real Japanese prosecutors, the prosecutors in the series often directly oversee investigations, issuing orders to the police. Japanese attitudes towards the police force are reflected in the series, with the police being represented by incompetent characters such as Dick Gumshoe, Maggey Byrde and Mike Meekins. In the world of Ace Attorney, trials only last three days, and usually end with a "guilty" verdict, with trials taken up by the protagonists of the games being rare exceptions. The outcomes of cases are decided by a judge, based on evidence provided by the defense attorney and the prosecutor. Development The series was created by Shu Takumi, who wrote and directed the first three games. The first game was conceived in 2000 when Takumi's boss at the time, Shinji Mikami, gave him six months to create any type of game he wanted to; Takumi had originally joined Capcom wanting to make mystery and adventure games, and felt that this was a big chance for him to make a mark as a creator. The game was designed to be simple, as Takumi wanted it to be easy enough for even his mother to play. It was originally going to be a detective game, with Phoenix being a private investigator, but at one point Takumi realized that finding and taking apart contradictions was not related to detective work, and felt that the main setting of the game should be courtrooms. Takumi cited Japanese mystery author Edogawa Ranpo as an inspiration, particularly The Psychological Test, a short story which involves a crime that "unravels due to the criminal's contradictory testimony." It had a big impact on him, and was a major influence on the game. He was also inspired by stories from another Japanese author, Shinichi Hoshi, stating that he was pursuing his "element of surprise and unexpectedness." Takumi felt that the best way to write a mystery with a good climax is to reveal various clues, and then pull them together into one conclusion, and not have multiple possible endings. He said that the biggest challenge with that was to make the gameplay and story work together; the goal was to make the player feel like they have driven the story forward themselves, with their own choices, even though the game is linear. He only spent little time on writing a backstory for Phoenix before writing the first game's story, and instead made up dialogue