This is one of those games that if it was released worldwide during the 90s, it would had been one of those games that would give you memories because of the atmosphere that you had, when you play during the night with just you and your super nintendo.
If this was released worldwide back in 92, you'd have all kinds of political and religious figures blaming it for every problem under the sun. Instead of Pokemon, this'd definitely be "THE DEVIL'S GAME!"
@@NintendanGX i wonder what the franchise would look like now. certainly very different, either atlus would be killing it finanically or be long in the past
One of the true definitions of nightmare fuel, without the over-the-top horror. Great gaming series too due to its immense amounts of replayability alone :)
The intro where it showed the characters and the creepy heartbeat and gong-like sounds played makes it very clear that this is not your typical lighthearted fantasy RPG, what happen in this game CAN happen in real life should situations become too dire for government to handle. Society as a whole would change for the worse no matter how hopeful people can be.
There's even more than that in the intro, such as the eerily quiet ATLUS splash screen, showing a sigil without any context whatsoever, before just suddenly cutting to "Kichijoji, 199X". I can only imagine picking this up and taking it home back when it was new.
(A year late to comment) Shoot man if you were to compare this game to others released around this time you probably be shock by how straight up spooky the intro is... Also that bit about society oof in later smt games it show how things could quickly spiral out of control. (Devil survivor, Smt 4, and DDS)
If you compare this intro to other (J)RPGs that came out around the same time you often have a wall of text explaining the back story so this intro really stands out The bell sound is a reference to the "last hour" aka the apocalypse
too bad that it never made it to europe or US... especially this kind of ambience and themes - that is definitely more for the matured audience - is really striking... and rare for a 16-bit console...
I'd love to watch an SMT 1 anime directed by either Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust) or Hiroshi Hamasaki (Texhnolyze, Shigurui: Death Frenzy, Blade of the Immortal). A show with a foreboding atmosphere and an unforgiving world, that makes you think any one of its characters could die at any moment.
The first game had an aesthetic the series never replicated. Theres just something "dreamlike" about those REALLY low detail 16 bit 3d enviroments (already in II theres more detail on the background)
Ok, just thought back to this now, but the team at Atlus must have REALLY done their research because those are some ACTUAL straight up occult symbols in the intro. The Symbol at the beginning is a lesser key of Solomon, and is featured in the Legemeton (as published by Aleister bloody Crowley) and the barbarous words at the beginning are from the Grimoire of Armadel, a 17th century French Christian spell book. That plus all the other legit mythological references makes me really wonder what their research was like, especially pre internet.
Also the text that appears in the beginning ( El elohim eloho, elohim tsabaoth...) is an actual incantation making sense when translated from hebrew to english. If not inspired, it was taken straight from the Key of Solomon.
I wonder if they had Japanese translations of all those rare occult books or if they had someone who knew English on their team. Either way, they did an awesome job
Honestly kind of glad we didn't get this in the west when it was first released can you imagine the shit this would have gotten. I still want a better official English release than the old IOS version though.
It's so simple but so powerful. It's basically inputting an old pagan magical incantation into a computer system, but that's such a perfect encapsulation of the themes of SMT
This opening drives me nuts man it’s so fucking good. It’s the best video game opening probably, either this or the PSX opening for Megami Ibunroku Persona.
The thing about this intro if you compare it to other games of Jrpg/Rpg you really get a different feel just from the intro alone.... Another reason is that it fully shows what would happen if demons were to pop out.
i imagine someone trying to type this into a programming interpreter.....actually *types this in notepad++ with lua and gets an error message* dang it, oh well i tried.
You'll need a 65C816 processor and an assembler, although I see some instructions for possible multiplication (X16, M8, probably SNES specific quirks).
I leave a comment on this video every 3-4 years...the first two were because I forgot that I had even commented on this in the first place. Life update: Since my first comment I went from being a edgy teenager to a weird adult...with a job and a college degree! Still into Mega-Ten, looking forward to Five, will buy a Switch to play it. BTW: Did you know that, canonically, the original Devil Summoner Program was written in FORTRAN? It's in the anime, look it up.
Conheci esse game por conta do snes station, daí em diante conheci o restante das séries e minha nossa... Depois desse achei que era o jogo mais psicodélico que já tinha jogado. Aí vou ver os demais e tem até de dança kkk
aparentemente muita gente conheceu Shin Megami Tensei através do Snes Station. Já ouvi história de gente que pegou até trauma pq quando era criança jogou ele no Snes Station por curiosidade e até hoje, dps de adulto, tem certo receio de jogar outro game da franquia KKKKKKKK
that's interesting... in the PSX version of the intro, instead of saying "MEGAMI TENSEI" at 1:12 it said "DIGITAL DEVIL STORY" that's an interesting thing i just found out.
That's because digital devil story is the first game in the franchise, if you look at the Japanese box art you'll see that the name is in yellow, it functions as a tagline for the game's actual name Megami Tensei. So from a Japanese perspective writing digital devil story automatically translates to Megami Tensei. The translators likely just wanted to keep it simple in case there are players who don't know that the 2 names are related to each other
Just imagine if we eventually got a seinen anime based on this game, directed by either Hiroshi Hamasaki (Texhnolyze, Shigurui, Blade of the Immortal 2019) or Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll, Wicked City, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust). It'd probably start out as a Netflix or Prime original, and it'd have a foreboding atmosphere and unfiltered violence, similar to those in 90's OVA's (with the freedom afforded to them by those streaming services). Even in more crowed areas like the cafe, the show would seem more like it's prolonguing the inevitable, as the main characters are about to stare death in the face. The first episode would have quite a bit of build-up before Kazuya encounters his first demon; the preta that rips its victim's throat out. I'd especially love to see how a director like Hamasaki handles the mother death scene, where we see her sending Kazuya off to buy more coffee, and she unknowingly emits an ominous shadow on the wall (either that, or the scene ends with a knock on her door). Then when we next see her, it's towards the end of the second or third episode, with a slow, tension-filled build up as the usual music we hear in Kazuya's home is replaced with eerie ambience, and when he tries talking to his mother normally, she acts and behaves weirdly. It'd mostly play out like it does in the game, but the atmosphere will be set just right to prepare first-time audiences for the dreaded reveal. The moment her body is torn apart from the inside out, it cuts between the three heroes' expressions quickly as parts of her body and innards are thrown all across the room, and through the reflection of a traumatised Kazuya's eyes, we see the demon emerge from what remains of his mother, its eyes glaring glowing and glaring back at him, before the episode ends. The opening/intro for the show would be an homage to the intro of the first game, but after the first episode, the scenes we briefly see are screenshots from whatever episode is about to play (either that, or it could serve as a visual recap for the past episode, with an appropriate licensed song as the opening). For the closing theme, I reckon a slow-paced, serene song would fit it quite well, to offset the heavy atmosphere and grim nature of the show. This worked really well in Texhnolyze and Blade of the Immortal, as it took the edge off some of the more overwhelming moments in those shows.
The ESRB didn't start until '94 and this game came out in '92. SMT never had a U.S. release so it wouldn't have been rated under the ESRB anyway. The Japanese equivalent CERO didn't start until 2002. So, there was never a rating for it. I'd also say CERO tends to be more lenient than the ESRB so at most I could see it getting a teen rating but maybe not even that. The game has dark themes but it neither gory or particularly sexual.
@@brandchan How about the completely nude werecats, the spider lady boss fight, or the very first fight that starts with "the preta ripped the man's throat out"?
Well the series has been getting more and more attention over the years since DDS and Nocturne came out. My only wish is to see them transfer over to one of the higher end consoles instead of staying on handhelds. Cathrine showed how good they could look on those type of systems.
Idk IV gets pretty fucking creepy and disturbing sometimes and I think the whole game is thematically darker than everything else in the main series. Don't you remember Reverse Hills, Blasted Tokyo and the Monochrome Forest?
In fact, i feel Persona is basically Shin Megami Tensei with a lot of filler... Don't get me wrong; i like Persona, but SMT is way more direct. Like: Persona: You should sleep. Tomorrow you must study. SMT: Sleep? No fucking time for that! There's a lot of demons outside killing people and God is going to destroy humankind because he's an asshole!
