A pair of Armored Core games are being freed from their 2000s Japanese mobile phone prison with upcoming PC ports

Armored Core is a FromSoftware series that absolutely rips, and has done since its debut way back on the PS1. Technically us PC players only recently were graced with the ability to play something from the series with the release of Armored Core 6, but soon we’ll have a couple more to mess around with. The only caveat is that it would be helpful if you could speak Japanese, as they’re not getting an English language release.

You see, back in the early 2000s, Japan had some pretty advanced phones, some of which had cameras built in, internet access, GPS, and yes, even games. Some of them had whole ports of classic Final Fantasys, and there’s even a Final Fantasy 7 spinoff that’s exclusive to one of these phones (which is, legally speaking, unplayable to this day despite supposedly being canon). Amongst the numerous other series that got early mobile spinoffs – I’m talking Kingdom Hearts, Monster Hunter, Katamari Damacy, Persona – Armored Core also received a few entries too.

And, as announced by developer G-Mode, Armored Core Mobile Mission and its sequel Mobile Mission 2 are coming to Steam. The first one’s actually due out soon, on April 30th, and you can wishlist it on Steam, but the second one doesn’t have a release date just yet. Mobile mission is a top down shooter, but you can still customise your mech, and the second one actually lets you walk around its levels too. Honestly, really impressive stuff for the time.

Not only that, there’s a couple of Shin Megami Tensei ports on the way too, if RPGs are more your thing. The first of them, Tokyo Requiem, was a completely original game for Japanese phones, whereas 20XX was a prequel to Shin Megami Tensei 2. Neither have release dates just yet, but the latter is available to wishlist on Steam too.

Again, none of this will be playable in English, but I really love the work that G-Mode is putting into these releases. Their whole shtick is porting old Japanese phone games, not an easy feat given that some of them were exclusive to certain networks, so I’m chuffed to see them playable on modern hardware. Good motivation to finally start those Japanese lessons I reckon!