Trivia / Atelier Series

• Fan Translation: After several years of Development Hell, the PlayStation 2 remake of Marie and Elie have been translated, including several bug fixes and minor features restored from the original versions added to the English patch.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • As of The New '20s, this has become an issue for some of the games, up to and including some of the ones released when this very wiki was new and had recent pages for the titles! While every Atelier title from Rorona on (save for mobile titles) has been released on PS4 and PC, thus ensuring their long-term accessibility, earlier titles are in a rougher state: Marie has been re-released for numerous platforms and even got a remake, but Elie was last released on the PS2 in 2005, and the PS2-original games have it even tougher. The Atelier Iris games have never been re-issued for any platform, and the Gramnad and Mana Khemia series were last released on the PlayStation Portable - and the PSP download storefront shut down in 2021 (and only the original Mana Khemia saw an international release on the platform in any event). As a result, from Elie through MK2, anyone with an interest in the games as of this (2023) edit has to resort to either the second-hand market or outright piracy.
  • As additional trivia, Atelier Lilie has the worst of it by far - the game has not been re-issued in any way since 2002 (with its Plus edition with expanded content), and was never put up on download storefronts or ported to the PSP, so it has now been out of print for more than twenty years! It also lacks any kind of translation patch, so enjoying it as a non-Japanese speaker can be extremely challenging. The Iris games at least got a second printing under the "PlayStation The BEST" label in Japan much later in the PS2's life, as well as the US printings - no such luck on either front for Lilie.
  • With their lack of ports, the Iris games are definitely in the "next-worst" position, and prices for authentic US discs - never mind near-mint copies - began getting predictably crazy as The New '20s wore on.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.":
  • Parts of the casts of the first two games made their American debuts in, of all things, Gust's other RPG series EXA_PICO, in a bonus virtual reality level for the two heroines in the first Ar tonelico. And with the release of Cross Edge in the States in May 2009, Marie has made her American console debut - completely outside her own franchise or even company.
  • "Marth Syndrome" ended up striking the franchise twice; Trinity Universe received a US release, and it features characters from Gust, Nippon Ichi and Idea Factory games... including the titular heroine of Atelier Viorate. This means that Viorate (called Violet in the game itself) joins Marie in debuting in America in a game not directly produced by her home company. Frothing, possibly rabid gamers armed with carrots have been spotted outside NISA's offices at this point.
  • And, of course, there's the fact that, thanks to bringing Atelier Annie over first, this trope now applies to Liese Randel, the heroine of Atelier Liese.
• Newbie Boom: These games were quite niche for a long time, but Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout helped bring it into the mainstream, in part thanks to its streamlined gameplay experience, and also due to Ryza's design attaining Memetic Mutation.
• No Dub for You: Most of the Atelier games were dubbed up to Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings, which at that point, the Atelier series were released without one. According to the PR manager from Koei Tecmo, the vast majority of players use Japanese voices and decided it would speed up the Atelier game releases and save more money in the long run.
• No Export for You:
  • It took eight years for any material of the series to be released in English, and that started with the first Atelier Iris game. To this day, despite a PS2 remake for the first two games and PSP remakes for the Gramnad games (Judie and Viorate), none of the first five games in the series have ever shown any sign of being exported in any fashion. The Atelier Marie & Elie manga also took over half a decade to cross the Pacific, and with Tokyopop's financial troubles and closure, the last volume was cut from publication. Atelier fans used to have good reason to think that the series was cursed in the West, especially for "classic-style" games, but with every game in the series (bar Lina) having come over since the series switched back toward its classic mechanics, the curse now seems solidly broken.
    • Interestingly, the M&E manga did get released in complete form in several other European languages; Éditions Ki-oon released the full five-volume set in French in 2005, and Egmont released a German edition in 2002, not long after the original Japanese release (a fact that Yoshihiko Ochi, the author, even notes in his omake!)
  • And as noted, due to the changing fortunes of the DS versus the 3DS and the terrible-for-the-US-market release window, poor Atelier Lina became the only Atelier title to miss the export boat once export of "traditional" (e.g. non-Iris or Khemia) games actually began with Annie and Rorona, joining Liese in non-export ignomy and leaving Annie alone on the DS in English.
    • And of course, Atelier Liese missed the boat, too, but this is very likely due to the serious issues that game had.
• Referenced by...: Some alchemist-based games will have their alchemists exclaim "Barrel!" or in Japanese, "Taru!", at well, barrels:
  • Märchen Forest: Mylne and the Forest Gift
  • Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure
• Remade for the Export: The original Atelier Marie got a Video Game Remake in 2023 with an international release from Koei Tecmo America. It was available on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC, with a port of Atelier Marie Plus included with the Digital Deluxe Edition.
• Role Reprise: Much of the cast from the original Atelier Marie reprised their roles for the remake, including Haruna Ikezawa as Marie, Tsumugi Oozawa as Schia Donnerstag and Jurota Kosugi as Endrek Yard.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • The original games were reportedly brought over to Sony for U.S. release approval several times, and shot down every time because "Americans won't get a 2D game that revolves around Item Crafting". This despite the games selling six-digits in Japan and influencing how the industry approached Item Crafting.
  • And then, when Tokyopop finally decided to bring over the Atelier Marie & Elie manga, first they were going to sell the books online only without any bookstore exposure (a decision later reverted), and then when the company hit financial rocks, guess which series was thrown overboard with only one volume to go?
• Sequel First: Arguably started with Atelier Iris 1, since we got that game ahead of the first five "proper" Atelier games. This happened much more blatantly with Atelier Annie, however, which serves as a sort of sequel to Atelier Liese; Liese Randel, protagonist of the previous game, makes a major appearance in Annie, and her game not making it to the States necessitates marking some spoilers out of politeness.
• Voiced Differently in the Dub: Throughout the Mysterious subseries, Plachta's Japanese voice is soft and very high-pitched, making her sound young and innocent, while the English dub has her speak in a somewhat deeper, more mature tone to reflect her very long life.

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