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GamesRadar
GamesRadar
Technology
Dustin Bailey

Square Enix throws a bone to Xenogears fans on the classic JRPG's 28th anniversary, but with no remake or remaster in sight, folks are behaving exactly as you'd expect: "I'm on my knees here"

An anime-style cutscene in Xenogears.

February 11 marks the 28th anniversary of the beloved JRPG Xenogears, and Square Enix is offering one tiny crumb of a birthday cake: a single tweet acknowledging the game's existence. Still, that's the most official validation Xenogears diehards have gotten in years, and many are already taking the opportunity to beg for a remake. Or a remaster. Or any kind of modern release at all.

Square Enix's tweet is a simple celebration of Xenogears' legacy, calling it (via machine translation) "a new generation cybernetic RPG that radiates unparalleled originality." That's honestly a pretty fair description of the 1998 PS1 game's reputation, which looms large despite the fact that it hasn't gotten a rerelease since the PS3 era.

You can already guess the tone of the replies to that tweet. "xenogears mentioned by an official square account," one commenter observes. "please. they know i want it. give me that remake or rerelease with quality of life upgrades please. im on my knees here."

"You guys could, you know, make it accessible to new platforms," another reply politely adds. "Just saying, though"

"BRING IT BACK PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE," as yet another commenter puts it.

There's another thread running through some of these posts – allusions to the impending PlayStation State of Play later this week. Would Square Enix truly make a social media post celebrating the game's birthday if something larger wasn't on the way? Well… yes. Tweets are free, and with 2.3k retweets this one has clearly driven a fair bit of engagement.

Director Tetsuya Takahashi would leave Square shortly after the release of Xenogears to found Monolith Soft. Now, decades later, the studio is owned by Nintendo and continues to build on Xenogears' legacy with its long-running Xenoblade Chronicles series. Whether Takahashi and Monolith or Square Enix will ever return to the game that started that legacy in the first place is now a decades-old mystery.

Xenogears translator had a rough time with the legendary PS1 JRPG, and not just because it's about killing God: "At the time, I was a Jehovah's Witness."

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