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"We get off on your tears."

Atlus is a Japanese video game developer, publisher and distributor based in Tokyo, founded on April 7, 1986 and a subsidiary of Sega since 2013. While not necessarily having the name-recognition of some larger companies, they have a huge number of quality products, both as a developer and a publisher, and often both at once. The Japanese HQ portion of the company is both a publisher (since 1989) and developer, the North American branch serves as a publisher and localization company that publishes more games than just what its parent company Index Corporation develops and publishes; in the list of games below said games are listed with Atlus being the North American publisher. Atlus is probably most notable for developing and publishing the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games.

Many of their internally developed 21st-century games are really freaking HARD.note  Though good design means they usually avoid Fake Difficulty. Their American branch is also famous for the translation of their games: Woolseyism and Superlative Dubbing abound in games they publish. Atlus is also famous for first exposing North America to Nippon Ichi Software, having published Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure back in the PlayStation 1 era, and later Disgaea: Hour of Darkness game for PlayStation 2. This led to NIS eventually branching out on their own, and to this day the companies share many staff amongst their translation and dubbing teams, as well as an amicable business relationship. In fact, NIS America is responsible for publishing Persona -trinity soul-, the anime based on the Atlus game.

Currently holds the dubious title of "That One Company", due to their joy at making gamers suffer. And we like it, dammit. Funnily enough, even some games they merely published and not developed can be Nintendo Hard, like Demon's Souls and the Disgaea games.

Also note the number of Quirky Works below.

Atlus Japan is co-creator (with Sega) of "Print Club".

In June 2013, Atlus' parent company Index Corporation was convicted of corporate fraud, leading to them declaring bankruptcy. Sega Sammy eventually stepped in and purchased Index (including Atlus) for 14 billion yen (approximately $141 million US). Index's other assets were sold two years later.

Quite a few Atlus alumni became major players in the game industry after their tenures at the company ended. Kazuya Niinō, Kouji Okada and Range Murata began their gaming careers at the studio.

Its North American rival, Sierra, was known for developing very difficult games and was defunct for years before being revived by its parent company, Activision.

Following the success of the Sonic movies, Sega has expressed an interest in adapting Atlus’ IP to live action film and television. Time will tell if they follow through. Worth mentioning the rather surreal TV drama adaptation of Devil Summoner.


Some of their titles (including externally developed games localized by Atlus USA) include:

Western Developed

Licensed Games

Published/Localized by Atlus USA

1 - developed by FromSoftware
2 - developed by Sting Entertainment
3 - developed by Cave
4 - developed by Flight-Plan
5 - developed by SNK Playmore
6 - developed by Irem
7 - published by LJN Toys in the US
8 - developed by Psikyo
9 - published by BAM! Entertainment
10 - developed by Hudson Soft


Tropes in Atlus' works:

  • International Coproduction: Go! Go! Hypergrind, a skateboarding game the company published for the Nintendo GameCube, was developed in collaboration with American animator John Kricfalusi and his Spumco studio. The character designs and environments are reminiscent of The Ren & Stimpy Show.
  • Nintendo Hard: invoked Atlus Japan-developed games tend to be quite difficult.
  • No Budget: A few of their games in the late 2000s to early 2010s were produced with lower budgets than some of their other games and were even forced to re-use assets from previous games to help complete them. A major example is the original base release for Persona 4 which was released on the Playstation 2 in 2008 in Japan and 2009 in America instead of the Playstation 3 which was already out for two years and uses similar assets to Persona 3, the previous game with sprite data for the main characters of that game still existing in the code. This was mainly due to financial issues regarding Index Corporation, Atlus's parent company at the time, which eventually led to them being convicted of corporate fraud and declaring bankruptcy in June, 2013. Thankfully this issue stopped plaguing Atlus after they were acquired by the Sega Sammy Corporation.
  • That One Boss: invoked Enough examples for its own page.

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