As you may well be aware, we recently had the opportunity to chat with Masakazu Sugimori, the composer of Gyakuten Saiban for the Game Boy Advance — the game that would later be localized as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for the Nintendo DS.
As part of this conversation, we spoke back and forth with the developer with the help of the Japanese-to-English translator Liz Bushouse, getting to ask the musician about everything from how he first came to be involved in the Shu Takumi-led project, the challenges he faced working on the handheld system, and the specific direction he took when approaching the score.
He ended up sharing with us a lot of great information about the game's music, but one story, in particular, we felt was worth highlighting separately, was the insight he gave us into the game's "main theme." Those who have played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney will probably be thinking, 'What is Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney's main theme?', as it necessarily clear from the game alone. However, as Sugimori confirmed to us, there is one special piece of music in particular that he wrote for the project that he intended to serve as its theme.
This is the track that has since been called, 'Phoenix Wright - Objection 2001", which plays after Phoenix has pointed out a contradiction in a witness's testimony, and which later featured as a motif in the main menu music for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (as highlighted in Joey Lopes's excellent "Two SECRETS behind Ace Attorney's musical genius" video essay)
In our chat, Sugimori described how he approached this theme, saying he wanted to make the player feel "cool", and went on to reveal that it was going to feature a second part, which would have seen the Pursuit theme kick in:
"I wanted to make it so that when that song came on, it would leave the strongest, 'Aren't I the coolest?' impression, so even though it's short, I tried to make it impactful. Incidentally, Phoenix's theme has a second half. Originally, the Pursuit theme was going to break in during the second half. But at the time, I wasn't able to put that together, and abandoned the idea because of the restrictions in capacity and number of sounds. That's why the track is so short."
That wasn't all he revealed, either, with the developer also debunking a popular fan theory related to the relationship between the main theme and the track used for Detective Gumshoe.
As some have pointed out in the past, including Lopes in the aforementioned video essay on the Ace Attorney soundtrack, the piano ostinato in the background of Gumshoe's theme, though not exactly an exact match, seems to be an apparent reference to the Objection Theme, signalling the latter's importance within the game. We asked Sugimori if this was intentional, as many have suspected, but were surprised to hear that this was actually not a conscious decision on behalf of the musician:
"I didn't consciously make any particular connections between the two, haha. If anything, I believe that track was the second one I composed (which would mean "Objection! 2001" was composed after it, not before). That track was also used for the GBA test version, and there may be a connection between the first and second tracks in the sense that they form the basis for other tracks. But in the end, I don't think there was really any particular meaning behind it. By the way, the first track I composed was "Investigation - Opening 2001". (If memory serves)"
What's your favourite track from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney? Let us know in the comments!