Lost Professor Layton Game Rises From the Ashes, Literally

A long-forgotten Professor Layton game has been recovered from an old feature phone that appears to have survived a fire. Called Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly Mirror, the mobile game rose from the ashes just ahead of its 16th anniversary.

Although Level-5 ported some Professor Layton games to mobile devices over the years, Mansion of the Deathly Mirror is distinct in that it is a completely original experience made exclusively for feature phones. It was released in an episodic format, with its first episode debuting on October 10, 2008. Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly Mirror never made its way outside of Japan, and hasn’t been available for purchase since 2014.

Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly Mirror Recovered After 16 Years

Nearly 16 years following its original debut, the long-lost adventure game has been fully recovered by a group of dedicated fans. As reported by Twitter user RockmanCosmo, game preservationist Yuvi managed to save the game’s final three chapters, recovering them from a working unit of the Fujitsu F906i, a Japan-only feature phone from 2008. The first three chapters of Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly Mirror were already recovered back in February 2024.

The Phone With the Lost Professor Layton Game Might Have Survived a Fire

RockmanCosmo said that the group behind this preservation effort plans to translate Mansion of the Deathly Mirror into English, albeit without committing to a concrete time frame for the initiative. The game preservationist also shared some photos of the 2008 flip phone on which the mobile adventure was discovered, which suggest that the device might have survived a fire, as indicated by the ash traces all over its body. Apart from the old Professor Layton game, Yuvi also managed to recover Mr. Driller Aqua from the device. This 2006 Mr. Driller spin-off is another feature phone-only game that has long been considered lost.

Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly Mirror was originally offered as a MobageTown (nowadays called Mobage) service exclusive in 2008 before receiving a re-release subtitled -REMIX- a year later. The 2009 version of the game contained different puzzles but otherwise followed the same story, which was set between the events of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box and Unwound Future. The images shared by RockmanCosmo indicate that Yuvi recovered the 2008 original.

Aside from fan initiatives of this sort, some feature phone game preservation efforts are also currently being pursued for commercial purposes, especially in Japan. In one of the most recent examples of this trend, publisher G-MODE re-released Persona 3 Aigis: The First Mission, a 2006 feature phone game, for PC and the Nintendo Switch in June 2024.