With the looming release of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition a preservation group for Japanese mobile games has successfully preserved Xenosaga: Pied Piper. Mobile games, notoriously ephemeral, are often left behind when standards change, new form factors are adopted, or simply during OS upgrades when companies go under. Xenosaga: Pied Piper was one of two games that were only released for the series in Japan. The other, a Nintendo DS game titled Xenosaga I & II is supposed to be a retelling of the events in both Xenosaga Episodes I & II which, according to Wikipedia, expands on the narrative and characters from the first two games. Xenosaga: Pied Piper, originally released on Vodaphone in 2004 and brought to i-mode in 2006, is now able to be emulated on PCs.
Above is a video of a Let’s Play by 桂樹(Keju_frangelico) captioned by ValakTurtle, who preserved the i-mode version of the game. The announcement of the preservation, made on this YouTube videothat can’t be played on other websites, comes with a download link to both the game and setup instructions for the emulator. Along with the announcement for Xenosaga: Pied Piper comes the announcement of a translation as well. ValakTurtle is working on a full translation patch for the game along with Vector Translations & Preservation, which appears to be a newer collective of hobbyist translators and preservationists. Promising a new YouTube channel and social media accounts soon.
The Xenosaga: Pied Piper Remake
While the fan translation and preservation of the i-mode version of the game are new, a remake has been in the works for some time. Last year, posted on the Godsibb.net forums, CycloneFox announced that they were working on a complete remake of Xenosaga: Pied Piper using RPG Maker. On CycloneFox’s itch.io page for the project, they mention that most of the gameplay is lost and that there are some differences between the actual product and the remake they’re working on. A few of the differences are the localization used is from ValakTurtle’s video embedded above, no random encounters, higher quality art, and the music. Notably, the music used for the remake is RPG Maker and royalty-free music. However, with the original now preserved, how much of that is likely to stay the same? A demo is available on CycloneFox’s itch.io page for the project and is completely playable in the browser.
What is Xenosaga: Pied Piper?
Originally, Tetsuya Takahashi wanted to include the story of Ziggy, who first appeared in Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht as an “ex-human” revived as a cyborg under the Life Recycling Act, as a scenario in Xenosaga Episode II. However, when contacted by the mobile division of Namco to work with them on a mobile property for Xenosaga, Takahashi decided to offload Ziggy’s story to the mobile game. Developed by Namco Mobile with help from external studio Tom Create, who also helped with Xenosaga I+II for the Nintendo DS in 2006, Pied Piper was released in 2004 on Vodaphone. The game’s title is about the German fable, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and was the third installment of the Xenosaga series at the time. The i-mode release coincided with the release of Xenosaga III: Also sprach Zarathustra. Pied Piper takes place 100 years prior to the events of Xenosaga: Episode 1 and focuses on Ziggy’s life as a human and what led to him becoming a cyborg. The story seems tragic but that should be no surprise to Xeno fans.
There’s very little likelihood of an official Namco release of Xenosaga: Pied Piper, as the original Xenosaga games have been locked to their original release platforms since release in the mid-2000s. While fans would love to see a rerelease or just port to modern platforms, it’s fairly ambiguous how a remake would go about now that Nintendo is the parent company of Monolith Soft. Regardless of where these titles rest, fans across the world will go to great lengths to make sure they’re preserved and translated, as we can’t expect companies to do that work for us. Sadly, game preservation, code preservation, and translation are often overlooked by companies who expect little to no return on those investments. People like ValakTurtle and CycloneFox who dedicate their free time to preserving our collective gaming history should be lauded for their efforts. Spread the word, help if you can, and keep up the good fight. I wish both ValakTurtle and CycloneFox all the best on their impending releases.
