Previously on Xenosaga: We took a look at the reimagined, portable version of Xenosaga. Ya know, thinking about portable remixes of classic JRPGs gets me thinking…

I remember when I first heard about Final Fantasy 4: The After Years. An official sequel to Final Fantasy 4! I loved the cast of Final Fantasy 4, and revisiting the gang with modern sensibilities should be amazing! And it’s a sequel, so we get to find out “what happened next”! That’s astounding! How could such a game be anything but awesome?!

But there was one significant thing holding me back from enjoying such an eagerly awaited game: Final Fantasy 4: The After Years was only available on Japanese cell phones. This… was a deathblow. At the time, I barely had a cell phone at all, left alone a cell phone “for gaming”. And with the technology of the day, the idea of playing a comprehensive JRPG on a phone’s screen seemed, at best, cumbersome. And, of course, we’re talking about a game that was only in that magical land of Japan, so even if the previously mentioned hurdles were somehow bypassed, I didn’t have a prayer of seeing such a niche product stateside anytime soon.

Oh well, at least a variety of nerds took the time to transcribe the finer points of the adventure for an online audience. Edge got disciples! Palom and Porom were all grown up! Cid was somehow still alive! It all sounded so exciting, and, like other “never gonna see ‘em” games like Secret of Mana 2 or Terranigma, my imagination filled in any blanks on what may have been a game’s deficiencies.

In time, against all odds, we received Final Fantasy 4: The After Years as a WiiWare title. I played this “Japanese cell phone game” voraciously, and found it… lacking. In time, the game was released again on the PSP. At that point, despite technically buying it again with its Final Fantasy 4 Original brother, I didn’t even boot the game once. Anyone who has ever played it knows exactly why. Suffice it to say, Final Fantasy 4: The After Years did not live up to whatever hype it had once garnered.

Xenosaga had its own “Japanese exclusive cell phone game”. Was it any good? I have no idea. Will we ever see it come to America? I very much doubt it. But is it important to the franchise? Unfortunately, yes.

Xenosaga: Pied Piper is a prequel of sorts to the Xenosaga main story. XPP tells the story of Ziggy, aka Jan Sauer, before he was the immortal cyborg we all know and love. A century before the events of Xenosaga, Jan was simply your average space cop, working a case to track down some terrorist that had a habit of eating babies. In short, Pied Piper tells the entire tale of how Ziggy came to be Ziggy, and initially met his archrival, the Black Testament, Voyager.

And the US audience never had a prayer of playing the dang thing…