captivated as I was. I had to know what happened next and every time something completely unexpected or mind-bending reared its head, it only added to my obsession. There are some downright head-scratching moments and revelations that completely change how you look at certain characters - it's the kind of writing and storytelling that hit TV shows are made of.

As this game is a DS remake of a GBA original, with that comes GBA-style graphics and sound. Everything is bright and detailed, but limited in different facial expressions and animation. Luckily the gameplay and style doesn't demand exquisite graphics, as most of your time is spent reading text, looking at still scenes and making eye contact with characters who are standing still. It's still hard not to want more DS-specific upgrades though - more character animations and facial expressions would have be nice, maybe even more of the animated facial expression combos. Anything to put this above the GBA, but alas it wasn't to be. There is one shining graphical moment, which gives me hope for the upcoming sequel, Justice For All, and that is chapter five's 3D evidence. Certain pieces of evidence can be looked at and manipulated in 3D space inside the court record, which can lead to new clues discovered. The evidence looks basic enough, but it's the extra amount of interaction that easily makes chapter five the favorite of the lot. If that still doesn't make up the GBA graphics for you, wait until you see the security video footage - now that is amazing.

The sound also suffers from the GBA roots, but in a less noticeable way than the graphics. The soundtrack is strong, with tunes for sleuthing, success and failure, but the song list doesn't get much bigger than that, with all five chapters reusing much of the same music. Sound effects are minimal at best, with the majority being dings when someone's light bulb clicks on and Phoenix and the other attorneys yelling "objection" and "hold it." If you turn off the sound, your experience will only lessen slightly.

My only real complaint is the lack of initial replayability. The entire game is as linear as they come and at first I thought this was going to be a huge problem once I finished it. There are no extras to unlock, there's no game completion rate and no grades given on your lawyer abilities. There is only one minor moment, at the end of the game, that will be passed over if you mess it up - but just as is the case with RPGs, you'll find yourself wanting to go back to experience the awesome story all over again.

The DS was released as a system that is striving to bring experiences to players that aren't possible on any other system. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, while not fully optimized for the DS, provides an experience that cannot be found on any other system (unless you live in Japan and played these games on the GBA!) handheld or otherwise. I never thought that being a lawyer would be this addicting and endearing. Don't make the mistake so many others made when skipping over this - pick up what should be one of the DS's flagship titles, not one of its hard-to-find sleeper hits.

Reviewed by Tony Peters for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).