Why Did Front Mission Reach the West Backwards?
Because Square skipped the beginning entirely when the series finally went West. Front Mission 3, for the PlayStation, was the first title in the series released in North America, Europe, and Australia, in 2000. The original Front Mission of 1995 reached North America only on October 23, 2007, as a Nintendo DS port of its PlayStation remake. Western players met the war in the middle, then read the beginning as a prequel that had existed for twelve years.
THE VERDICT
A release order, not a translation delayThis was not one slow localization. The 1995 Super Famicom original was never localized in its era, and neither was its PlayStation sequel Front Mission 2. When Square finally tested the series in the West, it tested it with the newest main game, not the oldest. Front Mission 3 was developed in house by the division G-Craft had become, was the first game in the series produced by Square itself, and arrived on the PlayStation at the height of Square’s Western power after Final Fantasy Tactics had taught the market what a tactical RPG was. It sold its premise fresh: no Western player needed the first two games to start, because no Western player could have played them.
THE SEQUENCE
1995 to 2007, in orderJapan, February 24, 1995: Front Mission on the Super Famicom, over 500,000 copies, no localization. North America, March 2000, and Europe, August 2000: Front Mission 3 on the PlayStation, the series’ Western debut, five years and two numbered games late. North America, October 23, 2007: Front Mission on the Nintendo DS, twelve years after the original release.
WHAT THE WEST FINALLY GOT
Not the 1995 game, exactlyThe 2007 arrival was the expanded version of the story. The PlayStation remake, Front Mission 1st of 2003, had added an entire second campaign from the USN side of the war, and the DS port added more: characters, parts, and weapons drawn from later games in the series, and nine secret missions. A Western player meeting the first game in 2007 was meeting a version partly written after the sequels they had already played, which makes the backwards order more than a curiosity of dates. The beginning itself had been revised by its own future.
THE FAN BRIDGE
2001Between the backwards steps, fans built the missing one. The Front Mission Translation Project released a complete English translation of the Super Famicom original in 2001, six years before the official DS arrival, so the game’s first English audience played the unexpanded 1995 text, on the original hardware’s terms, while the official audience waited for the remake. Both audiences are part of this game’s Western history, and neither met it in 1995.