Level-5: Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright were rivals, now friends

In the latest Nintendo Direct, Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino had a message for everyone regarding the upcoming crossover game Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. He says that when they made the first Professor Layton game, they identified Ace Attorney (or Gyakuten Saiban as it was known as in Japan) as their biggest rivals, and did as much research as possible in order to attempt and surpass them. However, once they released the game, he secretly wanted to do a collaboration with the Ace Attorney series one day. “Now that dream has come true!” he says.

Hino goes onto say that neither company wanted to waste this opportunity of combining two series they’ve put their all into by making something that would just be shrugged off as a spin-off work. He says that they wanted to create something of “movie-level quality”, that felt like a real, legitimate part of both series. He claims that the crossover surpasses both of the original series “in terms of sheer quality and quantity of content”, which is a big claim that hopefully rings true.

However, Hino was worried that the announcement of such a big and exciting crossover would overshadow the actual game itself, and stresses that the game will combine all the best parts of both series, right down to the little details.

During the recording we also got a few new snippets of in-game conversations and cutscenes, but the voice overs were cruelly muffled so we couldn’t make out what was being said. The art style is absolutely gorgeous, and manages to be a nice mix of both the Layton and Ace Attorney styles.

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney launches on March 29th 2014 on the 3DS.