Capcom Announces Demo for Latest Entry in Ace Attorney Series

Ever since October of 2005 when Capcom released the first Ace Attorney game in the United States, I have been addicted to this wonderful series of deduction based adventure games. In that first game, players were put into the role of Phoenix Wright a wet behind the ears defense attorney who defended the innocent against an overzealous and often corrupt criminal justice system.


The games were a combination of good storytelling and appropriately challenging logic puzzles. Players are expected to keep track of clues as they listen to their clients and do their own investigations of crime scenes during a trial. Two game elements exist which add tension to the game play. First, the trials themselves only last three days. If you haven't proven your client innocent and found the real culprit within three days, then your client is automatically found guilty. Second, you can only make three mistakes in logic during the examination and cross-examination before your client is found guilty due to your own incompetence. There are no appeals in the criminal justice system of the Ace Attorney series, so the stakes are high.

In addition to being highly entertaining adventure games in the mold of classics like Secret of Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion, these games fall into the noble genre of deduction games. Exceptional non-video game entries that fall into this genre include Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, 221B Baker Street (one of my wife's all time favorite games), Scotland Yard, Fury of Dracula, and Gumshoe. The board games differ in the amount of narrative content, but they all require players to use deductive skills in order to win the games. These games also vary in the amount that luck can play to aid the players, in the boardgames luck sometimes can give certain players more clues (or more important clues) than the other players possess. This is one of the drawbacks that board games in the deductive genre can fall into.

Thankfully, the Nintendo DS based Ace Attorney series doesn't suffer from this flaw. As a video games, the clues and their location are concealed by the magic of code and must be actively discovered by the person/people playing the game. The Ace Attorney game also requires the player to walk through all the steps of the logical process and the articulation of any logical proof. Even if you know the answer and have figured out the mystery, you must still walk step by step through the logical analysis in order to win the game. I think this is where the Ace Attorney games become more than just games, but valuable learning tools as well. While the information in the individual mysteries will never come into use in daily life, the critical skills developed by investigating the mysteries will. Given that the mysteries carefully balance learning with challenge, players don't tend to get frustrated that they cannot solve the mysteries. The first episode of each game is typically fairly easy to solve, but by the time you get to the final mystery things get quite challenging.

In the newest entry into the Ace Attorney series, which comes available on February 16, 2010, the players leave the court room for the crime scene as they take the role of Phoenix Wright's oft-time rival Miles Edgeworth. Instead of investigating previously examined crime scenes, as in the prior entries in the series, as Miles Edgeworth the players will be asked to start the investigation at the crime scene to find the clues which will be brought out in trial.



A prosecutor friend of mine once told me how Perry Mason influenced his desire to become an attorney and eventually a prosecutor. Perry Mason's ability to find out who the real culprit behind the murders on the TV show gave my friend the impression that attorneys where real life superheroes. They defended the innocent and made sure that the guilty were punished. At some point my friend came to the realization that prosecutors were the real Perry Masons of the world, they were the ones defending victims and prosecuting the perpetrators far more frequently than defense attorneys. Now the Ace Attorney series is walking down a similar path. The players have played defense attorneys fighting against an over zealous and sometimes corrupt Prosecutor's office. Now it is time for the players to take on the role of the most noble member of that office and bring justice to those who thought they could get away with murder.

I'm excited about the prospect and am grateful that Capcom has released a playable demo of the game, which can be played at the Gamespot website. Though all you have to do to play it is click on the image below.



Features :

• Starring Miles Edgeworth, the popular rival of attorney Phoenix Wright
• Gameplay moves out of the courtroom and onto the crime scene
• New investigative style using the Nintendo DS stylus to uncover evidence
• Several unique cases to solve with over 15 hours of gameplay
• New technique, such as “logic” mode assists you in uncovering the crime
• Unique dialog trees and interrogation techniques let you question witnesses to discover the truth

Hulu Recommendation Friday: The Prisoner

Given that this Sunday is the premiere of the new AMC series "The Prisoner," a site as devoted to geek culture as this one is has only one possible recommendation to make -- "The Prisoner" starring Patrick McGoohan. The show is not "officially" on Hulu, but you can find a link on the Hulu site.

The original "The Prisoner" was nominally a follow up to Patrick McGoohan's popular spy themed show "Danger Man," or as I always new it "Secret Agent." One way that "The Prisoner" can be viewed is as the "deprogramming" of McGoohan's character from the earlier series as he retires from the spy world.

There are many other lenses through which the show can be viewed as the show is a great example of what much of the New Wave SF Writers and the earlier Futurian SF writers where doing in written SF. In the fiction of both the New Wave writers and Futurians shifted the focus of sfnal elements away from the mechanically technical and into the political and social. It is true that earlier SF, like that of Wells and Huxley, had been filled with political and social elements as the primary sfnal elements, but the Hard SF movement championed by John W. Campbell had a greater focus on hard science than earlier SF. The Campbellian writers had political subtexts as well, but one can read much of Heinlein, Vogt, and Asimov without engaging with the political/philosophic content. The fiction of the New Wave and Futurians was a little more radical and overt in its use of political and social elements. One cannot read Behold the Man without engaging with the radicalism of the text. It's no accident that "The Prisoner," with its focus on the collective versus the individual, came into existence at the height of the, largely British, SF New Wave.

It is a common practice among fans of "The Prisoner" to have lengthy conversations about the meanings embedded within the series and it is almost impossible to describe the series itself without revealing one something that one might find to be a spoiler. "The Prisoner" is a show to be experienced tabula rasa, then to be experienced again and again in order to engage with the complexities of the narrative.

It appears that the new AMC show is using Alternate Reality Gaming to expand the experience. Make a little visit to the Summakor website to get an idea of what I mean.

Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" Opens in Limited Cities on November 20

Ever since I first saw "Aguirre: der Zorn Gottes" on a German class field trip, I have been entranced with Werner Herzog's films. His documentaries are extraordinary and his narrative films have a verisimilitude often lacking in films by other directors. His recent film "Rescue Dawn," a narrative film inspired by his earlier documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly," Herzog gave us a riveting story of hope in the face of hopelessness. The film features an excellent performance by Steve Zahn, a talented comedic actor who demonstrated dramatic ability in "Dawn."

On November 20th, First Look Studios will be releasing Herzog's latest film "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans." The film is a kind of re-envisioning of the cult classic 1992 Abel Farrara film starring Harvey Keitel.

Herzog changes the setting of the film from New York City to New Orleans in a move that opens the possibilities for Herzog to use the titular Bad Lieutenant as a human representation of the city itself. The press release describes the new film as follows:

In Werner Herzog’s new film BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS, Nicolas Cage plays a rogue detective who is as devoted to his job as he is at scoring drugs -- while playing fast and loose with the law. He wields his badge as often as he wields his gun in order to get his way. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina he becomes a high-functioning addict who is a deeply intuitive, fearless detective reigning over the beautiful ruins of New Orleans with authority and abandon. Complicating his tumultuous life is the prostitute he loves (played by Eva Mendes). Together they descend into their own world marked by desire, compulsion, and conscience. The result is a singular masterpiece of filmmaking: equally sad and manically humorous.

At first look, the role looks to be a nice fit for Cage. Many of his idiosyncratic traits will mesh well with a character spiraling through addiction. Unlike many in the "geekosphere," I have a genuine appreciation for Nic Cage and his films. As the motley crew in "Freaks" would say, he's "One of Us" and this has led him to select some projects where he wouldn't normally be the first choice of filmgoers. But he makes his choices out of a genuine love for the medium.

I don't know if this film will be "sad and manically humorous," but if it manages to capture the city of New Orleans in all of its stark beauty -- while simultaneously depicting the devastation of Hurricane Katrina -- the film will be worth watching for the city alone. When you have a damaged urban landscape, you don't need to use as many shadows to create a sense of despair.

On November 20 the film will be released in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington DC. The film will not be released in New Orleans until December.

Frederik Pohl Blogs About the Origins of Astounding (Now Analog) Magazine

Astounding/Analog magazine is the fountainhead of the Golden Age of science fiction. Many of the great SF stories that later generations read in various novelizations and anthologies first appeared within its pages, and most of those during the period the magazine was edited by John W. Campbell. For all of its importance in the field, I have not read much regarding the formative years of the magazine.

Thankfully, Frederik Pohl's has written a blog entry that is filling this significant gap in my knowledge of SF/F history. The post gives some insight on how the cost of printing covers for a line of pulp books, and the need for one more book title to be printed to prevent wasted revenue, was one of the contributing factors to the creation of the magazine. The story demonstrates how niche markets can receive product when the costs associated with the risk of the venture are less than the costs of the waste produced if no product is made -- and how this venture can eventually lead to a literary explosion.

Given my Oma's refusal to do anything remotely computer related, I find it inspiring that Frederik Pohl (who turns 90 this Thanksgiving) has a well maintained and "must read" blog. Well...must read for any SF fan.

Henry Rollins on Globalization for Vanity Fair

In today's "Straight Talk Espresso" for Vanity Fair, Henry Rollins writes a snark filled indictment of the banality of Globalization masked as travelogue. In today's post, Rollins shares in typical "Rollins-rantese" an experience he recently had in Jakarta. The center piece of the post is his sighting, and subsequent photographing, of an elderly female vendor on the streets of Jakarta who happened to be wearing a Black Flag t-shirt. It happens that she has no idea who Henry Rollins is or what Black Flag was, and Rollins uses this as an opportunity to contrast the ubiquity of American iconography with the lack of any real cultural understanding.

Rollins lets the facts stand as they are and presents the global encounter with American pop-culture as so much absurdist flotsam and jetsam -- pop culture as pollution.

The irony that Rollins mentions, but seems to fail to grasp himself, is that the young couple with whom he shares the absurdity of the moment are themselves the perfect example of more meaningful globalization. The couple both recognizes Rollins and is able to communicate the humorous situation to the older woman, a fact that speaks more genuinely to a flattening of the world.

What Rollins presents as an "ironic" encounter that supposedly demonstrates the lie of the emergence of a genuine global culture -- influenced by American culture -- instead becomes only slightly more incongruous than some American Gen-Xer's grandmother wearing a Black Flag t-shirt while grocery shopping. In both cases, a younger individual would likely be necessary to explain the history of the seminal punk band's history to the woman.

While Rollins may be missing some of the point of pro-globalization arguments, he is certainly right in reminding us that American culture is not world culture. Even when you think about our most monolithic pop-culture globalization industries, film and television, one can see that other cultures have influence American film making as much as we have that of other cultures. American film wouldn't be what it is today without the French New Wave, the Hong Kong Wave of the 80s and 90s, or the increasing influence of Bollywood. American television is filled with content influenced by the television of other nations, Britain in particular.

But the globalization of culture is only possible, and meaningful, when it comes with global experience. Americans spend to much time navel gazing and not enough time looking out at the world. Rollins is right when he hints at that necessity.

More genuinely ironic is that Henry Rollins is writing posts for a magazine that once featured articles by T.S. Eliot, P. G. Wodehouse, Aldous Huxley, and Thomas Wolfe.

An icon of my rebellious youth, okay the rebellious youth of some of my best friends, now writes for Vanity Fair. What is up with that?

[For full disclosure, I am a big fan of Rollins. He doesn't just talk the talk about the things he believes in, he acts on them as well. That deserves respect, that and the fact that he can rip my head off with one hand tied behind his back.]

Titan Books to Release The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds

In 1975, Warner Books released two wonderful, but tragically overlooked, volumes of Sherlock Holmes inspired speculative fiction. The first was Avram Davidson's The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy, a distinctive character of charm and grace who is an original creation for all that Davidson was inspired by Doyle's Consulting Detective.

The second book is a collection of tales by Manly Wade Wellman featuring Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Professor Challenger as they deal with the Martian invasion previously chronicled by H.G. Wells entitled Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds.



This "fix up" novel collects six short stories and combines them into a novel length adventure. The first of the stories, "The Adventure of the Martian Client" was originally published in the December 1969 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The other stories in the volume either appeared in later issues or were written specifically for the Warner volume.



"The Adventure of the Martian Client" begins brilliantly with Watson informing us of how tragic it is that society has chosen to follow H.G. Wells' account of the Martian invasion while totally neglecting the contributions of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger. As Watson puts it, "H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds is a frequently inaccurate chronicle by a known radical and athiest, a companion of Frank Harris, George Bernard Shaw, and worse. He exaggerates needlessly and pretends to expert scientific knowledge which he does not possess. Yet scientists and laymen applaud him, while scorning the brilliant deductions of Sherlock Holmes and Professor George Edward Challenger."

I initially found Watson's tone to be a little stronger than I am accustomed to reading, but quickly caught on to what Manly Wade Wellman -- and his son Wade Wellman -- were up to with the story. It is really quite brilliant. The Wellman's are using the lens of Holmes pastiche through which they are applying the modern scientific understanding of Mars over the representations of the Martians and their technology in the Wells novel. By doing so, they eventually add a greater possibility to further stories of Man vs. Martian than would have been allowed under the Wells model. The Wellman team do a good job of presenting the strengths of both Holmes and Professor Challenger, and of conveying the tension of the Wells story while still following the Holmes model of "a client arrives."

In the post script to "The Adventure of the Martian Client" published in the December 1969 issue, the younger Wellman sites a viewing of A STUDY IN TERROR as the inspiration for writing a Holmes meets the Martians tale. In A STUDY IN TERROR Holmes applies his detective skills against Jack the Ripper. The younger Wellman also expresses a certain amount of disdain for the 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS film. His primary complaint was that it was unnecessary to update the classic story to place it in contemporary circumstances and by doing so the movie makers overlooked the point of the story. I disagree that the 1953 film is weak, but agree that "updating" the story changed the underlying philosophical discussion. Wells' underlying message was one of the possibility that mankind might meet a being who thinks of us the same way we think of farm animals. The filmmakers of the 1953 story were grappling with the destructive power of nuclear weapons and had an opportunity to demonstrate their "ineffectiveness." I would argue that the most recent Spielberg version, which also updates the tale, keeps Wells' original philosophic statement, but is a worse translation of the story even so.




The stories in the Wellman Holmes vs. Mars cycle are entertaining and we can be thankful that Titan Books is releasing a new edition of this collection of the stories on the 17th, timed to feed off of the upcoming SHERLOCK HOLMES motion picture starring Robert Downey Jr. Hopefully a large number of people will read this collection of stories and discover the joy that is Manly Wade Wellman. He was one of the great voices in Fantasy fiction, a voice that wandered roads not typically encountered by the modern Fantasy reader.

Time Travel Clichés: Funny or Dull?

Thanks to John DeNardo of the ever informative SF Signal website for pointing us to the latest video by the folks over at Funkanomics.com.

As DeNardo noted in his pithy post title, "Every Time Travel Cliché in 3 Minutes," the "Built a Time Machine to Kill Hitler" video by the aspiring internet comedy crew at Funkanomics is not treading much new ground when it comes to the metaphysics of time travel. To be fair, dissecting the various connotations of time paradoxes in great detail isn't the point of the video. Funkanomics are trying to give us a few laughs and build a comedic reputation online.

Do they succeed?

Is "Built a Time Machine to Kill Hitler" funny?

Watch the video for yourself before you read my thoughts. It won't be the worst 3 minutes you have experienced.

"Built a Time Machine to Kill Hitler" is certainly passable as a 3 minute sketch, and I was impressed with how natural the insertion of additional time travelers looked in the film, but it's stuck on "amusing" and doesn't quite leap into "funny." I think that the greatest flaw of the skit is its lack of depth when it comes to its subject matter. We all get the BACK TO THE FUTURE and TERMINATOR references, but I'd have liked to see some A SOUND OF THUNDER, A GUN FOR DINOSAUR, MIMZY WERE THE BOROGROVES, or TIME COP (with regard to the existence of time police) thrown in for good measure. If you're going to go for the cliché gold, you have to have at least one reference to a dinosaur and one to time police. Otherwise, you're just not doing it right.

The basic comic beats are on cue in the piece, but the writers forgot one key point -- comedy is irony. I would have loved for the last time traveler to walk on the screen to be one who says, "you were right, I didn't set my clock forward for Daylight Savings. I guess it didn't work." Then have that character look down, bewildered, as he has to help his roommate clean up the mess left by the other travelers.

All that aside, I do think the film was entertaining and I will definitely be going back to Funanomics.com.

What are your favorite Time Travel stories and clichés?