(Photo: SoWhat)

A new Medabots (known as Medarots in Japan) RPG has been announced by developer SoWhat and publisher Imagineer. The kicker? It's for smartphones.

Details on the project are currently light, but we do know it's set in the near future where humans and robots co-exist. Said robots are apparently themed after insects and animals and battle each other.

According to Imagineer, the game will feature systems that have players gathering robot parts and items to create their own customized bots, which in turn can be trained or traded.

Game details beyond these, haven't been divulged. Further, neither a release date nor a release window have been provided, but Imagineer does tease that more information will be coming soon.

As you may know, back in October, Imagineer teased a new Medabots game would be revealed on November 28, the series' 20-year anniversary. However, at the time, there was no indication that it would simply be a new mobile game.

For those that don't know: Medabots is a role-playing game franchise originally developed by Natsume that debuted all the way back in 1997. Since then, the series has seen numerous subsequent releases, but in recent years, has quieted out a bit.

As you may know the series was adapted into an anime via Bee Train. Said adaptation spanned an impressive 52 episodes and aired, at the time, only in Japan from 1999 to 2000. This was then followed by a thirty-nine episode sequel that released from 2000 to 2001.

Both eventually made their way west via the Fox Kids network in 2001, and aired in North America until 2002. It was notably one of the channel's highest rated new series at the time. And then, a year later in 2003 (running until 2004), Medabot Damashi aired.

While the series has seen many game releases, not many have come to the west. In fact, the last games to come to the west were in 2003: Medabots for the Game Boy Advanced and Medabots Infinity for the Nintendo GameCube. However, in Japan, the series' most recent release was actually just last year and came in the form of Medabots Classics, which featured remastered versions of the original 1-5 Medabot games.

Some fans suspected the aforementioned announcement would be about Medabots Classics, which was released for Nintendo 3DS, coming to the Nintendo Switch. But alas, that was not the case. Hopefully that will change with time though.

Thanks, Gematsu.