The Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage mobile game is “already dead.” Koei Tecmo has announced that it will cease its services for the online-exclusive free-to-play game on Monday, January 27, 2025.
This mobile game is more particularly based on Shin Hokuto Musou, which is better known in the West as Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2. The original game appeared on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii U in Japan in 2012 and the West in 2013.
Koei Tecmo gradually released new story chapters on a weekly basis to emulate the original manga’s publications on Weekly Shonen Jump from 1983 until 1988. It also added new playable characters that were not available in the console games, such as the Nanto Goshasei members Huey and Shuren. The mobile game launched in late 2020, so it will have a total lifespan of around four years.
There are no mentions of an offline archive version on the announcement page, so the mobile game’s content not recorded on players’ screenshots and streams will be entirely lost to time. Koei Tecmo will instead offer refunds to players who still have unused paid currencies by the end-of-service date.
The loss of the mobile game will once again deprive people of the ability to play Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage games on ongoing gaming platforms. People cannot bring the original PS3 and Wii U versions to the PS4, PS5, or Switch due to the lack of backward compatibility support for the console generation. Microsoft did not include either of the two titles in the list of backward-compatible Xbox 360 games for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
The Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage mobile game is available on Android and iOS devices until January 27, 2025.
Published: Nov 28, 2024 01:00 pm