All good things must come to an end.
On July 4, 2012, Otagaki announced on his twitter account that Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style will finally end after 5 years of circulation in Young Gangan. Otagaki-san also noted that with pretty much the whole Front Mission team gone from Square Enix, this will also likely be the end of Front Mission…for good. As one of the writers who helped make Front Mission what it is, Otagaki-san also talked a bit about how he’s both happy and sad to be the one who will close out Front Mission. Given the recent news reported by gaming media on Square Enix’s struggles with their gaming division, he may be right on this being the definitive end of Front Mission. The writer revealed that Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style will be ending sometime this fall (likely in October), so the series will end with a tenth omnibus volume to be released either by the end of this year or in early 2013. While there technically will still be Front Mission releases in the form of the Korean and French Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style, there likely won’t be any more new content straight from Japan.
As a refresher for everyone, here is a list of products which were released since Toshiro Tsuchida and his developers achieved their original goal with Front Mission. As a reminder, their original goal was the completion of Front Mission 5 ~Scars of the War~ (although Front Mission 2089-II was released afterwards, it is not counted here as it was in development alongside that entry):
- Front Mission First, Nintendo DS enhanced port (video game)
- Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness, Nintendo DS remake (video game)
- Front Mission Evolved (video game)
- Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style 01 to 10 (comics)
- Front Mission Evolved / Mission 01 to 05 OST (original soundtrack)
- Front Mission Evolved Play Arts Kai (action figures)
- Front Mission World Historica – Report of Conflicts 1970-2121 (reference book)
- Front Mission First Official Complete Guide (strategy guide)
- Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness Official Guide Book (strategy guide)
- Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness Official Complete Guide (strategy guide)
- Front Mission Evolved Official Complete Guide (strategy guide)
- Front Mission Evolved Signature Series Guide (strategy guide)
Some of these products did find their way outside of Japan, like the aforementioned Front Mission Dog Life & Dog Style Korean and French editions and Front Mission First. Unfortunately, the rest of them remained in Japan only.
So, with that said, what are your thoughts on all of this?
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29 replies on “The End”
Sad to see the series end, but I’m glad it ended on a positive note with DLDS which was an outstanding manga.
I concur with the sentiment that the ending of the manga series and our last modern lifeline to the Front Mission series is a very sad thing. Although, I can’t say I’m surprised given Square’s consistent mishandling of things and the general lack of concern they have expressed regarding the few localizations they have released stateside. However, perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky as I presume that means the story has come to a close, and the development team behind it seems to have superseded their original goals. It’s just a shame that the foreign localizations were so poorly throughout and foreign understanding of the plot lines suffered as a result of this.
P. S. Thank you for all of the hard work on everything that you have translated, and have yet to as your team has made the heartache of being a Front Mission fan all the more bearable!
If there’s no more Front Mission, then 2089-II will never get rereleased and by extension, translated?
Oh, phew! I thought this blog posting was going to be about the end of this fantastic website… Crisis averted, I guess! 😀
It’s sad to see the Front Mission series come to an end, but what we have gotten over the years has been great. So, I won’t shed too many tears. 🙂
Sad to see Front Mission finally ending for good. The franchise had a better than expected run I’d say, having pumped out a decent amount of products since it was initially planned to end with Front Mission 5. And in a way, I think it’s better that it ended now than later. Franchises that tend to go beyond its original purpose end up being either milked for money, or end up producing things that stain its legacy. Something so unique as Front Mission doesn’t deserve to end up like that.
That aside, it’s a shame that so much of Front Mission never made it outside of Japan. No thanks to horrible management at Square/Square Enix, of course. Had it been managed better or given to another publisher who actually cared about the fans, things certainly would have been different. But alas, life’s not always fair.
Lastly, I second Front Mission ending on a high note with Dog Life & Dog Style. The storytelling’s been stellar as of the last few volumes and from the preview of the final volume, it’s going out with a bang!
I still can smell someday Front Mission will be included in Super Robot Taisen game anyway, but we won’t know. (FYI: Tetsujin 28 also once listed in a (fake) SRW game announcement together with Armored Core and Front Mission, but it eventually shows up in the recently released Z2 Saisei-hen)
@Nightshade
I believe the discussion was about the end of the Front Mission franchise, not whether or not it will show up in Super Robot Taisen in a cameo role. Let’s stay on-topic and not discuss some random stuff…as the translation team has requested.
Anyways, I’m a bit depressed to see that Front Mission ending is finally going to be a reality. I can’t be too down on it since Front Mission went beyond what it was supposed to do in the first place. But, with how badly Square Enix mishandled things from day one, it feels like we out here in the West are still missing plenty of pieces from the puzzle.
Many, many thanks to everyone on the translation team for enlightening all of us on this work of art called Front Mission, and why we’re drawn to it in the first place!
I agree, Front Mission should be in a Super Robot Taisen game, along with Assualt Suits Valken, so that Banpresto can have some characters survive and/or redeem themselves, like despite what he did, Roid, along with Ryuji and Keith, rejoin the good guys, etc. @Nightshade
@Kane So no 2089-II remake either?
@Angel Jose Manuel Ribo Esguerra IV
Front Mission 2089-II was already included in the remake Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness, even if it’s inclusion is only an abridged one. A true port of it? Pretty much not happening at this point. Square Enix is a sinking ship and if the core Front Mission developers abandoned ship, all the better to leave things as is. Any true fan of Front Mission would rather Square Enix not ruin its legacy some more. Even ports can be inferior to the original if tampered with in the wrong way.
A shame to see things finally ending for good, but I’m not too disappointed. Aside from never getting a chance to play either Front Mission 2089-II or Online, or acquire some of the other media, I’m very satisfied with what I saw of the franchise. The video game series alone is one of the most unique of its kind, and the fact it was always changing in terms of gameplay, art, and music meant each entry was legitimately different from each other. Front Mission as a whole is even more unique, a true one-of-a-kind.
For something that employs transmedia storytelling, I would say that Front Mission exemplifies the definition to a T, and impressively so as one of its pioneers. What it achieved over the years will likely never be matched or imitated. All the best to Tsuchida-san and his loyal band of followers in their future endeavors!
So sad but I wasn’t expecting much anyway. SE was being awfully foolish with their handling of FM for quite long time now.
I hope that if Square Enix decides to revive/continue the Front Mission series that, out of respect for the past Front Mission games, Toshiro Tsuchida is included as an advisor in future developments.
I’m glad that Front Mission is going out in a good light, rather than from a string of failed games that would have led to a nasty demise.
I hope that someday I’m able to read Dog Life & Dog Style, and I hope that one day I can play Border of Madness in English as well. I can’t be that disappointed that the series is ending though. Something amazing was created, and despite their best efforts, Square was unable to ruin it.
I’m very sad. There’s really not much else to say at this point.
From what I read, the project that was going to be Gun Hazard 2, handled by the internal FM team, took a 180° turn because of management and became this horrible outourced and incoherent crap known as FM Evolved?
Unforgivable.
I hope SQEX doesn’t touch FM ever anymore.
Actually I wished they stopped touching every series from the original SquareSoft.
Hello guys. I’m one of the guys that got lovestruck with the Front Mission series.
It is an immense shame that Square Enix trashed one of its most valuable franchises. I was really rotting to see a Front Mission with story centered around the First Huffman Conflict. But it seems that Front Mission is now a dead franchise for good… Damn you, Square.
I am one of the guys who respected your rules and got their hands on the translated version of Front Mission 5. I am also waiting for the complete version of Front Mission 2 translation patch, with my good ol’ PSOne. I’m the one guy who played the translated ROM of Front Mission 1st for SNES, the reason why I got so aficionado for this franchise. Seeing it dying for good after Square messed it all with Front Mission Evolved is a terrible event for me.
I sincerely hope that you guys keep up with the translation service, and maybe one day, get that job to Front Mission 2089: Border of Madness for DS, as well as a retranslation for Front Mission 3 and 4…
Aside from that, I think this clearly shows my sadness towards the end of this franchise…
@TSR
Impossible. At least with Final Fantasy.
The franchise has still yet to do a Anime TV series or OVA
Can’t say I’m “sad” to see FM end, as far as I’m concerned it was over after FM5, the rest is just crap or average games. I’m mostly pissed at squarenix for what they made of what was once one of their best series.
I think it’s good that it’s ending. We don’t want things to become a franchise zombie.
That said, if only FM had been handled properly. Who knows? It might not have been the same hit FF may have been, but it would have certainly had its fans…
The only hope I have, in the furtherest recesses and dreams in my mind, is for SE to not be stupid fools, and re-release FM1-3 on the iPad – afterall, if you can port the early FF games, why not FM?
But Evolve makes me feel heartbroken. Evolved had so much potential, and had glimpses of fun and brilliance… but was overall mediocre. Especially the storytelling.
All I have to say is that, a tear shall be shed, and a glass shall be raised high in the honor of Front Mission.
@Zero Dozer
You’re not the only one. I got to play the FM1 fantranslation many years ago and almost every FM game there is except the DS releases, FM2, FMA, FMO, and FMEv. I also waited years for FM5, especially when news about the translation came up. Squenix fucked up big time with the way they treated the franchise. I’m sad all things had to end this way.
Truly a sad thing for me to see one of my most beloved series ending for good. I have tons of great memories playing FRONT MISSION games. I really loved them. It’s unfortunate that we here in the west missed out on so many installments of this great series. Hats off to the teams who brought us these gems… I’ll keep playing FRONT MISSION forever… FRONT MISSON RULES…
yes its quite sad front mission franchise is quite done for
Hello.
Does anyone maintain this site online? There are a few things I would like to say.
1. Thank you very much for your work on the Front Mission series! I hope you are doing well.
2. Do you still have FM 2089 and 2089-II games on cell phones and would you like them to be available to everyone by letting me upload them to archive.org? We now have an iOS/Android emulator for almost all platforms, including BREW, Java, and many others. So people are quite capable of playing them. The main reason is that 2089-II was severely cut in 2089 BoM. I’ve been looking for them on the internet and archived sites for about a year and still can’t find them.
From their description on your website and from an interview on Path of Valour (https://web.archive.org/web/20121031194012/http://valour.ru/fm5-interview-eng), it’s obvious you played them somehow.
3. could you provide some useful information (programs, addons, mods, customization recommendations, etc.) at least to start working on translating FM 2089 BoM (NDS, 2008)? It seems to be a very big blank spot on the FM continuum. And we know why, it has very convoluted and non-standard encoding/encryption of all the files. Some people tried to hack it about 2 years ago (https://gbatemp.net/threads/recruiting-front-mission-2089-border-of-madness-english-translation.578649/) but without success. I was hoping there would be some easy way to help them, but, again, we haven’t found it yet. Since the new game / 2089 remake has been rebranded to Mecharashi with no FM story, it looks like we won’t get this game in English without a self-translation.
4. In hopes of making FM a little closer to new players/readers, I’ve uploaded some material from your site and other sources to archive.org (https://archive.org/details/@evgeniy22). There is an opportunity to make them a little more influential. In short, when I upload at least 50 unique materials about FM, it will give me an opportunity to ask the moderators of archive.org to create a “Collection” called whatever, logically, “Front Mission Series”. So if you have any additional information not published on this site, please let me know.
5. It’s hard to get in touch with you these days. I was able to find two former members of your team on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap_x6JjEmlo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtgR2gIqt-o), but YouTube filtered me out allegedly due to spam, so I can’t email them again.
In case other former members of your team might still have mobile games or any other material, could you contact them or provide us with a way to contact them?
If you have an email or reddit account that you would feel more comfortable contacting me through, please send me the link.
@TJ here is a reply from LegaiaRules:
“Thanks for sharing your interest in the Front Mission series and keeping it going somehow. The deal with the mobile FM 2089 and 2089-II games is that they were subscription services users paid access to. Once the mobile games were shut down, so did their access. Since these games weren’t built for iOS and Android, it’s unlikely they could be exported even if they were not subscription-based.
As for FM 2089 Border of Madness, you are correct that it uses a unique type of encryption that’s not easy to decipher. Since the game runs on a modified FM 1st engine and that was recently remastered, it’s possible FM 2089 may also get the same treatment.
We as a team would love to help out, but we no longer have the time to dedicate to this kind of hobby. It would be great if Front Mission 2089 Border of Madness gets translated and remastered, but that’s a business decision not in our control.”
@TJ thank you very much for your message. I have contacted the team privately and they have read your post. Please be patient for a reply. Thanks again
Hello,
First of all let me thank you for your work on translating this series.
During my spare time I took the time to reverse engineer FM2089 file system, and was able to write a small tool to extract text from the game.
We are slowing starting to translate the game, but we are looking for help. I was wondering if you’d be willing to write a blog post to advertise our translation project?
Thank you for your time