King's Field Mobile, EX & Mobile 2
(images from KFCapsule)
2023-08-09 - Article updated with new information. A few more links have been added to the evidence dump.
The King's Field games are one of my top favourite game series of all time. I've played all of them; 1, 2, 3, Pilot Style, SOM Remake, etc. Even played a bunch of the 'spin-offs' such as Eternal Ring, Shadow Tower Abyss and more. Even played some of the KF-likes such as Deep Labyrinth and Baroque [PSX]. I really can't get enough of the slow first-person dungeon crawling experience.
It's also one of the few game series I can even say I've tried everything in. Hell, for a good while I was so used to KF-style controls I couldn't even play a regular FPS with a controller. It just felt wrong (this is the main reason I actually stopped playing Bioshock 2).
But, despite my efforts to complete the series there are still a few games I haven't played. Both of the 'Additional' games, which I would play if an English patch existed and the 3 mobile games, which are the subject of this article.
One could argue that Demon's Souls should count as the final KF game, but DS and its sequels don't really interest me. I've got little intention of ever playing those.
There were three mobile KF games.
King's Field Mobile (2004) - Date known from a Dengeki Online article stating this to be released on January 14, 2004.
King's Field EX (2004) - Date known from an NLab article that stated this came out exactly on April 13, 2004.
King's Field Mobile II (2005) - Date known from a 2005 Tokyo Game Show report that stated it released in October of 2005 to for BREW first.
KFM's page makes the claim it is the first ever 'full-fledged 3D RPG for mobile phones!' (懐かしくて新しい、ケータイ初の本格的 3DアクションRPGです!). Between the description and screenshots this just looks to be a mobile remake of the first King's Field game. Looking at the screenshots both those areas are familiar to me. It was likely released in anticipation of the 10-year anniversary of KF1.
What separates KFM from KF1 however are three things. First of all you can now save anywhere as opposed to the angel decorations. An AutoMap is now present as well, giving you a rough location of your whereabouts. In KF1 you either had a rudimentary map or had to DIY-it. The layout of the game has also changed somewhat. The game had to be compressed. Even though KF1 was a PSX launch title it was still a massive game. There is no way it is fitting on a < 100mb phone. I don't know exactly what was cut from the game, but I'd expect entire floors to have been removed. I doubt the plot has changed much, though KF1 barely had a story anyways.
KFEX's page open with the claim that 'KFEX is even harder!'. Unlike KFM this appears to be a whole new game, written in the mobile engine.
The map is stated to be bigger; areas are more confusing, enemy AI is better, the AutoMap feature has been improved and it's all in all, a better game.
No details about the games plot are known. However, I can't find any confirmation this isn't just a remake of KFM either. None of the posts I've seen outright state it, but the way they're describing this as a better experience lead me to belief it could be a remake of KFM. It doesn't help either that some of the screenshots could correspond to areas in KF1.
The final game, KFM2 is apparently a huge improvement over the first two. While I may not be certain about KFEX's status, KFM2 is a full-fledged new experience. That much is obvious from the screenshots. I've played the KF series, there is no character who looks like that 'cat-wizard' (might just be the screenshot) in the first picture on the site. There are new enemies too. The orc, the frost golem and the fire golem are all exclusive to KFM2.
KFM2 is the most interesting of the three. It has magic, new enemies, no longer set in a dungeon, open-world (on a flip phone?!), tonnes of new enemies, new areas, traps, secrets and more. I find it even hard to believe they jammed all this stuff into a game as small as this. They even added lock-on, something not really featured in any of the mainline games. Unfortunately, like EX, no plot details have been revealed. Stories never been a huge thing in the series, but it would be cool to know if these games fit anywhere in in the timeline. It goes without saying but this game takes place on Verdite.
The page even has a cool skeleton render on it. Interjection:: Thanks to people on reddit (shouts to /u/Neurot666 and /u/throwaway042502) I've been made aware of this King's Field fan site. It has a treasure trove of info regarding the three games, confirming KFM and KFEX are the same game, the plot of KFM2 and a few play-by-plays of KFM2. Be warned though. It may make you depressed as it shows this was a really good game. Neurot666 has actually taken it upon himself to translate the plot of KFM2 from that fan site. He has since sent me two images describing it. "As I mentioned, I suck at writing, but here are the two images from my layout with the story all compiled. The green text should just say Mobile 2 as the others had no story, and I'm sure this could do with some heavy editing lol. Hope you get a kick out of it though." ~ Neurot666.
(click to expand)
I don't know about you but it makes me want to play them even more. Ahem. Getting back on topic I want to write a little bit about how these games were released. So for the uninitiated your phone options back then were vastly different. These days you have Android, iOS, (maybe) Linux phones and then a bunch of barely known OS' like Tizen, KaiOS, etc. Back then you had a plethora of different ones. There was J2ME, PalmOS, BREW, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, etc. J2ME was the most popular and the likely system people are talking about when discussing flip-phones. Japan had entirely different systems, often exclusive to the country.
These games were released for three systems only: I-Mode, Yahoo Keitai/J-SKY, and BREW (via EZWeb). These were all Japanese-exclusive systems each with their own proprietary formats. A few of those were based on J2ME but shared little similarity with it. You simply must treat those 3 as completely separate systems. The availability of these games across all 3 systems is also suspect. Scrolling through it appears the games themselves may have only been released for one system each (KFM2's page specifically only lists EZWeb and KFEX only lists Yahoo! Keitai, KFM's lists all). I'm not convinced each game was only released on one platform, but if so, it makes tracking them all down significantly harder. Let's just say that each of the 3 games were available on all systems (it doesn't make sense that they'd make each game exclusive to one).
In order to purchase one of these games you needed a Japanese cellular plan, be located in Japan, have an address in Japan then log into the storefronts with your phone and purchase each game. Then it would download via cellular. The games each retailed about 5 bucks or c. 500-600¥. And even then, there were instances where the game would be leased not purchased and would only be on your phone so long as you had the contract.
On a flip phone I imagine the controls to just be move with 2-4-6-8, strafe with 7-9 and 5 is attack and use. It would have been very jank but that's the beauty of it and it translates well to King's Field's full controls. Enemies were constrained to these controls too, so the playing field was equal. It really helped the games out as a whole. I have no idea how they worked KFM2's magic system in. I guess they probably used 1 or 3, or even # for the phones that had it.
I can't really name any other 3D RPGs on J2ME/BREW/Others. That style was extremely rare on flip phones. Rendering a whole 3D environment on those low-powered devices was challenging enough. To make a whole RPG in that? Downright taxing. FROM still pulled it off though.
EZWeb, Keitai and I-Mode have all been long shut down. The last holdout was I-Mode which shut down in 2020. So with them gone how have these games been preserved?
The situation is grim. FROM Software had the decency to keep the pages for the 3 games live up until 2021-or-so with their KFCapsule project. They still have different separate pages for KFEX and KFM2 si thankfully they still acknowledge their past. No gameplay videos exist of these games anywhere I could find. At most we only have the screenshots FROM supplied. The only other proof I even have that these games were real are a few articles and references on various websites. As always, I’ll dump what I got below but there isn't much.
All of FROM's mobile catalogue is lost. I have no idea of the state of their Armoured Core games but there's piss all info about those either. At most I have a single video of one of them running on a flip phone I found on Twitter.
Preservation is just as bad too. I-Mode / EZWeb / Keitai are a complete mess when it comes to trying to dump the games.
Let's just focus on I-Mode and let me paint you how dire the situation is. That is the one I followed most closely.
Recovering any I-Mode games are a challenge. Never mind KFM, barely any I-Mode games period have been recovered. It is probably one of, if not the most unpreserved system out there. Kahvibreak, the largest flip phone-era have only managed to rescue a handful of the games. The Video Game Preservation Society (after seemingly not hearing the requests for MONTHS), found someone in Japan to proxy purchase as many I-Mode games as possible. And even then, once the game is obtained you still need to crazy I-Mode's encryption.
Nobody's cracked the encryption publicly yet. As far as I know the games can be transferred to an external SD card but are encrypted upon doing so. Aside from hiring an encryption expert (which is too expensive) another possible scenario is to find an exploit on the phone and crack it from there then dump the game while it is running. Several groups are trying to crack the encryption themselves, Kahvibreak, GPS, a RockmanEXE fan group, etc. There are also phone diagnostic tools and JTAG which could theoretically get the data, though nobody to my knowledge has been successful.
Okay, but what if someone somehow dumped the games and had them sitting on a hard drive? Well, presumably this person would be based in Japan. If you don't know Japanese copyright law is downright tyrannical. Don't believe me? Go look into the many arrests Japanese police had enacted against Perfect Dark and Share users. Copyright infringement is taken really seriously there. Of course, there's no way of knowing for sure if FROM would even send a cease and desist but the possibility still looms. Either way, nobody has said anything about having a copy.
To dash hopes even more, I-Mode emulation isn't possible. I'll get to that later though.
There have been plenty of efforts for trying to recover these games, but none had any success. It didn't help either that FROM had the pages for the games live well into the 2020s, almost taunting us.
I did a bunch of searching myself. Offered to pay a known Japanese collector to look, he found nothing. I scoured a few p2p networks, also not finding anything. Even did a bit of proxy work to see if things were hiding. Nope. Nobody has these games.
I even tried piercing the 3 networks it was on via proxy, user agents, GET/POSTs but had no luck there. The network shut down a few years ago so that possibility has been snuffed. Had I even gotten in, I still would have had to figure out how to purchase and obtain the games.
For a while I was checking all the auction sites seeing if someone would list a I-Mode enabled phone with the games on it (yes, I don't need to be reminded of how slim that chance is). Even considered outright purchasing old phones hoping they had it but didn't get around to it (money was tight).
As far as I know many others have gone down this same path and had similar results to me.
So far, I have identified three possible outcomes to finding these.
1. People keep buying phones at random, hoping that by some near-zero chance the game is still installed. Have you ever listed a phone on an auction site? Well surely you would wipe the phone before selling right? That's the case with most of these second-hand phones. Let's say there's some method to recover deleted data from it. Not that there is...but following along. Repeat that at least 3 times to obtain all of the games. I know if a listing came up of someone claiming to have it on their phone it would sell fast. I would hope either I got to it first or someone who would actually dump it cops it, and not a collector or the GPS.
2. FROM Software decides to re-release the games. I would personally love that but it's super unlikely. FROM has barely done anything with the KF series as a whole in the last decade. Why would they now? And no, sticking the Sword of Moonlight in everything doesn't count. They already didn't do anything for the 20th anniversary. Maybe during the 30th they'll do something? (2024/2027). I would love to see it but I'm not going to hold out hope.
3. G-MODE Archives. I think this is our best shot, and by best shot I mean hoping Japanese fans convince G-MODE to do it. G-MODE is a mobile phone game company, that in 2020 started re-releasing and remaking old I-Mode/Keitai/EZWeb games. They released them on Steam and the Nintendo Switch. As far as I understand it's not emulation but rather full-on remakes. Recently they've made a deal with Atlus to re-release the old Last Bible mobile games. A deal with FROM isn't completely out of the question. If they did re-release the 3 games, you can bet I'd buy it. Shit, I'd be first in line with a hex editor, ready to start translating.
4. In the final days of I-Mode the GPS finally got off its butt and put the call out. They made contact with a Japanese gamer who, with money from GPS purchased as many I-Mode games as he could....and that was the last I heard of it. They purchased a tonne of games, but no list was ever made public. The GPS hasn’t signalled any intention to release a list, nor dump the games either. Looking optimistically, I figure they're still busy trying to crack the encryption to make any announcements. Adding some pessimism, if we look at the FROMCapsule pages above and take them literally, then it's possible only KFM was saved.
Interjection:I have since been made aware of that the list is public. And no. Not a single a From Software game was saved. Way more games were saved than I expected though. Not gonna complain.
I have no idea which of these is most likely. Chances are very slim for recovery at all but I'm still going to hold out hope. There's also a fourth distinct possibility that someone records gameplay from it and uploads it. I know some people are so desperate they may use that gameplay and re-create the game in the Sword of Moonlight Engine. I'd be content with that too. I considered sending off an e-mail but checking through From's website I couldn't find a proper address to e-mail. Just support. I was unable to find a press-specific mail and not one that would just go to Bandai Namco.
Continuing on from point 1 even if we did obtain the BAR/KJX/etc files, running them is a whole 'nother challenge. I-Mode is a completely system. And while it is partially Java-based there are no emulators for it currently. The most active project is
SquirrelJME which has I-Mode support on its roadmap. As for the other systems the games were released for...well it's kind all over the place. EZWeb, which I understood to be a BREW spin is apparently supported in J2ME-Loader (according to the GameTechWiki)? I don't have any EZWeb games to try but if so that's good. And J-SKY, the standard used in Yahoo! Keitai isn't supported anywhere, nor are there any emulators currently being developed for it (yes, I know there are SDKs but compatibility with them are all over the place).
The whole I-Mode situation looks grim. There is not much I can do other than bring attention to it. I still keep an eye on various servers, waiting for any news and I have told that collector my offer still stands if he finds anything.
One could write an extensive article on the history of I-Mode and its preservation efforts. Near was the first person I heard ring that bell but even then, there were people searching before him. This isn't the only I-Mode game I'm looking for. There's another 3-4 but I'll cover those games in a future article.
It's a longshot to infinity but if you by some chance have these games, get in contact with me. Or I can direct you to the people trying to crack the code. Or if you know encryption and thing you have a way to break into these phones. Or even if you are familiar enough with these Java-phones to know an exploit to extract the games. There's still a bit we can do. And hopefully one day these games can again see the light.
Brief
- Title: King's Field Mobile
- Year: January 14, 2004
- Platform(s): I-Mode, EZWeb/BREW, Yahoo! Keitai/J-SKY
- Developer(s): FROM Software
- Publisher: FROM Software
- Playable-If-Recovered: not without exact hardware.
- Title: King's Field EX
- Year: April 13, 2004
- Platform(s): EZWeb/BREW, (possibly I-Mode and Keitai/J-SKY)
- Developer(s): FROM Software
- Publisher: FROM Software
- Playable-If-Recovered: not without exact hardware.
- Title: King's Field Mobile II
- Year: 2005 FROM Software
- Platform(s): Yahoo! Keitai/J-SKY, (possibly I-Mode and EZWeb)
- Developer(s): FROM Software
- Publisher: FROM Software
- Playable-If-Recovered: not without exact hardware.
Evidence Dump
