Capcom on decision to bring back Ghost Trick and how fans helped make it happen

In an interview with Famitsu this week, original Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective director Shu Takumi and new producer Shingo Izumi discussed how the game’s recent return came to be.

You might be interested to learn that fans played a pretty big role in making the re-release possible. Aside from a petition that gained notable traction, Izuma said the title “ranked first on a list of games fans wanted remakes of, far ahead of the game in second place.” Yuki Kaji, who played Phoenix Wright in the Ace Attorney anime, also told Takumi at one point about how the mobile version no longer worked. That prompted Takumi to reach out to original producer Hironobu Takeshita, which “really became the start of everything.”

Our translation of the interview excerpt reads as follows:

So for the first time in about thirteen years, Ghost Trick is being ported, which is pretty amazing! First, can you talk to us about how that came about?

Takumi: Around the tenth anniversary of the game coming out, various coincidences piled together, and the fans even signed a petition asking for a port. The thing that really sticks with me from that time was after the Ace Attorney anime had finished I would sometimes talk to Yuki Kaji who voiced Phoenix Wright and he said, “I recently decided to play the iOS version of Ghost Trick, but it doesn’t work anymore.”

Actually at that time due to the operating systems being upgraded there was a period where the iOS version was not playable. That was the first I knew about it, and I spoke to the producer of the original game – Takeshita-san – and asked, “Is there something you can do about Ghost Trick?” That was actually the first time I had spoken to Takeshita-san in a long time (laughs), and that really became the start of everything. I wonder if all these various things have an influence on the way things are trending now…

So the passionate voices of fans and Kaji-san led to Capcom starting the project?

Izumi: Yeah, for sure. In 2020, with the ten year anniversary, and the petition for a remake, the game ranked first on a list of games fans wanted remakes of, far ahead of the game in second place. Of course we cannot always port any title simply because there is a hope for it, but in this case there is no mistaking that the passionate voices of fans played a big role.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is out now on the Switch eShop worldwide. A physical version is available in Japan, and we have more information about that here.

Translation provided by Simon Griffin and SatsumaFS on behalf of Nintendo Everything.