A Professor Layton game you almost definitely haven't played has been saved and is getting an unofficial translation, all thanks to a phone that looks like it survived a house fire

You've probably never played Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly Mirror, but thanks to some dedicated fans, you might soon be able to.

Prior to the advent of smartphones, Japan was very ahead of the game when it came to mobile phones. They could do things that are commonplace these days like email, stream live video, take pictures, and even play games. In-depth games too, with even big names like Final Fantasy having exclusive releases on Japan-only phones (also known as Keitai phones), like the Final Fantasy 7 title Before Crisis - there were a few Kingdom Hearts games too, the most notable being the original version of Kingdom Hearts Coded (with the rest just sort of being minigames). A lot of these have sort of been lost though, as hardly any of them were released outside of Japanese phones, leaving fans to pick up the slack.

And that's exactly what fans are doing with Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly mirror, a Japanese phone game that has been incomplete up until now. Game preservationist RockmanCosmo shared last week that fellow preservationist Yuvi had acquired a junk Fujitsu F906i phone, which just so happened to have all six chapters of the Professor Layton phone game. RockmanCosmo explains that "previously, we only had the first three chapters. An English translation will happen in due time!" The phone the game came from was in a real rough state - it literally looked like it survived a house fire - so it's honestly a bit of a miracle the whole game is being preserved.

It's a real shame that more of these games aren't available these days, as one of my favourites, Ni no Kuni, received a Keitai phone game, which was basically an Earthbound clone. There was even a Persona 3 spin-off, and that actually received a Nintendo Switch and PC port back in June, so if you're curious about the capability of older Japanese phones ahead of that Professor Layton game's unofficial translation, that's your best place to start.