It’s the final day of Celebrating All Things Mysterious 2024 (and your last chance to participate in the contest).

Last year, we closed out the month by talking about Ace Attorney Investigations 2, so why not end the event with Ace Attorney again?

Earlier this year, Capcom finally brought Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies, and Spirit of Justice (the 4th, 5th, and 6th mainline games) to modern platforms as the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, which even got a physical release for the Switch in North America. Since Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice were digital-only here before, it’s great to finally have them in physical form.

While I ultimately decided against playing through all three games again, I did spend some time with the Apollo Justice Trilogy nevertheless.

I love that these newer collections include concept art and similar bonuses. Looking through the concept art is always fun, especially when you get to see earlier character designs.

It also includes an extensive soundtrack selection (all the songs from the three games, minus the ones that only play for a few seconds, plus some additional tracks as well), and you can set a song to play in the background while you look through other parts of the gallery.

Then there’s the Animation Studio, which might be the best bonus feature I’ve ever seen.

The Animation Studio lets you pick any background, character, pose/animation, and voice clip (ex. “Objection!”) to create your own scenes. It’s restricted based on game, so no taking a character exclusive to one game and putting them in a background from a different game, but it still has a ton of options. One annoying part is that some poses/animations are exclusive to the courtroom, so if you select that option while on a different background, it automatically changes to the courtroom. I’d have preferred it if courtroom-specific options only showed up on the list while you had a courtroom background set, or if it asked first.

Still, after a bit of fiddling, I managed to make some fun what-if scenes with Blackquill, since he’s one of my favorite prosecutors. I like to think he’s there to see the bird.

…and a scene with my least favorite prosecutor, to imagine what could have been (out-of-court encounters with Nahyuta might have done wonders for him).

Playing around with the Animation Studio makes me wish The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles had this feature, because I’d go crazy if I could make my own Great Ace Attorney scenes.

Anyway, another nice feature added to the Apollo Justice Trilogy is that you can not only select which game to play, but even a specific section of a specific case. I revisited some of my favorite moments from the trilogy this way, and it reminded me just how much I love this series.

The Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy is a fantastic collection of the later three Ace Attorney games, with some really nice bonus features, and a perfect collection to end Celebrating All Things Mysterious 2024 with. So let me know your thoughts on the Apollo Justice Trilogy, and join me in hoping that this is the year a new Ace Attorney game will finally be announced!