(continued from Part 2) (Part 1 is recommended to read prior to Part 3)
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey might be one of the greatest examples of fanservice ever made. In a genre where “fanservice” usually means crass pandering with skimpy outfits for female characters or other brazen titillation, Strange Journey instead provided its ravenous fans with more of what they already loved about Shin Megami Tensei: creative direction from Kazuma Kaneko, more demons, mature characters, an original setting, and proper apocalyptic atmosphere—a true SMT game in every sense. Neither the limits of the Nintendo DS hardware nor the series’ usual rough edges would suppress Strange Journey’s understanding that the greatest fanservice is respect for its audience.
There’s just one big problem: Strange Journey under-performed at retail relative to other games in the franchise and in spite
of being on a platform with a large install base, moving only 127,946 copies in
Japan. [1] To add insult to injury, Persona 3 Portable, the
second re-release of Persona 3, was released in Japan only a few weeks after Strange Journey’s launch and completely outclassed it with
183,283 in sales. [1] The niche Shin Megami Tensei had always relied on
was apparently eroding away.
It was in this climate that development of Shin Megami Tensei
IV began. "I first started thinking about [SMT4] once Strange
Journey, which came out October 2009, was finished," said SMT4’s
director, Kazuyuki Yamai. "I've been hearing from fans who wanted an
'official' SMT sequel for ages, and we thought that we were finally at the
point as a team where we were mature enough to tackle the job, so that's how it
got started." [2] So much like what happened with Persona, a
new generation of creators would take hold of Shin Megami Tensei with a fresh,
modern approach. But amid changing tastes, how much of SMT’s old identity would
have to be sacrificed to bridge the series to the new players it so desperately
needed?
