An important achievement in the preservation and translation of retro gaming has recently unfolded. Xenosaga: Pied Piper, a mobile phone spin-off developed by Monolith Soft, Namco, and Tom Create, that was previously thought to be lost to digital oblivion is now being restored and will be playable in English.
ValakTurtle from Vector Translations & Preservation acknowledges the tireless efforts of many within the Xenosaga fan community:
Firstly, I cannot express enough gratitude to the Keitai Wiki Discord for the many months of hard work and dedication they’ve put towards preserving this game. I’d especially like to thank MemoryHunter for starting the whole Keitai preservation movement, xyz for being the lead reverse engineer…, LNRC for keeping us informed about the status of the project…, cuebus for assisting in chip dumping phones, RockmanCosmo for being a pillar of the Keitai community, and everyone else who contributed to our cause. I’m also eternally grateful for the anonymous donor who was willing to dump the game for us.
Fans can look forward to a full translation patch created by Vector Translations & Preservation, which is estimated to take at least several months to ensure quality. In the meantime, CycloneFox’s remake of the game (link in the original article) serves as an impressive testament to fan creativity and devotion.
How do these phone spin-off games compare to the mainline games?
I’ve read a fan translation of the script for this one because I was really into the series as a teenager. It’s Ziggy’s backstory. Story-wise it’s very much like the rest of the series and feels like they just fleshed out notes they already made for the other games which is probably what happened.