Sony is bringing PaRappa the Rapper, Hot Shots Golf and more to mobile

Sony Interactive Entertainment is branching into mobile, and it’s taking some beloved PlayStation franchises with it. ForwardWorks, its publishing arm dedicated to mobile games, will release titles based on Hot Shots Golf, Arc the Lad, PaRappa the Rapper and more starting next year.

Heading to smartphones first are versions of Hot Shots Golf and the PlayStation Portable puzzle game What Did I Do to Deserve This?, which are due in spring and summer 2017, respectively. These and other ForwardWorks games will be available on both iOS and Android; the company has yet to announce Western release plans.

ForwardWorks released trailers for each title to give fans a sense of how they’ll translate to mobile. Here’s Everybody’s Golf, as it’s known in Japanese:

This is a slightly longer teaser for the puzzle-based What Did I Do to Deserve This? on mobile:

Later next year will see “reboots” of Arc the Lad and Wild Arms, two classic PlayStation role-playing game series. The last game in each franchise hit PlayStation consoles in 2004 and 2007, respectively, and the reboots will bring back members of the original production teams.

Also planned are mobile games based on PaRappa the Rapper, Boku no Natsuyasumi (My Summer Vacation) and Toro, PlayStation’s unofficial, feline mascot. Sony declined to elaborate on what these games will entail, or when they’re expected to launch.

Square Enix is working with ForwardWorks as well, with mobile takes on the Disgaea series and PlayStation Vita horror game Yomawari: Never Alone in the pipeline.

Sony’s foray into smartphone games follows that of one of its closest competitors: Nintendo, who announced it would release at least five mobile titles based on its characters by March 2017. That timeline has since been revised a bit, with the second of those five, Super Mario Run, hitting iOS on Dec. 15. Also in the works are games based on Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing. Pokémon Go, this summer’s smartphone smash hit, notably is not part of that group of five games.

Yet Sony is also heading in a direction Nintendo has not yet, it announced alongside the mobile push. The company’s new Project Field platform will play games that use trading cards, which are based on series like Yo-Kai Watch.

ForwardWorks/Sony Interactive Entertainment

Project Field’s mat peripheral, which players will draw and move their cards upon, will work with smartphones and tablets using Bluetooth. A Western launch has not been announced for Project Field, and its Japanese release has not yet been dated.