Halloween isn’t the only holiday involving spooky spirits worth celebrating — October 30th (yesterday) was the 30th anniversary of the release of the very first Shin Megami Tensei game in Japan on the SNES!
The Shin Megami Tensei series, which began with the Japanese launch of Shin Megami Tensei on October 30th, 1992, has just reached its 30th anniversary!
Thank you to fans around the world for your support of the series! #SMT #SMT30th pic.twitter.com/Go6CCpbS8G
— Official ATLUS West (@Atlus_West) October 29, 2022
Shin Megami Tensei was technically the third game in the Megami Tensei series, which began with a pair of Famicom titles, the first of which was based loosely on the Digital Devil Story trilogy of science fantasy books by Aya Nishitani. After the second game had its own original story with much of the same themes, Atlus remade and remolded parts of it into Shin Megami Tensei (“New Goddess Reincarnation”) on the SNES. From thereafter, the larger series has borne the SMT moniker, even spinoff games outside of Japan (like Persona games for a time).
The original SMT didn’t make it out of Japan at the time, mostly because it was a game about summoning demons and killing gods at a time when pearl-clutchers in America were convinced video games were tools of Satan designed to lure in good children and teach them wickedness.While receiving many ports, the only one that’s gotten an English release is an iOS one from 2014, which is no longer compatible with current iOS devices (though there are many translation patches for other versions out there) and the sequel never received an official localization at all. Hopefully Atlus will release the games in some capacity overseas eventually — it’d be a shame to leave one of the original deity-slaying RPGs on the shelf.
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Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
