Publisher Rocket Panda Games has announced today that Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds and Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Overdrive—the side-scrolling beat ’em up spin-off game in the Phantom Breaker series, and its subsequent enhanced port—will be delisted from digital storefronts on March 4, 2024. The publisher’s upcoming remaster of the game, Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate, is expected to supersede these versions of the game.
In the announcement, Rocket Panda Games cites engine difficulties as the basis of this decision, noting “[it is] simply not conducive to being updated or added to, which makes it impossible for [Rocket Panda Games] to make any meaningful updates or add new content.” Their upcoming remaster, Battle Grounds Ultimate, is expected to be “built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, [containing] quite a number of new features and improvements on top of the classic Battle Grounds experience.”
Players who have bought or choose to buy the classic versions of the game prior to March 2024 will retain access and continue to be able to play the game offline and online, the publisher reaffirms, with the exception of the PlayStation Vita version, for which online services have ended.
The Phantom Breaker series, originally helmed by MAGES., is best known to Science Adventure fans for its frequent guest character appearances from Kurisu Makise, Frau Koujiro, and Rimi Sakihata. In 2022, the Phantom Breaker IP was acquired by Western publisher and developer Rocket Panda Games, who subsequently announced Battle Grounds Ultimate—a modern remaster of the classic Battle Grounds.
Phantom Breaker Battle Grounds Ultimate is expected to launch in 2024 for Xbox One, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam, and PC via Epic Games Store. For more details on these recent news, view the publisher’s blog post here.
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