'Shin Megami Tensei If' Is Being Added To Japan's NSO Super Famicom Collection

This is the game that gave Atlus the idea to create the Persona series. Without this game, Persona wouldn't exist. In this game, the characters us what are known as Guardians which are demons that protect you and your party members as you fight within a school (SMT 1 and 2 were based around the general apocalypse). These would serve as the basis for demons being used as Personas and the Persona games taking place in school.

Yet again, Japan gets the better deal.

funny sour patch kid go brrr

English speaking territories win.

Is Nintendo even trying? There are so many classics for the NES/SNES that haven’t been released yet to NSO but they are putting out a lot of mediocre to bad titles for it.

While we get a game about Clay and Jelly…Where’s my passport?!

There's JN-only Fire Emblem games on the service as well, right?

Western territories are seriously getting shafted.

So once again we get crap but japan at least gets tap.

Oh my word this game is a million times better than the drivel we’re getting. It’s actually comical at this point.

I'm so done

You know what I’d like to see? Clock tower. Of course, what I really want is a Western translated release of that game. The original game (SNES or PS1 version).

@JR150 Also it's the first SMT game to have an option between male/female protagonists and the first with a canon female protagonist route

Obviously in some form this idea would later be revisited in Persona 3 Portable

Thought for sure the title was a typo

@TheFrenchiestFry We truly live in the greatest timeline.

No NSO for me till the service has some real value. Furukawa, talked about it in their investors Q&A but I have seen nothing so till then it's just wait and see for me

So, Japan gets the good stuff while we're stuck with the tablescrap games that no one even heard of before.. seems legit.

@TheFrenchiestFry @nessisonett Good thing fan translations exist. And hacked Vitas with CFW.

Isn’t that great 😊 Japan gets another JRPG. Meanwhile in America and Europe we get ClayVomit. So let me learn some Japanese and get my Japanese account and press the wrong button again.

I wish NSO accept ips files, in that way we could use fan translations on jap games

@Ralizah Where the hell is Cybernator?

@roboshort I think a lot of those are third party titles that their owners prefer to release on their own terms. Square Enix, Konami and Capcom aren't giving away their main lines for "free".

I'm just waiting for the Japanese NSO to get Earthbound while we Westerners get some obscure licensed game

Just started playing Shin Megami Tensei on Super Famicom Online earlier this week.

@Ralizah Mystery of the Emblem and Genealogy of the Holy War. NSO in Japan is currently missing Gaiden and Thracia 776, I'd guess Gaiden is being skipped because of the 3DS remake but Thracia 776 seems likely to come within the next year judging by the current pattern.

We need a translation of this. Looks cool!

@SmaggTheSmug Yeah. There are some like that and some licensed titles. But there are great titles that those three companies won’t bring back because they don’t have a large enough cult following, games made by other companies like SNK or Tecmo or even good games made by Nintendo still unavailable.

Maybe I'll load it up and look at the title screen, but I honestly have no chance of completing it.

Is it based on the Malcolm McDowell film "If"? That would be cool if it was even an influence!

would be nice if there were more Shin Megami Tensei games worldwide on Switch other than Nocturne to build upto 5 release but what do I know 😑

Funny enough I made a Japanese Nintendo account yesterday and downloaded both Japanese Famicom apps. Guess I'll try this.

Japan gets all the great content. We get all the crap. This is why I dont sub to NSO anymore

@Grumblevolcano or Geneaoly of the Holy War could got a remake on Switch acording to some rumors.

Nintendo is this a joke? why japan is getting all the good games?when westerners is shatners with crap? Shuntaro Furukawa lied to us when he stated he gonna make NSO good, where is the good online service? N64/ Game Cube games?

There you go, Persona fans. The first Persona game is now on the Switch. I'm a bit surprised this even came around.

@roboshort The problem is that most of the major third-party titles on the NES and SNES like Mega Man, Castlevania, Contra, and Dragon Quest all have either collections on the Switch or enhanced ports.

Other major issues is that stuff like the TMNT games are held back by licensing issues.

As for other major third party titles like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy I, IV, VI, and Hudson Soft's backlog(Bomberman, Adventure Island, Bonk) those don't have special ports on the Switch yet, but Square Enix and Konami(Who own the rights to all of Hudson Soft's library) don't seem to want to put their games on the service.

Nintendo themselves don't really have much left in terms of first party software for the NES or SNES.

Earthbound Beginnings and Star Tropics II on the NES side and Earthbound and Super Mario RPG on the SNES side are the only major first-party titles not on the service yet. No doubt, they are saving these titles for the holiday season to push the online service.

With all these factors considered, this is why it seems like Nintendo is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Games from lower tier third parties like Data East and Interplay is likely all they can get right now.

While I am not totally defending Nintendo, I get the impression they expected third-parties to pick up the slack and that simply has not happened.

@Ralizah

Will a hacked vita even be necessary with steam deck coming out?

I've only heard rumors, but isn't that supposed to run non steam stuff?

*all discussion on hacking, emulating, and utilizing fan translations of games listed above is purely hypothetical and doesn't warrant a conversation about the morality of piracy

@Kiwi_Unlimited Well, Steam Deck won't be shipping until mid-2022 for most people, is $400 + tax and shipping at bare minimum, and ships with SteamOS, which probably won't run emulators. But I guess if you install Windows on it and use it primarily as an emulation handheld it'll work OK.

Hacked Vitas and PSPs are nice because you call still do all the normal stuff you'd do on them in addition to running emulators and homebrew software.

Although, tbh, if you don't care about buttons, you could easily run patched SNES ROMs on any semi-modern smartphone as well.

@Kiwi_Unlimited Steam Deck isn't being released in most territories until 2022, even if you manage to get an order in during December, and even then I'd barely consider that thing portable at all despite the fact it's clearly going to be an emulation powerhouse

oh come on! why aren't we geetting the smt games?! japan is getting it much better than us

@TheFrenchiestFry

Ahh, fair point

@Ralizah

Interesting. Thanks for filling in my knowledge gaps!

@JR150

SMT if is clearly the best game being added overall, but it is still very dated and most people wouldn’t have a lot of patience for it even if we did get a translated version in the West (just look at how poorly Persona 1 is regarded over here).

Outside of SMT if, Japan is getting two pretty lame games too.

Overall, yeah, Japan’s titles are better, but this is still a very poor showing for NSO worldwide. I could personally rattle of around 50 games I’d rather see added than any of these titles.

@InkIdols Because that would require Atlus to localize them and at that point, they'd probably charge for them as separate from NSO like how FE1 was separate despite being free on Japan's NSO

Hopefully, SMT V does well enough for Atlus to consider localizing SMT 1, 2, and IF and either putting them on our NSO or putting them in a collection. The Switch is already looking to join the PS2 and 3DS as the go-to consoles for SMT (not counting PC emulators) so hopefully, this happens (and maybe some other SMT HD ports happen in the future like DDS or the Raidou games)

It's hard to argue against the notion that Nintendo gives its Japanese customers better games. I'd almost say they get preferential treatment, but that is a little dramatic.

@roboshort I dunno if I'd call "The game that gave birth to effing Persona" a bad choice of a thing to include.

If anything, the annoying thing is that it's Japan-exclusive(since it never got localized).

@IronMan30 Tbh it helps a lot of the better games... don't require additional expenses to be localized here since a lot of those titles are very much the ones which never got a localization sadly.

@Ludovsky yeah, that is the biggest factor. Which is why I don't get too emotional about it, tbh.

The NSO offerings Japan gets and the showcases that appear in Japan Directs but not NA ones are kind of proving Nintendo doesn't care as much for the western market right now.

It’s such a shame that for a lot of Atlus classics only the fans have put in the effort to translate them.

Nintendo might have missed this opportunity, but Atlus have slipped many more.

I realise that there are finances to consider, but preservation and accessibility is important too.

Japan's dual language use STILL baffles me. Can you think of how that would go down anywhere else in the world?

Play this new US RPG right now! The menu and dialog are in English while the combat selection and Title are in Polish!

And I can assure you, outside of games and TV English is not all that common in Japan. Sure you learn it in school, but how your Spanish (US people) or French (Canada), or Cockney rhyming slang and bingo calls (I assume that's what you learn in the UK)?

It's on signs specifically for tourists (bathroom/exit/stop) in major cities, but even when you get to tier two tourist locations they get replaced by signs with romaji, so while you don't need to how to read 浴室, you still need to correctly guess as to what baethruwm means. And that's the easiest example.

@tkdboy1889 Tbh it doesn't help a lot of these games never got localized here and honestly considering they're third party titles, actually localizing them would make it an hurdle in itself to get this here

Since then there would be a debate of who would even foot the bill of localizing the title and whether it should be a NSO collection title or instead sold separately. And then the matter of who gets to publish and profit and that's not even getting into the cost-analysis of whether enough westerners would be curious enough to buy a likely niche title. Unless a lot of marketing money is then spent to market it as the predecessor of Persona but again to a still very unknown outcome since people like Persona games but specifically the "modern" ones that are "Actually Flashy enough to grab attention"(and ultimately still sold much less than the fans seem to think they did).

Honestly there's reasons we're not getting this in the west, even if it's disapointing.

@ralphdibny its set in a school so it can't be a coincidence.

@ralphdibny just noticed the title screen has the 'Shin Megami Tensi' bit in Japanese but 'if' is written in English and is even written as 'if...' like the film poster so DEFINITELY not a coincidence

@YorkshireNed it's so weird, i know absolutely nothing about the game and only mentioned the film because the article mentioned a school setting and the logo too.

I can't imagine how that film would adapt into a game tbh either! It's pretty semi-obscure film to adapt too. I may dig further into this 😅

Or maybe I'll just watch If (and it's quasi semi spiritual sequels) again because I'm in the mood for it now 😅

@Caryslan Yeah. I know not being able to put games on it from Square/Enix, Capcom and Konami/Hudson is a big blow but there are other developers like SNK, Irem, Tecmo made quality titles for the NES and do not seem to be interested in releasing their games as packages like those other three developers. I imagine Konami has a lot of titles from both theirs and Hudson's library that they will never rerelease like Faxanadu so I hope Nintendo finds a way to bring them to the online service. Capcom is probably a bit tougher cause they made so many licensed games which would be hard to release on the service.

Also, Nintendo does have other first party games they can release besides what you mentioned like RC Pro Am. And also quite a few that were only available in Japan like Devil World, Famicom Wars or Murasame Castle, though RPGs like Ginga no Sannin may cost too much money to localize.

In the case of the SNES, I think there is a huge number of titles they could release.

@ralphdibny Well, the SMT games are all RPGs based around fighting and recruiting gods and devils during a Tokyo supernatural apocalypse so I think the only link to "If..." is the school setting