Square Enix has announced that Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen will be coming to the Wii U Virtual console. The game will be released in Japan on November 20th. There’s no word yet if it will see a release in North America, but this wouldn’t be totally unexpected considering the game was released on the Wii Virtual Console in North America in March of 2009.
Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen was released on the Super Nintendo back in 1993 in Japan and 1995 in North America. It is the first entry in the Ogre Battle series, a series of real-time tactical role-playing games. The game was directed by Yasumi Matsuno, who may be best known for his work on Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics. If the Ogre Battle artwork looks familiar, that’s because it was done by Akihiko Yoshida, who worked on many games in the Final Fantasy series including Final Fantasy Tactics.
March of the Black Queen was the precursor to many of the other great games to come out of the series, including Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together — which was recently was recently released as an enhanced port on the PSP in 2011 — and Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber. If you’re a fan of the series, or strategy RPGs in general, and missed out on the first Ogre Battle game, now is as good a time as ever to get into the series. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that the Wii U Virtual Console release makes it to North America!
