Mobile phone spin-off Xenosaga: Pied Piper, a 2004 Japan-only release created by Monolith Soft, Namco, and Tom Create, has finally been preserved—and it will soon be playable in English.
"After many years of tirelessly searching for Xenosaga Pied Piper, the day has finally come where it has been preserved for everyone to experience," says translator ValakTurtle.
"This is truly a monumental moment for Xeno Series fans as it was the only missing game in the series," they say before adding:
Firstly, I cannot express enough gratitude to the Keitai Wiki Discord enough 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 for the phone that had the game (he seriously did some wizardry to dump it), LNRC for keeping us constantly informed about the status of the project and chip dumping several phones to help us better understand the phone’s hardware, cuebus for also assisting in the chip dumping of 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.
ValakTurtle says they have "already begun working on a full translation patch for the game as a member of Vector Translations & Preservation, alongside the romhackers in the Keitai Wiki’s server (shoutouts to Yuvi)." The patch is expected to take "at least a few months to ensure the highest possible quality."
While we're waiting, ValakTurtle recommends that fans check out CycloneFox’s remake of the game, which is described as "one of the most ambitious and impressive fangames the Xeno Series community has ever seen".
ValakTurtle concludes by saying that their person is "for us is to one day have every single piece of MonolithSoft-related content fully translated into English (and hopefully more languages!), but that naturally is quite a far way off."