You can almost hear them... the rallying cries of Earth's last and only hope against the bug- I mean space alien threat. "..df... edf... EDF... EDF!" Yes the very co-op friendly, and different, Earth Defense Force 2025 is still headed to our shores some time this year and I know for a fact that some members on staff can't wait for it to be here already. While we don't have an exact release date just yet, an alert Co-Optimus reader (Martin) pointed us to a video where we can see the option to play the game in splitscreen mode.
The original Earth Defense Force 2017 game had local co-op only while the more recent entries have expanded upon that by adding online co-op as well. The semi-reveal of this feature, then, is hardly surprising, but it's nice to finalyl get the confirmation of it. I never played any of the craziness that was Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon, but I do have some fond memories of playing the original with Mike on his couch and shouting things like "THERE'S A GIANT SPIDER BEHIND YOU!" And then once we killed that, we got back to playing the game. Yeah... good times...
The specific part of video in which this feature is revealed is at about the 0:25 mark. The whole thing is taken from an interview with the developer/producer and is in Japanese. You can try the YouTube Translate feature, but be prepared for phrases like "Though I'm a white fish interest of excavation from June last year."
So there you have it, the confirmation of local/splitscreen co-op for Earth Defense Force 2025. There may be some other interesting tidbits lurking in that demonstration and interview, and if your Japanese skills are better than YouTube's, let us know if there's any other exciting news.
Thanks again to Martin A for reaching out to us.