You’ve probably never played Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly Mirror, but thanks to its dedicated fans, you’ll soon have the chance.
Before the advent of smartphones, Japan was way ahead of the curve when it came to mobile phones. They could do things that are common today, like email, stream live video, take photos, and even play games. In-depth gaming too, even gigantic titles like Final Fantasy had exclusive releases for phones only in Japan (also known as Keitai phones), like the Final Fantasy 7 Before Crisis title – there were also a few Kingdom Hearts games, the most notable of which was the original Kingdom Hearts Coded (the rest were just mini-games). Much of this has been lost though, as almost none of them were released outside of Japanese phones, leaving fans to catch up.
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And that’s exactly what fans are doing with Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly Mirror, a Japanese phone game that was previously incomplete. Game restorer RockmanCosmo reported last week that his fellow restorer Yuvi had acquired a scrapped Fujitsu F906i phone that happened to have all six chapters of the Professor Layton phone game. RockmanCosmo explains that “we previously only had the first three chapters. An English translation will follow in due time!” The phone that the game came from was in really bad shape – it literally looked like survived a house fire – so honestly, it’s a miracle that the game has been preserved in its entirety.
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It’s a shame there aren’t more games like this these days, as one of my favorites, Ni no Kuni, got a game on the Keitai phone that was basically an Earthbound clone. There was even a Persona 3 spin-off that actually got a port to the Nintendo Switch and PC back in JuneSo if you’re curious about the capabilities of older Japanese phones before the unofficial translation of Professor Layton, this is the best place to start.