This Persona series video game page is a stub. You can help Megami Tensei Wiki by expanding it.
No reason provided.
This article is about the first game in the Persona franchise, also known as Revelations: Persona. For other things named Persona, see Persona.

Megami Ibunroku Persona is a 1996 role-playing game for the PlayStation, and the first entry in the Persona series. It was developed and published by Atlus and released on September 20th, 1996 in Japan. The game was subsequently released in North America as Revelations: Persona on December 14th of the same year, including significant localization changes. A PC port was released in Japan on March 25th 1999. It was included as one of the games on the PlayStation Classic released on December 3rd 2018, marking its first release in Europe.

A remaster of the game, simply titled Persona, was released for the PlayStation Portable in 2009, featuring a more faithful localization outside of Japan and completely replacing the soundtrack.

Blurb

Japanese

English

In the near future, mankind has conquered dimensional travel but the door we have opened swings both ways. The peaceful city you have grown up in has become a haven for dark creatures from another world— Demons! Now it's up to you and your friends to harness the hidden power within you by entering the fantasy game known as Persona.


You awaken with incredible abilities that you will need to defeat the scores of Demon invaders and cleanse the land of their forces. Converse with them before doing battle to determine your best course of action. Fight them or enlist their aid in your mission. Either way, you are set for the fantasy adventure of a lifetime!

Synopsis

  This section is a stub. You can help Megami Tensei Wiki by expanding it.
No reason provided.
 

Gameplay

  This section is a stub. You can help Megami Tensei Wiki by expanding it.
No reason provided.

Version Differences

  This section is a stub. You can help Megami Tensei Wiki by expanding it.
No reason provided.

Revelations: Persona

In contrast to the Japanese release, the North American release of Revelations: Persona made numerous changes to the characters and their designs, as well as receiving several omissions to the story.


Most of the members of the main cast received major alterations to their designs, most notably being the protagonist and the character Mark.[1] Each member of the main cast received names that were heavily westernized, with Mark, Elly and Yuki being the only characters to receive little to no alterations.[1]

The setting has also been entirely americanized: for example, the city is renamed "Lunarvale", and the game is now set in the United States.[2] Thus, Yen are now changed to dollars. The sole exceptions being the shoe lockers at the entrance of the high school and the Shinto Shrines.[3] This was done in an effort to make the game more palpable to western audiences, as Atlus USA felt american gamers would not be able to connect with the game due to the heavy Japanese influence present in Megami Ibunroku Persona.[4][5][6]

A large number of demons are completely renamed, in order to avoid controversy.[7]

Notoriously, the Snow Queen Quest was almost entirely discarded, with only remnants of translated information being accessible through the usage of cheats. The majority of the quest still exists within the game's files, but the data is largely untranslated. The engine cannot support Japanese characters, so upon accessing this data, the game cannot process this information properly, and the text is left almost entirely unintelligible.[8]

PSP

Main article: Persona (PSP)

Listings

Characters

Demons

Skills

Items

Equipment

Locations

Development

  This section is a stub. You can help Megami Tensei Wiki by expanding it.
No reason provided.

Localization

The team responsible for the localization of Megami Ibunroku Persona into Revelations: Persona was pretty small, consisting of only 6 full time employees at Atlus USA.[5] The game also contains a large amount of text, and is full of mature and potentially controversial content.[5] The team choose to remove or change almost every reference to Japan and Japanese culture. Plus, due to the american version releasing only 3 months after the japanese release, there was pressure to finish it quickly for the christmas 1996 deadline. As such, the Snow Queen Quest had to be cut to finish the game on time. However, the data is still accessible on the disk via cheats, though untranslated, and unreadable as the text engine cannot render japanese characters.[8] Philemon's cutscene at the entrance of the dream world in Hypnos' Tower has been fully translated and dubbed.[8]

Nomenclature

Names in Other Languages
Language Name Meaning
  English Revelations: Persona
  Japanese 女神異聞録ペルソナ Alternate Goddess Tale: Persona

Gallery

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 https://tcrf.net/Revelations:_Persona#Characters
  2. https://www.destructoid.com/anime-expo-08-atlus-shin-megami-tensei-panel/
  3. https://tcrf.net/Revelations:_Persona#Other_Changes
  4. https://www.destructoid.com/anime-expo-08-atlus-shin-megami-tensei-panel/
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2013/09/17/perfecting-persona-how-atlus-usa-bloomed.aspx
  6. "Interview: Atlus Talks Translating Shin Megami Tensei: Persona for PSP". Archieved here.
  7. https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2015/08/07/examining-the-localization-of-persona/
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 https://tcrf.net/Revelations:_Persona#Snow_Queen_Quest_Localization