BODY: Few game announcements get endorsed by a two-time Olympic gold medalist. But when Taito used Tokyo Game Show 2026 to confirm that Estpolis Denki I & II — known to Western players as Lufia & The Fortress of Doom and Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals — is returning in 2027, figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu, a famously devoted fan of the second game, took to X with a string of messages amounting to "this is unreal."
The collection bundles the 1993 original and its 1995 sequel for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 and PC. Pricing hasn't been announced. Taito is billing it as a partially renewed port rather than a remake: the pixel art stays exactly as it was, with the changes landing in quality-of-life functions and, notably, a full rewrite of the Japanese script from hiragana into proper kanji — a limitation of Super Famicom cartridge memory that made the originals read like children's books to adult players.
Original series planner Masahide Miyata supplied a comment for the announcement, describing rereading the old scripts during localization work and calling the revival "the culmination of a game creator's fortune" after decades of fan support. Publishing partner Clear River Games handled the modern adaptation and pointed to the series' unusual status as one of the earliest JRPGs localized for European audiences, along with mechanics that were ahead of their time — New Game+ and Zelda-style action-puzzle dungeons years before either was standard.
The insider take
The reason this took so long has a name: Neverland Co., the Tokyo studio that actually built the Estpolis games, went bankrupt in 2013 after the poorly received Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, leaving the series in limbo even though Taito retained the IP. Taito's recent strategy — reviving dormant catalog titles through outside partners rather than rebuilding in-house teams — is what made 2027 possible. And Hanyu's involvement is not incidental PR: his affection for Estpolis II is long-documented in Japanese media, and in a market where celebrity game fandom is usually manufactured, his reaction is the kind of organic signal boost Taito could never have bought.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).