Front Mission 1st

Front Mission 1st for PlayStation is Square Enix’s 2003 Japanese remake of the 1995 Super Famicom tactical role-playing game that began the Front Mission series. Released in Japan on October 23, 2003, it returns to the near-future conflict on Huffman Island, where rival political blocs field walking combat machines called wanzers. The PlayStation edition preserves the original game’s military drama and turn-based strategy while presenting the series origin in a revised console release.

The main campaign follows Royd Clive, an OCU soldier whose reconnaissance mission ends in the Larcus Incident, an event that costs him both his position and his fiancée, Karen. A year later he is fighting in a wanzer arena when the Canyon Crows mercenary unit gives him a route back into the conflict. From there, Front Mission 1st builds its story through missions, conversations, and visits to locations on its map as Royd and his allies become involved in the Second Huffman Conflict between the OCU and the USN.

Battles take place on tactical grids, with each side moving individual wanzers and other combat units in turn. Positioning, weapon range, terrain, and the target selected on an opposing machine all matter. A wanzer is assembled from a body, two arms, and legs; damage to an arm can take away the weapons it carries, while damaged legs restrict mobility. Destroying the central body removes the unit from battle, giving each exchange a mechanical as well as a tactical dimension.

Customization is central to Front Mission 1st. Players buy and fit frames, computers, backpacks, shields, and weapons, balancing their choices against a machine’s available power and weight. Weapon types support different roles: melee equipment works at close quarters, guns can spread damage across parts, long-range weapons can attack from safer positions, and missiles provide indirect support with their own limitations. Pilots also develop abilities through use, encouraging the player to shape a squad around preferred tactics rather than rely on a single fixed setup.

Between missions, towns and other map points serve as preparation spaces where the player can organize units, shop for parts, and follow the continuing narrative. The game also includes an arena for optional computer-controlled fights and briefings that outline upcoming enemy forces. These intermissions give the campaign a measured rhythm: equip the team, study the next problem, deploy, then return to the wider story with new resources and recruits.

This PlayStation version is specifically Front Mission 1st, rather than the original Super Famicom release or the later Nintendo DS version. Its major addition is the U.S.N. Side scenario, starring USN officer Kevin Greenfield and showing the same war from the opposing superpower’s perspective. That extra route makes the remake more than a straightforward visual update, adding another protagonist and campaign viewpoint to the first Front Mission’s setting.

Front Mission 1st is a single-player strategy RPG built around a serious science-fiction war story and detailed mecha construction. Its blend of squad tactics, component damage, character skills, and two perspectives on Huffman Island established ideas that later Front Mission games continued to explore. For players looking at the original PlayStation release, this is the 2003 Japanese Square Enix edition with the expanded USN material, not the English-language Nintendo DS release that followed several years later.