Nintendo Director Wanted To Adapt ‘Megami Tensei’ Series, Says Novel’s Author

Japanese writer Aya Nishitani — most well-known for writing Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, the primary of a trilogy of novels that the entire Megami Tensei sequence from Atlus spawned from — has revealed that the director of Nintendo himself as soon as approached the novelist about adapting his novel.

In an in depth thread on Twitter, the writer shared how he got here up with the primary novel within the trilogy and the way he struggled to write down a novel a couple of hero. Then, as soon as he settled that the premise of the ebook — “A high school student who summons demons because he is dissatisfied with the status quo” — meant that the lead character should not be written as a hero, Nishitani submitted the manuscript to the editors. His pal, then, matched Nishitani with the director of Nintendo. As you do!

Ninshitani revealed that the then-director of Nintendo — who shouldn’t be named — learn the novel and mentioned that he was within the ebook. Unfortunately, it by no means occurred, as you possibly can see from Nishitani’s anecdote:

“He [director of Nintnedo] read my novel and said that it was interesting and that he would consider whether my company could adapt it into a game. I’ll see if my company can adapt it into a game,” he mentioned, and took the manuscript with him. Every week later, nonetheless, he referred to as me and mentioned he was sorry.

“I believe it might work, however there is a robust opinion {that a} demon-summoning recreation could not be launched below the Nintendo model.
Why do not you attempt one thing different one?
He instructed one other creation, however I refused.
” I could not do another title as a result of I used to be fixated on 女神転生” [Megami Tensei]

So in one other world, we might’ve seen the SMT sequence by means of the lens of Nintendo. It would’ve most likely been a bit completely different, thoughts you, however this can be a vastly fascinating perception into the historical past of this franchise. We wish to thank Nishitani-san for sharing this anecdote with the world! We extremely advocate studying the whole thread because the writer offers the world a captivating perception into what has turn out to be a vastly widespread RPG sequence worldwide.

The Megami Tensei sequence — which is extra generally identified internationally as Shin Megami Tensei — began in 1986 on the Famicom. Atlus was the corporate that ultimately tailored Nishitani’s trilogy of novels, and the developer nonetheless works on the franchise as we speak, which has birthed quite a few spin-offs and sub-series, probably the most well-known being the Persona franchise.

The most up-to-date mainline recreation within the franchise is Shin Megami Tensei V, which launched on the Switch in 2021. However, Soul Hackers 2 — the fifth entry within the Devil Summoner sub-series — is the most recent recreation within the wider franchise, debuting on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC in 2022. Shin Megami Tensei, the third recreation within the sequence and first to make use of the extra commonly-used title, is presently celebrating its 30th anniversary, and there might be a live performance at this yr’s Anime Expo.