Shin Megami Tensei (Game): Difference between revisions

Shin Megami Tensei began development as "Megami Tensei III" and was initially intended to be a follow-up to the original Megami Tensei games on the Nintendo Famicom published by Namco. During development of SMT1, Kouji Okada and the president of ATLUS, Naoya Harano, directly went to the Namco chairman, Masaya Nakamura, to ask permission to publish the game on their own. Nakamura readily agreed, presumably due to the friendship he shared with Harano and ATLUS themselves owning the trademark to "Megami Tensei" prior to working with Namco.<ref>https://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999905/20220813010/</ref> After this, the game's development direction changed and all story connections to the previous games were removed. The title was subsequently given the prefix "Shin," a Japanese word meaning "true" or "new" to symbolize the series' rebirth. The game's early draft documents state: ''“We grabbed the strongest points of Megami Tensei 1 and 2, and turned many ideas we couldn't use on the Famicom into reality through the Super Famicom. This is… a '''true''' Megami Tensei…”''<ref>Atlus Co., Ltd. (2017). Shin Megami Tensei Series 25th Anniversary Memorial Book Megaten Maniacs [Page 19] Tokyo, Japan: Atlus Co., Ltd.</ref> The game's writer, Ryuutaro Itou, would describe this process saying, ''“As Shin Megami Tensei was essentially a remake of Megami Tensei II, the staff all had an implicit understanding that the game would have the characters Law Hero and Chaos Hero, with the protagonist starting from a neutral standpoint, their future actions then determining their alignment.”''<ref>https://blueforestbible.tumblr.com/post/109174139417/an-interview-with-ryutaro-ito-megami-tensei</ref>