What Twelve Kingdoms video games are there?
Two games, one console, no exports: Konami’s PlayStation 2 pair.
There are two Twelve Kingdoms games, and the whole of the series’ game history fits between the anime’s broadcast and the year after it ended. Konami produced both for the PlayStation 2, with Takashi Shimomichi producing, weaving anime footage and stills through sprite-based play. Neither was released outside Japan: the West received the novels and the anime, but never the games.
The pair tells Yoko’s story consecutively. The first follows her journey to the throne of Kei; the second takes up the troubles of her reign, and it reads the first game’s save data, so the two were sold as one continuous commitment.
THE TWO KONAMI GAMES
PlayStation 2, 2003 and 2004GUREN NO SHIRUBE, KOUJIN NO MICHI · AUG 28, 2003
The first game retells Yoko’s journey to becoming Empress of Kei. It was classified an RPG but plays as an adventure game, with event scenes drawn from the novels alongside original material; in battle Yoko can summon Keiki’s shirei to fight for her.
KAKUKAKUTARU OUDOU, KOURYOKU NO UKA · APR 4, 2004
The sequel: the problems that begin after the coronation. Its role-playing systems are fuller, party-based menu battles are the standard, and save data from the first game carries into it.
THE SHARED BONES
Both games are sprite-based, cut through with footage and stills from the Pierrot anime, and produced by Takashi Shimomichi at Konami. They are adaptations of the anime’s telling as much as of the novels’.
THE BUDGET AFTERLIFE
The first game was re-released in Konami’s The Best budget line in June 2004, two months after the sequel: the pair were meant to be bought together, cheaply, by the anime’s audience.
JAPAN AND THE WEST
And nothing sinceJAPAN ONLY
No localization was ever announced for either title. For English-speaking players the games remain import objects: playable hardware permitting, readable only with Japanese or a guide.
THE EMPTY SHELF AFTER
No handheld port, no mobile game, no remake followed. Two decades on, the Konami pair is still the entire games shelf, which is itself a kind of statement about where the series’ value has always sat: in the books.