Square Enix Using Nintendo DS to Expand Front Mission Audience

Square Enix's Front Mission guru Toshirou Tsuchida and producer Kouichirou Sakamoto have spoken to Famitsu about the forthcoming Front Mission DS game, 'Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness', as well as the series' future. Sakamoto-san has already produced the first DS-based Front Mission title, which was a remake of the original Front Mission from the SNES/PSone and has sadly not been released in Europe as of yet.

As for this new DS project, Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness, it was initially released on mobile phones over in Japan. According to the duo, it turned out that the Front Mission faithful were not too enamoured by the prospect of playing their favourite SRPG series on a mobile, so to please those that did indeed want to play it, but in another format, the decision was made to bring it to DS. In terms of the game system, Border of Madness is going to be based on Front Mission 1st, but the development team is in the process of updating both the visuals and scenario side to ensure the DS release is sufficiently improved over its mobile counterpart.

In addition to this, Tsuchida-san stated that his days of creating new Front Mission games are certainly not over, and the he definitely wants to create a new entry into the world that will manage to bring more interest to the series in the long-run.

As for the mobile-to-DS transition, it certainly bodes well for the chances of Square Enix's other recent mobile games, Parasite Eve 3, Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis and Final Fantasy IV: The After, coming over to Nintendo DS at some point.