While Level-5 has been no stranger to bringing their games to mobile in Japan, very few of them actually end up releasing outside Japan for a few reasons. In most cases, the best of their catalogue in recent times has been on the Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS and the localisation and publishing has almsot always been handled by Nintendo. If you’re a fan of the Dragon Quest franchise, you probably already know that iOS and Android don’t have Dragon Quest VII in English but have the others from the original eight games. This is because Nintendo handled that localisation on 3DS. Professor Layton and the Curious Village is the first Layton title and while iOS did get Layton’s Mystery Journey ($15.99), I wasn’t sure if this one would hit the West. Watch the iOS trailer from Japan for it below:

The App Store Twitter account went ahead and announced that Professor Layton and the Curious Village is coming soon to iOS with a short teaser but the use of the Nintendo hashtag got me thinking of various things. Nintendo isn’t a stranger to letting other companies use localisations they do. Bayonetta on PC uses the Nintendo Japanese Dub which was done for the Wii U port of the original. This could imply that Nintendo is either ok with Level-5 publishing it on iOS with the localisation that Nintendo footed the bill or did back on DS or that Nintendo will have some sort of presence at the Apple event later this week with a gaming focus.

Before you burst out laughing at the thought of Apple focussing on gaming at an event, with new hardware, they usually showcase some games. A few of those end up being vaporware but we do see some gaming things at every iOS hardware announcement for the most part. I wonder if we will get any more teases or announcements from the App Store leading up to the event. This announcement also opens up the doors to the original Yo-Kai Watch getting an English release on iOS and basically most Level-5 releases on DS and 3DS getting iOS ports when Nintendo handled publishing and localisation to some extent. There’s also a possibility that Nintendo publishes this on iOS in the West like they did the DS version. We will know more soon. I’m definitely excited to revisit the first Professor Layton game when it hits iOS. If you want to check the Japanese release, it is available on the App Store and Google Play there.