Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth[a] is a 2009 adventure video game developed and published by Capcom. It was originally released for the Nintendo DS in Japan in 2009, and internationally in 2010, and later for iOS and Android in 2017. It is the fifth game in the Ace Attorney series, and is set between the events of the third and fourth games, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.
While previous games in the series focus on defense attorneys, Ace Attorney Investigations has the player control prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, who investigates five cases that tie together to form an overarching story about a smuggling ring. The game consists of investigation phases, in which the player investigates crime scenes in search for evidence, and rebuttal phases, in which they confront other characters, to hear what they think has happened; the player is able to use evidence to find contradictions in the characters' statements, to get closer to the truth.
The game was directed by Takeshi Yamazaki and produced by Motohide Eshiro. Eshiro had come up with the idea of a new adventure game about Ace Attorney characters while working on Trials and Tribulations, and Yamazaki had the idea to have it be about deductive reasoning and crime scene investigation. The game was specifically designed to be different from previous Ace Attorney titles, with a larger focus on the environment. The development team had originally considered using Ema Skye, a character from earlier games in the series, as the lead character, but used Miles Edgeworth instead because of his popularity. They aimed to have players be immersed in the game and feel like they are Edgeworth, as opposed to previous Ace Attorney games, where they felt players merely could identify with the lead characters; to do this, they included direct control of Edgeworth, and a gameplay element that involves connecting his thoughts.
It was met by generally favorable reviews, with a common complaint being that rebuttals at times devolve into trial and error. The game was one of the best selling games of 2009 in Japan, while Western sales were described as "poor at best". After the game's release, a manga series based on it has been released. A sequel, Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit, was released in Japan in 2011. Both games were remastered as part of the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection compilation release in 2024.
