Atlus has confirmed its second modern remake of a Persona game originally released on the PlayStation.
Atlus’s Persona games have had a long and storied history before the popularity of recent PS2 entries Persona 3 and Persona 4. Though the spin-off grew out of a series that began on the Famicom and bore the name Megami Tensei, the original Persona was released for the PlayStation in 1996. Atlus remade that title on the PSP with Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, and has recently announced that it plans to give the same treatment to Persona 2: Innocent Sin.
Confused yet? No? Well, I’ll continue. Persona 2 was originally released in Japan as a mini-series composed of two different games: Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. Though Innocent Sin was the first game in the duology, only Eternal Punishment was localized and released in North America. Innocent Sin has become a target of collectors and importers that want to experience the full Persona 2 saga, though Eternal Punishment isn’t a direct sequel to Innocent Sin plot-wise.
Atlus is only remaking Innocent Sin for now. Atlus revealed the game in Japanese magazine Famitsu, with director Shoji Meguro saying that remaking both parts of Persona 2 at once just wouldn’t fit on a single UMD. However, he said he’d love to do Eternal Punishment in the future.
Innocent Sin begins a few years after the story of the first Persona and stars a returning character amongst other high school demon summoners. The remake will feature remade demon and character graphics, an updated battle interface, and a new anime-style opening movie. Meguro also says that it’ll have difficulty settings that can be changed at any time, it’ll control better than the original, and there are even more features he can’t reveal yet.
Innocent Sin PSP has only been announced for Japan at this time, but I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if Atlus USA doesn’t localize it for North America too. Nearly every recent Megami Tensei game or spin-off has made it overseas, from the original Persona‘s PSP remake to Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor on the Nintendo DS.
North America now has a chance to finally see a release of Innocent Sin upgraded with an official translation, which is something that series fans have desired for nearly a decade, despite subject matter that may be a little racy including the resurrection of Adolf Hitler. A future remake of Eternal Punishment wouldn’t be terrible either, because the late 1990s North American localization changed a lot of its original content.
Source: 1up
