Thanks to a recent interview by 4Gamer (via VGC) with Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy producer Kenichi Hashimoto, I've learned that the impending release is powered by none other than the RE Engine.

I wrote about just how flexible Capcom's secret sauce is back in 2022.

Since RE7‘s release, Capcom has turned the Resident Evil engine into the Capcom Engine. There are currently a total of 17 games that use the RE Engine. The real dope part is how diverse that catalog of games is and how many different platforms are supported.

While the bulk are third-person action/shooters, RE Engine also supports first-person games, VR, 2D platformers, retro-emulated arcade games, fighting games, action games, and online multiplayer games.

Add point-and-click style adventure games to the list now.

In light of this news, I went back and checked the other two collections to see what engine they used. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy uses Unity. This doesn't surprise me; as far as I can tell, the mobile ports were built off Unity back in 2013.

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, which is on my 2024 gaming goals list, was brought in-house on the MT Framework engine, Capcom's old reliable before RE Engine.

When you look back, of course Ace Attorney would be brought onto the RE Engine at some point. It's clearly the foundation of Capcom's efforts for the foreseeable future. What I love about it, besides being more in awe of the tech, is that a series like Ace Attorney can stretch all the way up from the Game Boy Advance to modern hardware. I get this new trilogy is exclusively titles from the DS and 3DS, but I still love to see it. Ace Attorney has been on just about every platform you could imagine: Wii Ware, iOS, PC, PS4, Xbox, and a buttload of Nintendo hardware. Makes sense that such a flexible series would end up on such a flexible engine.