BODY: Some franchises wait a long time for a second act. Estpolis Denki — known in the West as Lufia — has waited more than three decades, and the loudest cheer for its return came from an Olympic figure skating champion.
Taito has announced Lufia I & II (Estpolis Denki I&II) for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 and PC, arriving in 2027. Pricing has not been set. The publisher describes the release as a port with partial renewal — Japanese gaming press read that phrasing as a faithful conversion with selective modernization, rather than a ground-up remake in the vein of recent Square Enix HD-2D projects.
The package bundles both Super Famicom entries: the 1993 original, released overseas as Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, and 1995's Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, a prequel widely regarded as one of the finest RPGs on the system. Lufia II earned its reputation on puzzle-dense dungeons, the capsule monster system, and an ending that Japanese players still cite as a high-water mark for 16-bit storytelling.
Taito also published a comment from Masahide Miyata, the creator behind the series at developer Neverland — a notable inclusion, since Neverland folded in 2013 and the IP has sat quiet under Taito ever since.
Then there is Yuzuru Hanyu. The two-time Olympic gold medalist has named Lufia II as a formative favorite in interviews for years, and their delighted reaction to the announcement became a story in its own right across Japanese outlets.
The insider take
In Tokyo, the phrase 一部リニューアル ("partially renewed") is doing a lot of quiet work here. It signals caution — and that caution is earned. The last attempt to revive this series, the 2010 DS action-RPG Estpolis: The Lands Cursed by the Gods, reinvented the combat and alienated the faithful so thoroughly that the brand went dormant. Taito appears to have learned the lesson: preserve first, modernize sparingly. The Hanyu factor matters more than Western readers might assume, too. In Japan, a celebrity endorsement that predates the announcement by a decade reads as authentic in a way no paid campaign can buy — and it hands Taito a mainstream news hook for a 30-year-old SFC RPG.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).