What Could Have Been / Shin Megami Tensei

• Devil Summoner: There were official attempts to bring the Saturn and PSP versions to North America at one point, but both were cancelled at the last minute. Atlus has never revealed the reason why; some members of the rom hacking community claim that the game's coding is an absolute nightmare, thus making any sort of translation next to impossible.
• Digital Devil Saga: The game was originally planned to have a slightly different story, however the writer, Yu Godai, was forced to abandon the work due to illness and Atlus where left with trying to finish up the story on their own. Yu would continue the story after she recovered, however, which led to the Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner novels.
• Persona:
  • There is an unused track in the official soundtrack which is called "Time Count Event". The track was later remixed in Persona 2 as the "Time Castle", which is owned by the titular count. Given The Reveal in Eternal Punishment that the Count is an avatar of Nyarlathotep, it's fairly obvious that he was meant to appear in the game.
  • Yuka Ayase's role in the Snow Queen Quest was meant to be much greater; there is a key item in the game's files called "Ambrosia" which she had cooked herself. This is referenced in the final game, as she wonders where the Home Economy room is.
  • The files from the game's initial western release also reveal that the Snow Queen Quest was meant to be included. It's entirety still exists in the game's data, and the first line of the Quest is even translated. It is possible to trigger it by hacking the game, but it is incredibly glitchy and completely freezes from a point onward.
• Persona 2:
  • Supposedly, the player could have influenced Joker's One-Winged Angel form by spreading rumors describing the Joker as angelic or devilish. The NPCs that reference this are still in the game, and both the Concept Art and a sprite of the Joker's "devil" form still exist, but there's no way to influence his appearance.
• Persona 3:
  • As far as the game's development itself, it seems that, in addition to battles taking place on-screen instead of changing (like a Random Encounter), Persona-users would use tarot cards for summoning, which is more or less what goes on in both the earlier games and in Persona 4. The evokers were made to better evoke the theme of death that the game is built on.
  • Apparently, the creators had always intended to let the player pick the Protagonist's gender; for the original release, it could not be implemented in time.
  • Most of the characters' personalities remained consistent throughout development, but with some drastic design changes: Fuuka's early designs had her more resembling Chihiro Fushimi (a Social Link), a lot of Mitsuru's early Concept Art featured her with short hair, and one of the dog breeds that Koromaru was considered as was a dalmatian. Ironically, one early concept of Akihiko penned him as an outright obnoxious ladies' man, whereas he's the complete opposite in the final product. Aigis also went through a lot of design changes, on top of the fact that a sizable portion of the staff were reluctant to put a robot of her caliber in the game in the first place.
  • Junpei was going to be a romance option for the female protagonist in Portable. One can actually hack the game to see a video of him being the one to find her and hold her at the ending of a New Game Plus (link here.) There was also the intention of making Yukari the straight up canon Love Interest for the male protagonist, which was phased out when Social Links were put in the game.
  • Ken was originally planned to use thrown projectiles (darts in this case) as his weapon, like Yukino, Jun, and Baofu before him, instead of the spear he would end up using.
  • The game taking place over the course of three school years was an early consideration before being cut down to a single year.
  • A funeral scene for the protagonist was considered, with more attendees depending on how far Social Links were progressed over the course of the game.
• Persona 4 had a lot of unused concepts:
  • Kanji Tatsumi originally had a much more adult-looking design.
  • Rise Kujikawa was to be a juvenile delinquent with Saki Konishi's design and chains for weapons.
  • Naoto and Teddie switched genders in development; Naoto was originally going a boy, and Teddie a girl. According to the artbook, when it was decided Naoto would be female, Teddie was made male in response just to keep the party's gender ratio even. An early sketch of his female form resembles his Alice Costume from the final game, except looking somewhat older.
  • Also, weird little things like Chie and Yukiko having long and short hair, respectively.
  • Some character portraits from Persona 3 were found in the game data, albeit it's been said that those are actually leftovers from the fact that Persona 4 was made with Persona 3 FES' engine.
  • Some Dummied Out dub dialogue seems to have implied a romantic route for Yosuke, despite no such option being available in the original. However, Yosuke's Social Link actually does contain a "Girlfriend Flag" usually only used for Romance Routes - except that in his case, said flag only determines whether or not you get to hug him at a certain point in the final game. This all has become a huge subject of fan art and fanfiction.
  • There's also evidence that at one point in the story the killer was going to turn out to be your uncle Dojima but this was apparently so disturbing to testers that it was changed during production. Some elements of this early version stayed around with the eventual killer Tohru Adachi, such as him being someone you trust implicitly and who's welcome in the house at any time but dialed down somewhat.
• Persona 4: Arena:
  • Ryotaro Dojima was considered as a playable character (instead of a Persona, he'd summon Nanako, giving the impression he would have been a Joke Character), but Atlus bluntly shot the idea down.
  • Akihiko's initial design for the game was, in the words of Zen United, similar to Jason Statham in The Transporter, implying Soejima may have planned to give him a design similar to his Trinity Soul appearance. However, the director felt a 'wild man' was needed, and influenced Akihiko's drastic change in appearance.
  • Aigis was intended to have a braided ponytail in her new design. That went to Fuuka in the end.
  • Going through the sound test in Gallery mode shows some unused lines for each of the characters, including the Investigation Team calling out their Ultimate Personas, and the Shadow Operatives calling out their own initial Personas. Obviously, the unused Personas were considered for the game at some time, but ultimately failed to make it into the final product.
• Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth: Some◊ discarded◊ designs◊ exist for Zen and Rei that were surprisingly different from the final product. Most of them had a Deliberately Monochrome color palette for their clothes, and some designs had them physically bound to each other to emphasize their codependency.
• For Persona 5, it is best to visit its trivia page, as there is so much cut content and scenarios that they are separated by folders.
• Megami Tensei II: The Dark Hero was supposed to be a boss fought during the player's trip to the Suzuki Company, hence his boss data and incredibly high stats. Also, Yumiko, a major character from the original Megami Tensei (now an old woman), was supposed to make a cameo in an unknown capacity according to a magazine preview.
• Shin Megami Tensei I:
  • The artbook had designs of demons that did not make the final cut.
  • Originally the game was only meant to start in Tokyo and then to take place on a global scale before ending in Israel.
• Shin Megami Tensei Synchronicity Prologue: Jack Ripper was originally going to be a playable character, but was scrapped for unknown reasons.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV:
  • The standard Samurai uniforms used to be gray and black until they decided that it wouldn't make sense for the Black Samurai to be considered conspicuous if all Samurai wore dark uniforms so they switched to blue and white.
  • The audience room of Mikado Castle was cut as a visitable location because of how little importance the king ended up having in the game itself.
  • Lucifer Palace and Purgatorium were originally the final dungeons for the opposite alignment route, Lucifer Palace for the Chaos route and Purgatorium for the Law route, they were switched for symbolism.
  • An idea that went unused for Lucifer Palace was Lucifer's eye being seen in windows, watching the party as they make their way through the dungeon.
  • Akihabara was originally going to be explorable before being cut entirely. It's explained in-universe as the Ashura-Kai destroying the ward in what appeared to be a military strike.
  • Reverse Hills had some content that was too graphic for a Cero C rating, so they toned it down.
  • The designer of Chemtrail, Tamotsu Shinohara, had initially wanted to put Illuminati symbolism in its design as part of its conspiracy theory aspect, like a one eyed pyramid imprinted on its stomach, before deciding that it might cause problems later and scrapped the idea.
  • Jonathan used to look like an older Ken Amada. Similarly, Nevarre has gone under several redesigns.
  • According to the Megaten Maniax book, the original script Kaneko had created for the game was so massive, it is described to have been able to fill upwards of 7 to 8 volumes of Japanese novels. Supposedly it was split into two huge parts internally called the Resurrection arc and the Destruction arc. The game is mostly based on the content in the Resurrection arc, while the material of the Destruction arc mostly went unused. According to revealed material about the second arc, it was supposed to take place in 201X and was going to act as a sort of interactive backstory for the Resurrection Arc. It also reveals that Kenji was originally going to have a much more central role.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse:
  • The game started as an Updated Re-release of Shin Megami Tensei IV, until the production staff realized they had so much new content and so many new ideas they needed an entirely new game to fit them all.
  • Nanashi was initially meant to be a middle-aged man trying to save his daughter. This was scrapped for a 15-year old protagonist, and Nanashi's original design was recycled for Asahi's father. Likewise, several young playable characters such as Toki and Asahi appeared much older in their initial designs.
• The Japanese Xbox exclusive Shin Megami Tensei NINE was planned to lead into a Shin Megami Tensei MMORPG which was never released.

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