Square Enix and Xenogears’ Original Artists Celebrate 20th Anniversary with Figures and Artwork

Giuseppe Nelva February 10, 2018 11:37 PM EST

Today is the 20th anniversary of the old and glorious JRPG Xenogears, and Square Enix has goodies in store alongside the original artists.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the much acclaimed JRPG Xenogears, and Square Enix is celebrating together with the original Character Designer Kunihiko Tanaka and Mecha Designer Junya Ishigaki.

The two artists are collaborating with Square Enix on a project that will bring the legendary game back at least with figures, and today the publisher shared two pictures of prototypes for Bring Arts figures portraying Fei and Elly. You can see them at the bottom of the post, at the beginning of the gallery.

Ishigaki-sensei also contributed by showing what appears to be a drawing overlayed to a prototype of a figure of Fei’s Weltall, alongside the artwork used to create it (third and fourth pictures). He also mentioned that it’s “coming soon,” encouraging fans to wait just a little more.

Last, but definitely not least, Tanaka-sensei posted a large batch of artwork he created for the game, apparently including a couple of new drawing, alongside designs that he created at the time, some that were never delivered, or rejected.

We also get to see some work he did for the figures (fifth and sixth picture in the gallery), as he explains that he carefully respected the textures created for the original game, without making any superficial changes, but he actually added the soles of Fei’s boots.

Alongside the figure project, Square Enix is also going to host a concert in April to commemorate the anniversary, directed by acclaimed composer Yasunori Mitsuda.

It’ll be certainly interesting to see if they have more in store, as they probably know quite well what we all want. Will they deliver? We’ll see, but for now you can enjoy the art and figures below.

Xenogears launched for the original PlayStation in Japan on February 11th, 1998. It reached the North American shores on October 20th of the same year.

Unfortunately, it was never released in Europe, and it’s actually the first game I modded my first PlayStation for.

A PSOne Classics version is currently available for PS3, PSP, and PS Vita, but Square Enix has been silent on the possibility of more modern ports. The game is certainly considered by many one of the best JRPGs of all time.

Following the release of Xenogears, developer Monolith Soft was acquired by Namco, for which they created the Xenosaga series, and then by Nintendo, giving birth to the Xenoblade series. Just a couple of months ago, they released their latest game, Xenoblade Chronicles 2.