Square Enix sends Front Mission 1st on a TGS demo run

Well… actually it wasn’t going to be a port of the PS2’s FM4, as we originally thought. Square Enix is remaking the game that started it all, the 1995 SNES classic (and never before released outside of Japan) Front Mission 1st. And this would be the second time they would be remaking the game, after having ported FM1st to the PSOne in 2003 – only three years ago. Square Enix unveiled a demo of the game’s DS incarnation during TGS – which is to say, they made Front Mission fans too giddy to hold their styluses properly.

The FM1st demo, previewed by 1UP,  featured only one battle – definitely not enough to explore what the game has to offer, but most certainly enough to give newcomers to the Front Mission franchise an idea of how the game works (which is, essentially, Advance Wars gameplay with MechWarrior-style battle rigs called “Wanzers”). The genius in porting this classic to the DS is that the stylus is a good match for the turn-based strategy/tactical genre. With the stylus, the player can easily access menus and direct Wanzers to different points on the battlefield.

On the other hand, being a PS port of a 1995 SNES game, the visuals were weighed and found… wanting. The judgement of the preview was that the graphics haven’t changed much since 1995. Because pictures or video of the demo in action or even the PSOne port haven’t turned up anywhere, we decided to tool around and locate the original SNES screenshots of the game, a couple of which we found from RPGFan.

We’re showing these below to give you an idea of how the game looks (well, looked) like – and we’re hoping that between now and the game’s eventual release, Square Enix will update the graphics to reflect the DS’s full capabilities (and we’ll update this story when we find shots of the demo in action).

Finally, being a recent announcement, there’s no word as yet on whether they would port the DS title to North America. Speaking on behalf of Front Mission fans in North America and elsewhere around the world, this writer hopes they do.

Well… actually it wasn’t going to be a port of the PS2’s FM4, as we originally thought. Square Enix is remaking the game that started it all, the 1995 SNES classic (and never before released outside of Japan) Front Mission 1st. And this would be the second time they would be remaking the game, after having ported FM1st to the PSOne in 2003 – only three years ago. Square Enix unveiled a demo of the game’s DS incarnation during TGS – which is to say, they made Front Mission fans too giddy to hold their styluses properly.

The FM1st demo, previewed by 1UP,  featured only one battle – definitely not enough to explore what the game has to offer, but most certainly enough to give newcomers to the Front Mission franchise an idea of how the game works (which is, essentially, Advance Wars gameplay with MechWarrior-style battle rigs called “Wanzers”). The genius in porting this classic to the DS is that the stylus is a good match for the turn-based strategy/tactical genre. With the stylus, the player can easily access menus and direct Wanzers to different points on the battlefield.

On the other hand, being a PS port of a 1995 SNES game, the visuals were weighed and found… wanting. The judgement of the preview was that the graphics haven’t changed much since 1995. Because pictures or video of the demo in action or even the PSOne port haven’t turned up anywhere, we decided to tool around and locate the original SNES screenshots of the game, a couple of which we found from RPGFan.

We’re showing these below to give you an idea of how the game looks (well, looked) like – and we’re hoping that between now and the game’s eventual release, Square Enix will update the graphics to reflect the DS’s full capabilities (and we’ll update this story when we find shots of the demo in action).

Finally, being a recent announcement, there’s no word as yet on whether they would port the DS title to North America. Speaking on behalf of Front Mission fans in North America and elsewhere around the world, this writer hopes they do.