The feature phone preservationist RockmanCosmo has announced that a long-lost i-Mode version of From Software's PS1 dungeon crawler King's Field has now been preserved giving players the chance to experience an obscure part of the company's history for themselves.
King's Field, in case you're unfamiliar, was the first-ever video game released by FromSoftware and was published on the original Sony PlayStation in Japan in 1994. It took place in the medieval world of Verdite and saw players embark on a quest into the royal catacombs to search for their father and discover the cause of a recent monster invasion.
Similar to classic RPG titles like Wizardry, players would explore this vast network of interconnected rooms from a first-person perspective, with the key difference here being the decision to drop turn-based combat in favour of tense real-time battles. Following the release of the original game, various sequels were eventually released, with King's Field II marking the series's debut overseas.
According to RockmanCosmo on social media, the mobile version of game was preserved by an individual named Yuuku and is a retelling of the original, featuring different map layouts and an automap function. It was originally released for i-Mode, EZWeb, and Yahoo! Keitai compatible phones in 2004 (exclusively in Japan), and also received a Yahoo! Keitai exclusive version that same year, which featured enhanced dungeons, new monsters, and more weapons and armour to choose from.
If you want to play the game, you can head over to this setup guide, which is where you'll find instructions on how to get started. There is also an English language patch already available.
We also recommend joining the Keitai Wiki Discord if you want to know more about these kinds of preservation efforts, which is a welcoming community full of people dedicated to researching and archiving these types for future generations.