I’m going to be honest, when researching this one, a subject I was fairly familiar with beforehand, this part surprised me: A quest that you could estimate takes up about a quarter of the game’s content, wholly functional in the Japanese release, totally removed from the American. These were minor compared to the greatest issue, though: the Snow Queen quest had vanished. The translation wasn’t so hot either, packing at least one famously bad line.
The result came out looking a lot less like America, though, and a lot more like an extremely naive and borderline racist depiction of America, right down to making the street punk character black for the purposes of racial equality. The appearances for most party members, as well as the entire city the game took place in, were redone to look more American. But this, their first release outside Japan, was… not. The Shin Megami Tensei series, and all its spinoffs, were always pretty famously Japanese. The story is loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name (which is also recognizable–barely–as Frozen), which is summarized by the teacher soon before her possession in the quest’s opening cutscene.Įven at the time, it stood as clearly obvious that something pretty nuts was going on regarding the American release of Persona. The branching choice takes up about a third of a playthrough, so it’s a fairly substantial quest. Instead of looking into shady energy company SEBEC, the player would instead be able to collect a mask haunted by the spirit of the Snow Queen, and give it to the protagonist’s homeroom teacher, who becomes possessed by it the spirit then freezes over the school and attempts to make sacrifices to bring on an eternal night. And it lies in the original Persona title, for the original Playstation.Īn alternative route for the main story, that’s both harder to access and harder to complete than the base route. Today, we’re learning about a big reason for both Atlus’ initial international floundering, and their later strengths. Yet that wasn’t when the series started, or even when they started being released outside Japan.
Source: Wikipedia, " Revelations:_Persona," available under the CC-BY-SA License.Like a lot of people, I got into Atlus with Persona 3 and 4, the tail end of a very strong entrance into the international market during the Playstation 2 era. The remake includes a redesigned user interface, new cutscenes, multiple difficulty levels, and an arranged soundtrack." It was released Japan on 29 April 2009 and in North American on Septemon UMD and Octoon the PlayStation Store as a downloadable title. Set in contemporary Japan, Revelations: Persona stars a group of high-schoolers who, armed with weapons and imbued with magical beings known as Personas, band together to combat demons that are invading their city.Ī remake of the game, titled Shin Megami Tensei: Persona and known in Japan as simply Persona (ペルソナ, Perusona), was released for the PlayStation Portable in 2009. The game was originally released on the PlayStation in Japan and North America the Japanese version was later ported to Microsoft Windows.
"Alternate Tale of the Goddess: Persona"), is the first game in the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series of role-playing video games for PlayStation consoles-one of several spin-off series within the Megami Tensei franchise, developed by Atlus. "Revelations: Persona, released in Japan as Megami Ibunroku Persona (女神異聞録ペルソナ, Megami Ibunroku Perusona, lit.