Be Your True Mind
Part 1: Desire to learn
2010-SUMMER
It’s hot and humid on a Friday night. I’m at my usual stomping grounds- my friend James’ house. We were both going to be seniors in highschool in the coming semester, and living in a town with a population of six thousand meant there was nothing to do but sit at home or do crimes. He and I were never the crimes type. I smoked things I shouldn’t have but he was pretty straight and narrow. I never did anything illegal around him though because I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable and because this was his home. He’s grinding away at Star Ocean 4 on his PS3 while i’m sitting at his computer looking things up on Wikipedia. I didn’t use the internet to communicate with people until my mid 20’s. In my teenage years I used it to learn….
about videogames.
You’re talking to someone who would stay in the computer lab after school to look up Super Famicom Satellaview games. I didn’t have internet (or a working computer) at home for a good chunk of my highschool years so I had to make do. I had a laptop in the latter half of my freshman year and would spend hours at Mcdonalds using their internet to download roms of japanese GBA games. I became a regular. They knew me by name. They new my order: a caramel frappe and a wifi voucher. Years later I would get a job there. The manager already knew me as “that quiet kid who would sit in the corner booth with their laptop all night”. If it wasn’t Mcdonalds or the computer lab it was James’ bedroom where I would stay up all night researching things like the differences between The Legend of Zelda’s American and Japanese soundtracks. This wasn’t pre-youtube, but I just didn’t know of any channels that delved into that sort of thing.
We should probably start talking about Persona.
I was already a pretty casual fan of Shin Megami Tensei by this time. My friend Karen lent me her copies of Persona 3&4 six months prior. I played Strange Journey and Devil Survivor the previous summer. I played Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha Vs. The Soulless Army in 2007 after my father picked it up at a pawn shop.
“I know you like those weird Japanese games so here you go.”
Before 2007 I had only seen SMT in magazine ads in Newtype USA. It looked cool as hell.
After playing Persona 3 and 4 I wanted to start from the top. I wanted to play the first one. Seeing that the original Persona hit shelves in the US all the way in 1996 and never received a release on Playstation Network my best bet was to purchase and play the remake that came out in September of 2009 in the US. I had a paltry amount of money but I scrounged up enough cash to purchase a copy for myself. Only problem was that none of the stores had a copy to sell. Persona was a little more than a cult hit at this time, but seeing that the first game in the series didn’t have dating simulation mechanics, cheerful mascot characters, or bright, vibrant locales Atlus USA must not have printed as many copies, thinking that this game in particular wouldn’t sell as well as it’s younger siblings.
I was at a loss. I didn’t want to purchase the PS1 version (even though maybe I should have, it’s $400 now) and I didn’t want to pirate the game either. I wanted to give Atlus some of my money but didn’t know where to give it to them.
At this point a halogen light bulb started to flicker in my head. My brain couldn’t afford LED bulbs.
For reasons I won’t get into now I had to go to Driscoll Hospital in Corpus Christi almost weekly for a few months, and afterwards my family and I would go somewhere to eat. I checked online to see if any game stores had a copy, and to my delight there was one copy left in a Gamestop around the corner from a Souper Salad.
I liked soup.
I liked salad.
I liked Shin Megami Tensei.
Everything was going according to plan. I made a call the next day and asked if they could hold the game until Wednesday.
“Yeah we usually only hold games for 24 hours but we’ve had this copy since the game came out so no one is going to buy it any time soon so uh yeah we’ll hold it”
I gave the clerk my thanks over the phone. I hung up. I pumped my fist exactly once in celebration. Just a few more days of waiting.
Part 2: What is Persona?
While we wait for Wednesday let’s talk some more about Persona.
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona is a spin off of well…Shin Megami Tensei. We see a group of highschool students acquire ethereal “Personas”- magical beings that they can control. Just like the main SMT series demon conversations return, and you can still fuse monsters to make new ones. Gameplay-wise Persona 1 plays a lot like classic SMT. Each character has gear that they can equip including a melee weapon, a gun, and assorted armor pieces. There’s a slight Strategy RPG mechanic in how you position your party. Some characters don’t deal great ranged damage so you position them into the front row. The battle system isn’t too complex and it’s easy to learn. I’d say it’s the most fun out of the series in some respects. It has to be fun because the encounter rate when playing the game is simply too high. Maybe three, four steps in a dungeon and you’re in another battle.
The tagline in the Japanese version of Persona is “Be your true mind.”
This is the main focus of Persona as a whole. In each game the main characters battle with their inner demons, sometimes literally. This is what stuck out with me as a player. It was the most well written game I had played at the time. It’s aged a bit now but it still holds up when you get into the swing of things.
Gameplay is just about where the PSP and PS1 versions of the game have the most similarities. It’s important to remember that when Persona launched in America in 1996 Japanese Role Playing Games weren’t the juggernauts like they are today. We were in a pre-Final Fantasy VII world.
Part 3: A Tale of Two Tensei
Most American fans of Shin Megami Tensei know that Atlus USA’s first RPG in the series to get the English treatment was Persona. What if I told you that they had another game in development that never came to fruition?
Enter: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner, due for an American release in June of 1996 for the Sega Saturn.
In the March 1996 issue of Gamefan magazine we got a glimpse of the game’s English logo. Notice the “Shin Megami Tensei” moniker above Devil Summoner. Atlus was so confident in their fanbase already knowing what SMT was that they wanted to keep the SMT logo despite Devil Summoner technically being the 13th game in the series. Persona dropped the SMT name in lieu of “Revelations” which gave the game a more religious feel. I don’t think Atlus was going for a religious audience however because they were already in enough hot water as it is with the church.
I had the chance to ask a former Atlus USA employee a few questions regarding why Devil Summoner never came out in the US. Rumor has it that they shelved the project after receiving hate mail from evangelical Christians claiming that they were supporting Satanism by attempting to publish a game literally titled “Devil Summoner”. I wanted to get to the bottom of this so I spoke to Gail Salamanca and this is what he had to say.
“…we received letters like that but from what I recall I think it had more to do with the lack of development resources at the time.”
It honestly makes sense because with Persona coming out in November of 1996 that would mean that they would have to split the localization team to work on both Devil Summoner and Persona. That and the fact that the Saturn simply wasn’t selling well at all in America. Atlus USA had no choice but to stop production on Devil Summoner and put all their effort into Persona.
Part 4: Roses are Red, Violets are Blue
November 1996
Atlus USA’s first RPG localization- “Revelations: Persona” is finally out in the The United States. Let’s take a little time to discuss the differences between the American and Japanese versions of the game.
Why is it called “Revelations: Persona” and not just “Persona”?
Short answer is that Atlus USA was making an attempt to construct a series out of different games in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise. Instead of just calling the series “Shin Megami Tensei” which roughly translates to “New Tale of the Goddess” Atlus USA went with “Revelations” for a more literal biblical name.
We would only get one more name under the Revelations moniker. The Demon Slayer- otherwise known in Japan as “Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible”- which translates roughly to “Goddess Tale Side Story: Last Bible”
In 2004 Atlus USA would finally adopt the Shin Megami Tensei name with “Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne”, known in Japan as “Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne”. The first Shin Megami Tensei wouldn’t be released in English until 2014. As of writing Shin Megami Tensei II has never been officially released in English.
CHARACTERS
Much like the coin-shaped battery I ingested this morning this all leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Everyone is whiter…well not everyone clearly. Jesus. I don’t know what their goal was here but it doesn’t sit well with me at all. It’s important however to understand that a lot of localization efforts included changing not only the text and spoken dialog but also the setting and (in some cases) characters as a whole in order to appeal to western audiences. I don’t think any of this was absolutely necessary though. If you were already interested in Persona at the time of purchasing the game then you didn’t care if the game was set in Japan. In fact I can bet you wanted it to be as close to the overseas version as possible. My best guess is that Atlus USA changed appearances to better fit with someone who just happened to find a copy at rental store or a Funcoland and thought “hey this cover looks cool. RPG? I like Dungeons and Dragons. Sign me up!”
You head to the clerk at the desk and drive home, pop the disk out of the case, slap that bad boy into your Sony Playstation and boot the console up and get started on what taste makers in the 90’s called “A joyous good time for fans of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020.”
Listen to that crisp battle music. Shoji Meguro went to TOWN when he composed the music for Revelations: Persona. Let’s hear the battle theme for the PSP version:
Hey that’s not bad either!
It’s also completely different.
That’s because Shoji Meguro’s musical style is ever changing, ever evolving. That owns. Atlus and Meguro (the composer and director of the remake) wanted a brand new soundtrack to better match the pop rock sounds from Persona 3 and Persona 4 while also remaining….adjacent to the 90’s synth sounds of the original game’s soundtrack.
DIALOG
You can’t see me but i’m pulling my collar with my finger trying to lighten up the mood after witnessing the borderline hate crime that is this game’s dialog. I’m going to be honest. I don’t think the translator had time to sit back and actually take into account just how bad this sounds.
At least the PSP port walks back some of the more…colorful dialog and changes the the hair and skin color back to normal. And I mean everyone’s.
Hey look. I don’t think what Atlus USA did to Mark in 1996 was a bad thing. I think they had their hearts in the right place. I also acknowledge that i’m about 5 or 6 skin tones too light to really feel comfortable with this whole thing so let me be honest when I say that both Marks are fine. I like American Mark’s hat a little more though.
CONTENT
We’ve talked about the hair and skin color changes, we’ve talked about the dialog, let’s talk about my favorite major change in Revelations: Persona.
The Snow Queen.
A few hours into the Japanese version of Persona you’re given the opportunity to sidle off the main path and start an entirely different story. You find a mysterious mask and suddenly ice starts to form all around the Highschool. With the mask in your inventory you have now successfully initiated the Snow Queen questline. This route of the game is about half as long as the main quest, so it’s best to do this route after you have finished the game. It’s impossible to go back and forth between quests so be warned that once you start the snow queen quest you either have to load an older save or just roll with it. To be honest I’m not sure why i’m even warning you about the snow queen quest in the American version of the game because Atlus USA must’ve run out of time and resources…
…because they made the Snow Queen quest inaccessible.
It’s simple really. Atlus USA blocked off a check in the American version that initiated the quest, so you could never make your way through in a traditional way. If by some chance you had cheat software like a GameShark however you can brute force your way into the questline, although you wouldn't make it long. Dialog is in neither English nor Japanese, but instead a disarranged wreckage of glitched text. Battle text however is still English. When localizing the game Atlus USA changed the in game currency from Japanese Yen to American Dollars, and a bit into the quest a character sells you an item for five thousand yen. That’s roughly fifty dollars. Since Atlus USA didn’t get this far into localizing this quest you’re still expected to pay five thousand dollars as the exchange rate wasn’t taken into consideration, and the currency conversion was already hard-coded into the game. That’s a lot of money for some scrappy Highschool students to have on hand, and even though demons would give you cash after you kill them you likely wouldn’t have enough at that time. I know the economy was better in the 90’s compared to today but something’s just not right there.
Judging from this cutscene being dubbed in English in the American version of Persona’s Snow Queen quest, it’s apparent that Atlus USA had at some point wanted to fully translate this story. My best guess is again time and budget constraints. We’ll get back to this later.
Part 5: Dream of Butterfly
2010- SUMMER- WEDNESDAY
It’s time to go to the Doctor.
It’s time to eat soup and/or salad.
It’s time to buy Shin Megami Tensei: Persona for the Sony Playstation Portable.
The salt in the air quickly dissolves on my tongue as I make a quick lick around my lips to encourage myself to ask the man at the counter the question of the day.
“I called the other day about Persona. Do you still have it?”
He turns around, squats behind the counter and rises back to face me with a thick cardboard box in hand.
“Right here man. Hope you enjoy it. I don’t really like anime games.”
I didn’t ask this guy if he liked “anime games”. Persona isn’t even an “anime” game.
It’s a game.
From Japan.
With Japanese art.
That happens to follow similar aesthetic choices frequently found in Anime.
It’s not an Anime Game.
I remember vividly how offended I was at the time, but looking back I know it was a pointless thing to be tiffed about. I didn’t show my anger and just smiled as I handed over the cash. As I walked out of the store with bag in hand I felt a triumphant surge of energy swell throughout my being, each step clapping thunderously as I walked 50 steps to the all you should eat buffet of Soup and Salad. I scoped the restaurant and quickly found my family sitting at a table.
“Sorry it took me so long. I had to fight a guy for this game.”
My mother looked scared.
“Oh God honey. Are you serious?”
“No.”
“Honey don’t say stuff like that. We’re in Corpus Christi. Anything can happen here. I lived here for a bit you know. It’s dangerous.”
“Did anything happen while you lived here?”
“No.”
I made my way to the all you have to eat station of Broccoli Cheese soup and Clam Chowder. If these people had the technology to engineer some kind of chili fountain you know they’d be on the case.
I had a bisque and a small salad with sunflower seeds, ranch, and cherry tomatoes. I didn’t hate it. It hated me though, or rather my digestive tract.
Part 6: Until the Dawn
2010-SUMMER-TWO MONTHS LATER
I’m laying in bed. A pool of sweat accumulates on the back of my shirt as a faulty box fan tries it’s best to move some kind of wind to my body. I’ve been playing this game for approximately 40 hours now throughout the summer break. I’m almost towards the end of the game’s main story. If I just push myself through and grind a bit more during the final dungeon I might be able to finish this game tonight.
The sun sets. The cicadas sing their death knell as ice cold chills spark in my brain after the fourth Coke Zero enters my body. I brought a cooler into my bedroom. I was serious about this. “Vampire Hunter D” is playing on my 20 inch CRT television. I just got past the shower scene. I remember screening this film during my highschool’s anime club and glancing a worried look at my teacher when Doris Lane’s exposed buttocks and breasts were shown in the film’s shower scene. While not sexual in nature it’s inclusion in the film is merely fan service for gross otaku.
“Ma’am I completely forgot-”
My teacher didn’t seem to worry.
“Paul I didn’t know these cartoons could show nudity. I guess they really are for mature audiences.”
Who would’ve thought that a little T&A would be what finally convinced my teacher to look into funding for my anime club. She now knew that anime and manga was a legitimate art-form and secured us $100 worth of manga for the school’s library. If by some chance you went to Cuero Highschool in 2010 and onward and found a few volumes of manga laying on a shelf then you have me, Mrs. Garcia, and anime breasts to thank.
THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT PERSONA
Oh, I suppose so.
It’s now 2AM. I’m on my fifth Coke Zero. That’s 170mg of caffeine in my system. That’s two cups of coffee in the the span of 4 hours. That’s….not that dramatic when you think about it. Still my foot taps as I’m now sitting at the edge of my bed hoping to be leveled high enough to put an end to this story. Older RPGs required you to spend a little extra time in dungeons to fight monsters, gain experience, and level up in order to fight and kill the boss easily. Battles in Persona are relatively quick by the end, and combined with the high encounter rate you can spend maybe an hour tops and have leveled up at least once per character…hopefully. I look at the DVD menu for Vampire Hunter D. It’s looped at least 4 times by now. If I play the film again I’ll end up grinding this game out until the film’s over yet again. That’s 90 minutes of leveling. I can do this. Instead however I bet myself that If I can finish Shin Megami Tensei: Persona before the film ends again I’ll go to sleep immediately afterward. If I can’t then i’m going to play this game until the sun comes up.
30 minutes into the final boss battle and I’m fully confident in my imminent success. Every character is a reasonable level. I have some of the best equipment in the game. The end is within reach. With one final spell cast the boss is down.
The game is over. I can sleep.
Or so I thought.
Part 7: The Snow Queen
2010-SUMMER-TEN MINUTES LATER
The biggest and in my opinion best change between the PS1 and PSP versions of Persona has to be that thirteen years later Atlus USA finally had the time, money, and staff necessary to localize all of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona. That means that yes, if you want to you can start the long discussed “Snow Queen” questline. Earlier in this essay I mentioned that in order to start this story you essentially needed to start the game over from scratch, and follow a small checklist of tasks to initiate this optional scenario. Still high off the dopamine from finishing the game’s 40 hour main story I took it upon myself to get started on my 2nd playthrough, and to make sure I got to start the Snow Queen quest. Not long after going through the first dungeon of the game I found myself drifting to sleep. It was time to give in to slumber and jump back in later that day with a fresh mind.
2010-Summer-Two Weeks Later
My senior year of highschool has started. I signed up for Theater as my last required art elective.
I hated it.
I was always a slacker, but when your first month of class is essentially nothing I just felt dirty. The “theater kids” had their own clique, the “people forced into the class to acquire the art credit” had their thing, I was stuck in the middle. I wanted to be here. I wanted to want to be here. I also deeply disliked almost everyone in this class. While everyone else tried to pass the time with conversation or other schoolwork I found myself sitting at the steps to the stage with PSP in hand, still forcing my way through my 2nd playthrough of Persona. I didn’t have a job at the time. I couldn’t just buy something new to play. I made somewhat of an attempt to get my money’s worth out of everything I purchased. A couple weeks later and I would end up dropping out of theater in exchange for choir. I loved it. The “choir kids” were actually pretty cool, and I would see myself excused out of classes that I already excelled at (my English teacher was a coach. He didn’t care if I stayed or left) and would go to the choir hall to either practice pieces or just to sit and play videogames.
I mostly played videogames.
Part 8: Bloody Destiny
I never did finish the Snow Queen questline. I got caught up in other things. I got a job. I used money from my job to buy new games. I started going to football games for the first time in years. I dealt with loss. I learned to trust myself and my classmates for the last year of highschool. I engaged in a romantic relationship. I talked to people I usually didn’t talk to. In “Trying To Make It Work: My Time With Bravely Default II” I confessed that I was snob when it came to media. I thought that whatever I liked was cool and good and better than what “normies” liked at the time. I was a cynic. I was….me. I went out of my way to purchase and play a game that I knew no one else played in my admittedly small group of friends because I wanted to dangle this game in front of people and say “Your games will never be as cool as Persona 1 for the PSP”. I still think that way from time to time. Having said that I’m still glad I purchased this game. The games I played as a teenager formed who I am today. I have weird tastes, but now with the ever-looming malevolence that is social media I know that people like me did in fact exist during my formative years. I always knew this though. I just didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to be different in the worst way. I wanted to be better than everyone else. I bought Shin Megami Tensei: Persona at a Gamestop in Corpus Christi, Texas for forty dollars in 2010, and now the same game is $400 on eBay. I was a taste maker. I made my own tastes. Does that make me better than anyone?
No.
In fact in some ways it makes me worse. I spent the first three years of highschool pretending I was someone else. I put up a persona of someone who didn’t care about anyone or anything. I only wanted to play videogames and watch anime and stay in my room but in reality I just wanted to be like everyone else. I knew that was out of the question when I looked at my classmates in freshman year. They were different than me. Skinny. Pretty. Cool. Straight. I was none of these things.
Yet…at the same time…I can’t see myself not being who I was in the first three years of highschool. I learned that who I was will forever be who I am. We’re all slowly dying and resurrecting with each action we make in our lives. I can’t take back the things I did or didn’t do. Persona’s main themes are about being true to yourself and rolling with the punches. In order for me to continue living I must face the death of my ego. I forgive my snobby otaku self for being who they were. You can rest now. Lord knows you deserve it.
EPILOGUE
I’ve looked well past what I initially hoped to look into. My goal here was to always take a long look at myself while also looking into Persona’s history, versions, and mechanics. Reflections aside I still want to get into the basic functions of what constitutes as a “review”.
Play the game.
It’s surprisingly accessible. If you have a phone or computer you can emulate the game easily using the program PPSSPP. If you have a PS Vita you can purchase the game for $20. you can do the same on PS3 and transfer the game to a PSP, but that’s kind of asking a lot.
Your best option honestly is to just emulate the game. I played on Vita, PC, my phone, and my laptop within the last year or so as of writing this. I didn’t have any complaints. Your mileage will vary.
PlayStation Classic consoles are still pretty cheap and relatively easy to come by if you look online. I’m glad to say that the original PS1 version of Persona is one of the 20 games curated for the tiny device. Everything from the original run of the American version is there. The character changes, the distasteful dialog, it’s all there. A lot of people were confused as to why this game was chosen but personally seeing how insanely popular Persona 5 is it makes perfect sense to include it’s predecessor. Young persona fans who started with the newest game will play this and while they probably won’t enjoy Revelations: Persona as much as Persona 5 perhaps they’ll take something from it.
2020- WINTER
https://www.instagram.com/p/B7ZaYK5lHRQ/
I Played Persona again for the first time in ten years.
In this game I saw myself in another universe. Another plane of existence.
Flickering went the synapses in my brain as I continued to remember the last of my formative years.
I was unfamiliar with who I was ten years ago, yet I knew them longer than any ghost.
It was my true mind.
