The Australian entertainment ratings board put out a curious new entry for Medabots: Rokusho. Described as being published by Nintendo and authored by Natsume, the listing went live on August 18, 2014. Given the name, one has to imagine this is referring to Medabots: An RPG Adventure, the 2003 Gameboy Advance remake of Medarot 2. Games are re-rated in preparation for a digital re-release. Given Nintendo is listed as the publisher, this should be for a Virtual Console title on the eShop. Currently the Game Boy Advance Virtual Console is restricted to Nintendo’s Wii U home console.

While the board only rated the Rokusho version of the game, I wouldn’t worry about the Metabee one. For whatever reason the board only lists one version of the Medabots games, even going back to the physical versions of the games.

Some of you may be asking why Wii U and not another platform. That’s due to the nature of these kinds of releases. This won’t be a remake or a Wii U native port. Should Medabots: An RPG Adventure be released on the Nintendo eShop, it’ll be an unmodified ROM from the original Gameboy Advance cartridge packaged in an emulator. Releasing that on Nintendo hardware is obviously a lot easier than trying to do that elsewhere. As for 3DS, I can’t say why Nintendo doesn’t allow GBA emulation.

This is an important milestone for the franchise in a variety of ways. Medabots: An RPG Adventure is the only mainline entry in the series to receive an English release. Should Natsume put this game on the Virtual Console, it’ll be the first official English Medabots release (outside of imported model kits) in nearly a decade. Due to that large gap in time, physical copies for the game command a fairly high price. Now fans that may have missed out on the game or just want to revisit it can play it for an affordable price. Lastly, this is the first time that a Medabots game is being re-released digitally anywhere. This game’s Japanese counterpart, Medarot 2 CORE, isn’t on the Japanese eShop. In fact, other than the 3DS games, none of the Medarot games are available digitally in Japan.

For us as a western fandom, this gives us something to support and show that there’s still interest in this series. Yes, it’s not perfect; not everyone owns a Wii U and not everyone wants an older game, but it’s something more than what we had.

[Source: NeoGAF]