Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (1987)

Original title

デジタル・デビル物語　女神転生

Directed by

Mizuho Nishikubo

Genre

horror film, science fiction film

Country

Japan

Runtime

45 min

Rating

5.9 of 10 from 15 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A high school student accidentally unleashes demons from a computer program. He and a classmate must fight supernatural forces in a dungeon crawling adventure.

retroatmosphericominousslow-pacedcerebraldarkfantasticaldated

What happens

Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei refers to two distinct role-playing video games based on the Digital Devil Story trilogy of science fiction novels by Japanese author Aya Nishitani. One version was developed by Atlus and published by Namco in 1987 for the Famicom—Atlus would go on to create further games in the Megami Tensei franchise. A separate version for personal computers was developed and published by Telenet Japan with assistance from Atlus during the same year. The story sees Japanese high school students Akemi Nakajima and Yumiko Shirasagi combat the forces of Lucifer, unleashed by a demon summoning program created by Nakajima. The gameplay features first-person dungeon crawling and turn-based battles or negotiation with demons in the Famicom version, and a journey through a hostile labyrinth as Nakajima featuring real-time combat in the Telenet version. Development on both versions of the video game began as part of a multimedia expansion of Nishitani's book series. Nishitani was deeply involved with the design and scenario. The gameplay mechanics in Atlus' role-playing version of the game were based on the Wizardry series, but with an added demon negotiation system considered revolutionary for the time. Atlus and Telenet Japan worked on their projects simultaneously, playing against genre expectations for their respective platforms. The Famicom version proved the more popular with both critics and players, leading to the development of the 1990 Famicom sequel Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II. An enhanced port of both games for the Super Famicom was released in 1995. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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