Which two games have you played? Anyone, I'm very interested in more of this series' history and I'm sure many readers are too. Have at it!

Interesting, I think I had originally only heard of the Game Boy Color version, so I thought it was some strange attempt at cashing in on the Pokémon craze. Obviously it came out well before then, so it sounds like a pretty interesting game, though the title is certainly strange. 

That is a pretty interesting factoid. Wasn't the first Persona called Revelations: Persona when it was originally released in the US?  I can't recall which game was the first to actually use the Shin Megami Tensei name in the US. Was it Eternal Punishment or did that not happen until Nocturne?

I will have to take a look for this fan translation. I imagine these games would probably be pretty disappointing to a lot of SMT fans, given that the unique setting is often what draws people to them.

Sounds more and more like the Last Bible offshoot is rather the ugly duckling of SMT's many sub-series. The near-east setting does sound somewhat neat, but in general these sound like generic RPGs with the only difference being some demon negotiations.

I wonder how many people even played the one Last Bible game that did make it over here. Anyway, though it would have been interesting to play some of these, I think we can safely safe that this is no big loss. Maybe Atlus will put them into some kind of collection some day and translate that, but it doesn't sound like these games were even popular in Japan. I look forward to hearing about the Devil Children games, good luck in Strange Journey!

Seriously? I guess the original game's plot was pretty wacky, but this just seems way out there. Oh well, it is a kid's game at its heart, so I'm not quite sure what I expect from the plot. Please tell me the Hades Pokémon is named Hadesmon!

So essentially, aside from the basic structure of Pokémon, they also have the game plot down to a formula? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. It would be cool if they could do something interesting with plot in one of the games. 

Yeah I've played a bit of Black and the plot seems even more inane than any other game in the series. Perhaps even their story formula is starting to falter? We'll see what they come up with for the next game.

Well to be fair, we are talking about a series where "demons" includes things like Angels and Norse Gods, so I don't think that aspect is too bad. The shooting yourself in the head aspect does surprise me. Even as a niche game, you'd think someone would have gotten angry about that. I don't really have a good answer. Atlus is a niche publisher, but it isn't exactly unknown, and  Persona 3 did well. I'm just going to call luck on this one. Perhaps if a certain Miami lawyer hadn't been so busy with other games he might have discovered this one?

I mean, we've even had two other versions of the game since the original release. I should probably just stop before someone finds this column and raises a stink shouldn't I?

I would say it's a simple matter of pandering to your audience. I think for the most part, subtlety is often lost on many people, so developers keep things more straightforward. Granted we aren't talking about first person shooters, so we expect a bit more, but still. Perhaps Sierra's developers just had more respect for their audience? Now, these blue and red options can often be quite compelling, but there are certainly a ton of games that would do much better with a subtle approach. I'm sure someone will try it eventually, but there is no doubt it is long overdue.