Square Enix unveils US mobile games

Square Enix is preparing to release a pair of games for US mobile phone users. Meanwhile, back home in Japan the company has just release a more complicated mobile game based on Front Mission.

The two US titles, Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding and Musashi: Mobile Samurai, are due out within the next two months.

FFVII Snowboarding is, as fans might imagine, a port of the snowboarding mini-game found in PlayStation classic Final Fantasy VII, while the latter is an action based spin-off of an upcoming PS2 action-RPG.

Square Enix has yet to specify which handsets will support the game and which carriers will distribute them, but has said that both will use 3D visuals similar to those found in recent mobile title Kingdom Hearts.

Square Enix's US president and COO Ichiro Otobe said he felt, "The mobile scenes in the US is like that of Japan, two of three years ago," indicating that it would be a while before we saw a proper Final Fantasy title on a phone.

Meanwhile, Front Mission 2089 has appeared on phones in Japan. It's available on a pair of NTT DoCoMo mobiles at a flat rate of 500 yen per month, and is a strategy-RPG set one year before the original Front Mission 1st, where players tune mechs and then send them on missions, taking turns to move around a square grid map and doing battle with their enemies.